During the occupation of a Ukrainian village, a 40-year-old Russian from the Republic of Tuva mocked the locals, including interrogating them and throwing explosives for fun. Prosecutor’s investigators learned about this, and the Slidstvo.Info journalists identified the occupier.

In January 2023, Ukrainian law enforcement officers announced suspicion of violating the laws and customs of war to a junior sergeant of the Russian army, Andriyan Bazan. At the beginning of the war, he and other occupiers entered the village of Yahidne, Chernihiv oblast, and terrorized local residents, holding more than 300 people in the basement.

Junior Sergeant Andriyan Bazan serves in the 55th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District of the Russian Federation, which is stationed in Kyzyl (Tuva Republic).

The chevron of the 55th separate motorized rifle brigade of the Russian army

According to the prosecutor’s office, Andriyan Bazan took one of the residents of Yahidne outside, put him against the wall and started shooting at the man over his head: he threatened to kill him if he did not tell something about the Armed Forces of Ukraine. 

Despite the fact that the resident of Yahidne knew nothing about Ukrainian defenders, the Russian continued to abuse him. The occupier took out a dummy grenade and threw it at the prisoner’s feet. Andriyan was very amused by how the man got scared, fell and tried to cover his head with his hands to protect himself. 

The Russian soldier found this “entertainment” amusing, laughed out loud at the frightened civilian, and then locked him in the basement of the school. For such actions, Bazan faces imprisonment for a term of 8 to 12 years (Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). 

Slidstvo.Info managed to find the occupier through the pages in the Russian social network Vkontakte. Andriyan Bazan is 40 years old, he lives with his wife and daughter in the village of Kaa-Khem in the Republic of Tuva.

 

Before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military actively ran a page on Vkontakte, willingly publishing many of his photos.

 

Andriyan Bazan is a wrestling fan. The man has many subscriptions to sports-related pages, and he also keeps dozens of videos from various competitions.

Apparently, the Russian did not have enough adrenaline, so he traveled more than 4,000 kilometers to a foreign country to kill and torture people.

It is not yet known whether the Russian occupier has returned to his native Tuva, as there have been no new posts on Andriyan Bazan’s page for a long time – the last publication dates back to November 2021. However, many of his colleagues from the military unit are already buried in Kyzyl, the capital of the Republic of Tuva. 

The social network VKontakte is full of obituaries of soldiers from Tuva who went to fight in Ukraine.

It is noteworthy that the social network published a post “56 biographies of Tuvan compatriots who died in 100 days of the ‘special military operation in Ukraine'”.

A screenshot of a post about more than 50 dead Russian soldiers from Tuva

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