Russian authorities have arrested a top military colonel and accused him of large-scale fraud, the state news agency TASS reported on Thursday. The colonel previously commanded forces responsible for a 2022 massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
Authorities arrested the colonel, Artyom Gorodilov, on July 3 and charged him with fraud worth at least one million rubles ($11,236), TASS reported. A military court ordered him to be held in pretrial detention until August 19 and he faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty, TASS reported. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Colonel Gorodilov is currently the commander of the 83rd Guards Air Assault Brigade, a unit based in the Russian Far East, operating in eastern Ukraine. He previously led the 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment, based in the Russian city of Pskov.
A 2022 New York Times investigation found that members of the 234th Regiment were responsible for a massacre of civilians on Yablunska Street in Bucha, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, when it was occupied by troops from Moscow in the early days of the war.
Colonel Gorodilov led the unit at the time and was present in the city where hundreds of civilians were killed, in some cases in brutal executions, The Times has learned. Russian troops withdrew from the area in early 2022.
The US government has imposed sanctions on Colonel Gorodilov last year for what it called “its involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings.”
He was promoted to the rank of colonel days after images of Bucha were made public, turning the neighborhood into a global symbol of the terror Russian forces are bringing to occupied Ukrainian cities.
Moscow has denied involvement in the Bucha killings, with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin calling the events “a provocation.” However, The Times identified two dozen members of the 234th Regiment who were in Bucha at the time of the massacre, partly by tracing the numbers that troops in Russia called from the Ukrainian victims’ mobile phones.
