A group of hackers and investigators said they had identified the commander who ordered the bombings of a maternity hospital and theater in Mariupol, where hundreds of Ukrainians were trying to hide from Russian strikes, Euromaidan Press reports.

According to an investigation published by the InformNapalm group, the Russian planes that killed more than 300 people during the attack on the building of the Mariupol Drama Theater on March 16, 2022, took off from the airfield of Primorsko-Akhtarsk, a port city on the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov.

Russian bombers dropped two 500-kilogram bombs on a theater in Mariupol, where more than 1,000 Ukrainian civilians, including women and children, hid during the siege of the city by Russian armed forces.

According to the new investigation, a week earlier, the same Russian planes also bombed a children’s hospital in Mariupol, dropping bombs, including on the delivery wing of the infirmary.

The two war crimes and the images that emerged after the bombings shocked international public opinion at the time, as they occurred more than six months before the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Buch and other Ukrainian cities it controlled became known. occupy temporarily

Russia initially tried to justify the bombing of the children’s hospital by accusing Ukraine of placing “combat positions” there. However, later Moscow completely denied the bombing of the hospital and the maternity hospital, calling it “fake news” on the subject.

Who was the commander who gave the order to bomb the civilians of Mariupol

The investigation, published by InformNapal on Thursday, is based on information obtained by a team of Ukrainian “hacktivists” Cyber​​​​​​Resistance, who hacked the email address and other channels of private correspondence of the commander of military unit 75387, Colonel Serhii Atroshchenko. , who is responsible for the bombing.

Full name Atroshchenko Serhiy Valeriyovych, officer, was born on May 5, 1981 in the city of Ovruch, Zhytomyr region, in the north of Ukraine. Later he moved to Russia, lived for years in the cities of Lipetsk and Voronezh, and then was stationed in a military unit in the occupied Crimea.

He currently lives in a luxury rented apartment in the city of Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Krasnodar Krai, and hackers managed to identify the address based on his coronavirus vaccination documents.

The hackers released his phone number and email address, including a video showing all the documents and photos they obtained after hacking the messaging services and apps he used.

In addition, the hackers also talked to the commander’s wife Lilia, convincing her to organize a photo session with the wives of other pilots of the unit commanded by Atroshchenko in order to “raise their morale.”

The pilots who bombed Mariupol complained to the International Criminal Court

InformNapalm states that all materials published so far, as well as others that will be presented later, have been handed over to the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court.

Created after the illegal annexation of Crimea and the start of the separatist war in Donbas, the investigative group InformNapalm in 2016 published more than 2,000 emails of Vladislav Surkov, a former deputy prime minister of Russia and one of the closest people to President Vladimir Putin. advisers at that time.

His messages included plans to destabilize Ukraine and exchanges with Denys Pushylin, the leader of pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, although Moscow has always maintained, until last year’s invasion of Ukraine, that it does not formally support them.

Surkov, who was considered the mastermind of the Minsk agreements, later fell out of favor with Putin and was fired by the Kremlin leader in February 2020.

Follow the latest events of the 399th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.