A Ukrainian officer who at one point commanded the notorious neo-Nazi Azov regiment has gloated on social media over graphic photos of dead members of an opposition party. The activists “disappeared” from the Ukrainian-held city of Severodonetsk in early March and appear to have been extrajudicially executed, with Maksim Zhorin implying such a fate awaits all “traitors.”
“This is what the ‘Patriots for Life’ from Severodonetsk look like now,” Zhorin said in a Telegram [warning: Graphic images] post on Wednesday. “They disappeared on March 7, and now their new photos have appeared. They look like that,” he added with a smirking-face emoji.
“I would not be surprised if the investigation finds out that they shot themselves in the head – when they realized how stupid they were when they went to cooperate with [Ilya] Kiva,” he added, in a reference to the Ukrainian MP who fled to Russia in January.
Prosecutors in Kiev had charged Kiva, an outspoken critic of President Volodymyr Zelensky, with treason on March 6, the day before the activists went missing. He had fled the country after being kicked out by his party, “Opposition Platform — For Life.”
That did not save the party, and almost a dozen others, from getting temporarily banned by Zelensky on March 20. A law allowing for permanent bans was adopted on May 14.