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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
In six of eight cases the bureau forwarded VSP complaints, explaining this was due to a lack of sufficient grounds to initiate an investigation.
At the beginning of July, the Director of the State Bureau of Investigation, Oleksiy Sukhachov, stated that prior to media publication about the death of 26 mobilized personnel of the 425-military unit “Skala,” there was no information reaching the agency from the military command or other services. But the Center for Combating Corruption received access to documents showing the opposite: the DBR knew about the violation at least since March 2026, but did not initiate an investigation.
The documents used by the CPC are the response of the military ombudswoman’s office to a request from deputies, which includes eight copies of appeals from Olha Reshetylova’s office to the DBR, sent from March to June. Her team warned about complaints from soldiers and their families about beatings, cases of failure to provide medical assistance leading to death, threats with firearms and combat grenades, unlawful deprivation of liberty, physical violence, torture and other unlawful acts.
Yet the DBR, instead of investigating, transferred cases to the Military Police and other law enforcement agencies. This happened 30 in March, when the sister of one of the servicemen said that her brother died in hospital due to failure to provide timely medical care. The investigative bureau responded that there were no sufficient grounds to enter the case into the Unified Register of Dossier Investigations (ERDR) and instructed VSP to conduct an additional check. Although the law requires starting an investigation in such a case.
"As a result of reviewing the specified materials, it was established that they do not contain complete and objective data that could indicate committing a criminal offense within the sub jurisdiction of the DBR investigative bodies, and therefore there are currently insufficient grounds to enter the above information into ERDR," the CPC quotes the DBR’s response.
In the ombudswoman’s office letter from the 18 of June it stated that one of the soldiers was illegally held in a basement, subjected to physical force and firearms. But because the DBR had already opened proceedings by the time they reviewed the complaint due to media publication, they were added to it.
However, CPC emphasizes that among all the bureau’s responses analyzed by anti-corruption activists, only two did not concern forwarding the case to the VSP, but rather the formal initiation of investigations. In the other six, it said that the DBR did not see sufficient grounds to start them.
"A similar result was found in responses to appeals to Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko and his prosecutors sent in July 2025. Yet there was no reaction from the prosecutors to reports about rights violations of military personnel," the CPC adds.
As a reminder, at the end of June the publication Babbel revealed a resonant investigation that from the end of 2025 to the spring 2026, in the “Skala” unit, 26 recruits died. But not during combat actions. According to the relatives of the dead, the unit did not provide timely medical assistance, and they also spoke of cases of violence, torture and threats. Journalists later learned of the death of seven more mobilized in the unit.
As a consequence, the office of the ombudsperson announced the start of checks, and the DBR announced the start of an investigation, during which commander of Skala, Yuriy Harkaviy, was removed from his post. The situation was also responded to by the Ground Forces, stating that no combat merits or difficult front-line situations can justify violence and failure to provide assistance, and then-chief of the General Staff Oleksandr Syrskyi — whom they consider the initiator of the creation of assault battalions, which were even called the "Syrsky battalions" — called the incident a "shameful story."
ZNU editor of internal politics Inna Vedernikova, in her article "The Fog of War. How a culture of silence undermines the ground underfoot," writes that the Skala regiment story demonstrated not only systemic problems in one of the country’s most famous assault units, but also became a test for Ukrainian society.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "У ДБР збрехали, що не знали про катування у "Скелі": ЦПК опублікував викривальні документи". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ZN.ua.
