Finnish prosecutors launched a landmark war crimes trial Thursday against Russian ultranationalist Voislav Torden, former commander of the Rusich sabotage group, for alleged atrocities committed during Ukraine’s 2014 conflict.
The Finnish Prosecutor-General’s Office charged Torden, also known as Yan Petrovsky, with five counts related to his activities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Deputy Prosecutor-General Jukka Rappe said the charges involve the deaths of 22 Ukrainian soldiers and injuries to four others.
According to Finnish broadcaster Yle, prosecutors accuse Torden of violating laws of war and committing acts of cruelty against both injured and deceased enemy combatants. A notorious September 2014 incident involved Rusich’s ambush of Ukraine’s Aidar battalion near Shchastya, where group members allegedly mutilated soldiers’ remains.
Torden, born in St. Petersburg in 1987, moved to Oslo in 2004 before joining former Russian paratrooper Aleksandr Milchakov in supporting separatist forces in Donbas. After deportation from Norway to Russia in 2016, he changed his name and entered Finland in 2023 as a family member of his student visa-holding wife.
Finnish authorities arrested Torden at Helsinki Airport in July 2023 as he attempted to board a flight to Nice. While Ukraine sought his extradition, Finland’s Supreme Court denied the request over prison conditions concerns. The United States sanctioned Torden in 2022 for alleged extreme cruelty during combat in the Kharkiv region.
