War veteran claimed that he was beaten by TCR military personnel in Volyn: terrirorial centre showed footage from body cameras and denied everything. VIDEO
During a warning in the town of Ratne in Volyn, servicemen from the TCR and SS allegedly assaulted Dmytro Nakhod, a war veteran and volunteer with a disability. The Volyn Regional TCR denied this and released footage from the soldiers’ body cameras.
This was reported by Censor.NET, citing hromadske and "Suspilne".
The veteran’s wife’s account
Blogger Dana Nakhodka posted a video on Instagram and explained that her husband — a war veteran who fought as a volunteer in Bilohorivka and Bakhmut, was wounded and has a Group III disability due to hearing loss — was forcibly put into a TCR minibus near their home. According to her, his documents were not checked at first, and once inside the vehicle, they began beating him, choking him and threatening to take him into the woods and break his fingers.
"When he started saying that he was a soldier – just shouting it out – they told him: ‘Oh, a soldier, and you’re not serving?’ – and beat him some more," the woman recounted.
She said that even after they had seen his deferment papers, and her husband had allegedly been thrown out of the van when he tried to take a photo of the vehicle, the TCR soldiers rushed over again, choked him and forced him to delete the photo — whilst the accompanying police officers allegedly did not intervene.
The Volyn TCR’s version
The Volyn Regional TCR and SS denied to the publication hromadske the account given by the veteran and his wife. The agency insists that the military personnel checked Dmytro’s documents — he showed the ‘Reserve+’ app and provided details of his service and his current deferment due to disability.
According to the TCR, the man asked for a lift to the hospital in the town of Ratne, but was refused a ride in the official vehicle, as this transport is intended exclusively for transporting conscripts to the recruitment centre. After his details were checked, he allegedly walked towards the hospital on his own.
"Following this, the alert team left the scene and resumed their duties. We emphasise that the man was not in a TCR service vehicle, and there is no evidence to support claims that he was beaten or that his mobile phone was taken from him," stated the regional TCR.
Video from the body cameras of the TCR’s military personnel
Text accompanying the video
The video, filmed from the body camera of a Military Registration and Enlistment Centre (TCK) officer, captures a moment near the open doors of a minibus. In the frame is a man wearing a dark jumper with the word ‘Puma’ and a light-coloured baseball cap, standing on the street near some trees and holding some item of clothing or a document in his hands. The footage is shot from a low angle from inside the vehicle; the silhouettes of other people nearby are partially visible in the frame. The recording is dark and has low contrast, making it difficult to make out the details of the faces and actions of the people in the frame.
What the veteran himself said
Dmytro Nakhod told hromadske that he had previously been stopped by TCR military personnel for checks, and there had been no problems.
- On the morning of 14 September, at around 9.40 am, he went out to take out the rubbish when a minibus carrying soldiers pulled up beside him. Dmytro confirmed that he had asked for a lift to the hospital and that his documents had been checked.
- However, his account differs from that given by his wife: according to Nakhod, he was shoved into the vehicle only after his documents had been checked.
"I walked about five metres away. They drove up again and opened the doors. One of them used a can of pepper spray, two dragged me into the van and started beating me up inside. Then they pushed me out of the van. After that, I wanted to film the police officers and that van. They drove up again, grabbed me once more, and this time they beat me very badly," said Nakhod.
According to him, the soldiers’ body camera only recorded the initial conversation, and then the camera was allegedly switched off. The videos he filmed himself were, he claims, deleted by the soldiers.
What next
- Nakhod contacted the hospital and the police — according to his wife, the doctors recorded a haemorrhage in his eye and several bruises, but the couple did not undergo a separate examination by a forensic medical expert.
According to Anna Pavlovska, senior inspector of the National Police’s communications sector in the region, the case files have been handed over to the State Bureau of Investigations in Lviv.
Sofia Lepekh-Davydovych, spokesperson for the Lviv regional office of the State Bureau of Investigations, stated that the case files are not currently in their possession, so they are unable to comment on the situation at this stage.
