Family of eight shot dead in occupied Makiivka, the youngest was 1 year old

A family of eight people, including four children, has been shot dead in temporarily occupied Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast. The occupation authorities claimed that the killers were common thieves, who had already been apprehended, but Petro Andriushchenko, Adviser to the Mayor of Mariupol, suggests that the murder was committed by mercenaries from the Wagner Group [Russian private military company - ed.].

Source: Novosti Donbassa; Russian state-owned media outlets RIA Novosti, TASS, RBC; Petro Andriushchenko, Adviser to the Mayor of Mariupol, on Telegram

Details: According to the so-called "Ministry of Internal Affairs" of the occupiers, a report on the discovery of the bodies of eight people, including four minors, on the premises of one of the households was received by the duty department at 21:15. It was noted that a Skoda car had been stolen from the yard.

According to media publications, the youngest of those killed is a one-year-old child. Children aged seven and nine were also killed.

An interception plan was announced in the city.

Later, the so-called "Ministry of Internal Affairs" of the occupiers reported that they had detained three suspects, "hot on their trail". It is reported that all of them have criminal records and allegedly "confessed that they committed the crime out of mercenary motives, with the aim of stealing a car and valuable property."

The so-called Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that the suspects could face "capital punishment" [thdeath penalty - ed.].

At the same time, Petro Andriushchenko, Adviser to the Mayor of Mariupol, reported on his Telegram feed that the occupiers do not agree on many things and that the mass murder could have been committed by Wagner Group mercenaries.

According to Andriushchenko, this crime was openly ethnic in nature, as a family of Roma ethnicity had been killed. In addition, all those killed had bullet wounds to the head from close range.

Andriushchenko noted that the residents of Makiivka themselves reported that the crime was committed by the military.

He added that he and his team spent nearly the entire night monitoring public sources and working with insiders and can state that this murder was committed by "several monsters in military uniform", but the occupiers would cover up the Russians' crime, as they did in Mariupol.

Andriushchenko suggests that such crimes may continue, since Russia has recruited "non-humans and criminals, neo-Nazis and other human trash" to fight at the line of contact.

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