The Case of the Murder of Volunteer Oleksiy Shcherbina

Andrii Yosypov and Viktor Yatsenko, attorneys at Barristers Law Firm, are representing the victim—the wife of the slain volunteer Oleksii Shcherbina—as part of their participation in the Legal Service of the DGV Training Center.
On March 21, 2023, a preliminary hearing was held at the Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv, during which the court extended the pretrial detention without the right to bail for a period of 60 days for all three defendants.
As a reminder, on October 21, 2022, in the courtyard of a high-rise building in Kyiv in broad daylight, 34-year-old Oleksiy Shcherbina, a volunteer with the “Svoboda” Territorial Defense Forces who was preparing to head to the front lines, was shot and killed. According to the circumstances of the case, Oleksiy had confronted the driver of a Lexus, telling him that he was blocking the way in the courtyard of his building. After that, three men got out of the car, beat the soldier, and then one of the attackers fired a shot from a carbine. Oleksiy died at the scene from his injuries.
Initially, the case was treated as a routine domestic homicide
.”From the very beginning of the criminal proceedings, our position has been unequivocal: Viltsanyuk fired the shot specifically to assert himself and to express demonstrative disrespect for Oleksiy’s status as a volunteer and his life, which clearly constitutes murder motivated by hooliganism. “We filed a separate motion on this issue at the very beginning of the investigation, which was subsequently taken into account by the investigators,” comments attorney Andriy Yosipov.
Therefore, the indictment was submitted to the court with the following legal classification:
- Paragraph 7, Part 2 of Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (murder committed out of hooliganism);
- Part 4 of Article 296 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (hooliganism involving the use of a firearm).
Oleksiy’s unit is currently defending Ukraine’s independence in the city of Bakhmut.
For more on the proceedings of the court hearing, see Serhiy Lankin’s article at the link in the first comment.