Twenty-something Russian military engineers behind targeted strikes

They are likely to have been complicit in war crimes in Ukraine. A group of young Russian military engineers, women and men, are responsible for the targeted strikes that have affected Ukraine, including its capital, since mid-October, according to a joint investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider and The mirror, published on Monday. These strikes shocked the international community, targeting the capital kyiv for the first time in months, but above all strategic electrical infrastructure and civilian targets, such as children’s playgrounds.

These six months of investigation have thus made it possible to identify a “hitherto secret group composed of dozens of military engineers with training and professional experience in missile programming”, notes Bellingcat in his article. “Most of the members identified by Bellingcat and its partners are young men and women, including a husband-wife couple, and many have a background in computers and even video games,” he said.

The age of these young soldiers calls out. In their twenties – the four youngest members are only 24 – they are possibly complicit in war crimes, notes the military historian, observer of the conflict and president of the Action Résilience institute, Cedric Mas on Twitter. “While many of them already had a civilian education in mathematics or computer science, all of them were trained as military engineers at the Military Academy of Strategic Missile Forces or the Institute of Military and Naval Engineering,” develops the investigation site.

Some of them would also have already worked at the Russian military command center in Damascus between 2016 and 2021, a period during which Russia deployed cruise missiles in Syria.