The crimes in question were committed in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine in September 2014, when Russian-backed separatists had taken control of parts of the region. According to the prosecutor, the man was the deputy commander of the Russian paramilitary force Rusich, which is considered a terrorist organization in Ukraine and is notorious for its brutality and neo-Nazi ideology.
But the Helsinki Court of Appeal found that the evidence is insufficient for some of the crimes and so changed the sentence from life imprisonment to twelve years and six months.
