Recently, the Russian city of Krasnodar witnessed the high-profile murder of submarine captain Stanislav Rzhytskyi, who is believed to be involved in the shelling of Ukraine.
His body was found in a park, and Rzhytsky was identified by a common mobile application. Every day, the victim posted his running route, which never changed. But that morning, on 10 July, he did not reach the finish line.
Rzhytskyi was shot at 06:00 in the morning, firing seven bullets. It was rainy and there were no witnesses at the scene. How do we know this? From Ukrainian intelligence, which publishes details of the crime. However, the GUR later denied any involvement.
Instead, Russian investigators did not find any CCTV footage of the crime. Evidence was scarce. Moreover, the police initially failed to even establish what killed Rzhytskyi. More precisely, they said he had been stabbed. Then they returned to the crime scene seven hours later and stated that the victim had been shot.
The motives for the murder have not been announced in Russia. However, information has emerged that Rzhytskyi could have been involved in the launch of Kalibr rockets at Vinnytsia in July 2022, which killed 29 Ukrainian civilians, including children. The attack was carried out from the same Krasnodar submarine whose captain was killed.
The very next day, Russian special forces detained a man suspected of killing Captain Rzhytskyi. And traditionally, Russian investigators found a “Ukrainian trace”. The detained man is the president of the Ukrainian Shotokan Karate-Do Federation, Serhiy Denysenko.
A pistol with a silencer and ammunition was found in the suspect’s apartment. That is, according to the so-called Russian investigation, the killer calmly brought the murder weapon to his home after the murder.
– For any killer, not to mention a professional… getting rid of the murder weapon or terrorist attack is a sacred thing. Immediately, in seconds,” says Mykola Malomuzh, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.
“But for some reason, the killer brought the gun home, but not the clothes he was wearing. But how did Denisenko appear in this story? Fakty Nedeli conducted its own investigation.
One of the clues was found in Kyiv. Oleksandr Honcharenko is a karate coach and a close friend of Denisenko, who was detained in Russia.
– For 30 years we have been together in different situations. Sometimes I’m surprised when they say that he is on the instructions of the GUR. It’s all nonsense. I understand that after what happened, the Russian side had to find a Ukrainian quickly, and here, please, a karate master – and that’s it,” says Oleksandr Honcharenko, a karate coach and close friend of Denysenko.
He claims to have spoken to Denisenko shortly before the Russian captain was killed. He did not notice anything unusual.
But Rzhytskyi could have been killed by the Russian special services. Due to the failures in the war in Ukraine and Prigozhin’s rebellion, many generals and officers in the Russian army went under the knife.
However, there is one more unexpected figure in this story – the father of the murdered man, whose audio interview suddenly surfaced in the Russian information field. He claims that his son applied for dismissal in 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. The procedure lasted until August 2022. And allegedly, all this time, Rzhytskyi did not go to sea, although he was in Sevastopol.
– “This position may have been formally called differently, but he was directly involved in the criminal activities of the Russian occupation forces and this ship, the submarine, and was involved in the shelling of Ukraine,” says Andriy Yusov, a representative of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.
“It seems that the information about Rzhytskyi’s release appears at the right time for a reason.
– Russian propaganda is practicing a cover-up operation today. I’ll be blunt. They need to show the innocence of the victims, that they are not involved in terrorist attacks in the war. In this situation, they cannot officially speak from the position of, for example, the Russian Navy or the Ministry of Defence. Because it would be unacceptable. But the father is in a situation where he seems to be filing objectively, purely from the family,” Malomuzh says.
When asked whether the GUR was involved in the liquidation of Russian Captain Rzhytskyi, Yusov said he could neither confirm nor deny it. But at the same time, the Ukrainian intelligence service added.
– “Every war criminal involved in Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine is certainly a legitimate target of the Ukrainian Security and Defence Forces. They will all be in danger wherever they are,” Yusov stressed.
In addition, the head of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, has himself stated that the Ukrainian Mossad, similar to the Israeli one, is already operating. And that Ukrainian intelligence is already engaged in eliminating enemies.
– There was a lot of talk about the Ukrainian Mossad. We have our own Mossad, our own capabilities, our own resources. We have a very good agency in the country of the aggressor – I can say this directly, without decoding. Therefore, when choosing specific targets, these are, first of all, the perpetrators of the murder, generals, colonels, captains, as in this case, Captain Rzhytskyi.
We are saying that these are the targets that are legitimate not only for procedural actions, but also for destruction. We do not yet have the resources to bring them to criminal responsibility. This is the practice of the special services,” Malomuzh said.
“What happened to the submarine captain in Russia is very similar to the methods used by the Israeli secret service.
– If a state wants to live, and I understand that Ukraine wants to live, then it needs to destroy its enemies. It doesn’t matter where they are. These people are walking bombs. If you don’t destroy them, they will destroy many more people,” says Victor Wertzner, a reserve officer in the Israeli Defence Forces, IDF.
If so, it seems that Ukrainian intelligence has changed the rules of the game. When Russian territory will no longer protect war criminals from the punishment that awaits them. Each of them will now look around every day, thinking that they could be next.