This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
The Krasnodar regional court in Russia’s southwest has sentenced Serhiy Denysenko, a Ukrainian-Russian dual citizen, to 25 years in prison for killing the former commander of a Russian submarine implicated in the shelling of Ukrainian territories in 2022.
The court also ordered Denysenko to pay 5 million rubles ($51,350) to the father of Stanislav Rzhitsky as compensation in the shooting death.
The court pronounced the ruling on October 29 after finding Denysenko, who obtained Russian citizenship in March 2023, guilty of murder, illegal weapon possession, and high treason.
Denysenko was arrested on July 11, 2023, a day after Rzhitsky, 42, was killed in the city of Krasnodar while jogging. The assailant fired several shots from a pistol with a silencer and struck Rzhitsky four times, Russian authorities said.
Rzhitsky, who served at the time as a deputy head of the department for mobilization work in Krasnodar, died at the scene.
Russian prosecutors claimed that the Security Service of Ukraine was behind the attack. The chief of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, rejected the claim, saying the anti-war sentiments among Russian military may have triggered the assassination.
Rzhitsky used to command the Krasnodar submarine in the Russian Navy.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Krasnodar is a diesel-electric submarine built for the Black Sea Fleet and designed “to fight surface ships and submarines, lay mines, and conduct reconnaissance.”
The Krasnodar is equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, and Ukrainian authorities claimed that the vessel had participated in the shelling of the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsya in July 2022, firing its Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea.
In addition, a person with the same name is included in the database of a Ukrainian website that collects data on war crimes allegedly conducted by the Russian Army.
It claims that he was the commander of the Alrosa submarine and was directly involved in the military invasion of Ukraine.
It is unclear when Rzhitsky left the submarine fleet for the post of deputy head of the department for mobilization work in Krasnodar.
