Human rights activists report that teenagers in Berdyansk were shot by snipers

The circumstances surrounding the deaths of Tigran Hovhannisyan and Nikita Khanganov are still unclear, said Olga Reshetilova, co-founder of the Media Initiative for Human Rights and co-ordinator of the War and Justice strand, on Radio Liberty.

No one knows how it happened or what was going on at that moment. Today we learned that the boys were killed by sniper shots. Nikita was killed by a shot to the head and Tigran by a shot to the heart. In other words, the occupation police did not even try to save the guys' lives in any way," she said.

Resetilova also recalled that six months before the murder, Hovhannisyan and Khanganov were regularly persecuted.
In particular, Tigran was kidnapped, detained and tortured by local police. Both guys were under pressure from the occupation authorities.

But in recent weeks this pressure has increased enormously. Because the so-called "investigators" have already prepared charges against them for "sabotage", that they were allegedly preparing to blow up electro-poles on the Melitopol railway. And this case was to be taken to court. This meant that most likely they would be arrested again," the human rights activist added.

Reshetilova believes that they are trying to accuse the murdered people of crimes they did not commit. And even assuming that the teenagers started shooting first, the representatives of the occupation authorities did not try to "disarm them in any other way".

She is also confident that Tigran's behaviour half an hour before the reports of the shooting did not indicate that he was planning "any risky actions for his life".

The occupation authorities say that civilians, random passers-by, were allegedly injured in the shooting. However, we cannot yet confirm such information. We have seen all this correspondence in local chats during the time when the shooting was taking place. It's a very short period of time. And there was no information that any civilians were injured there," she noted.

Sozportal earlier reported that the killing of teenagers by the Russian occupation authorities in Berdyansk was confirmed by the ombudsman.