September 2024, Russia-occupied part of Ukraine’s Luhansk region. Three Russian soldiers shoot with machine guns a Niva car with three their fellow servicemen inside. Two Russians die, one manages to escape. The owner of the Niva, who took part in the shooting, was killed a few minutes later, and the car was blown up with an anti-tank mine. In a while, locals found the bodies of four more Russian soldiers in a forest 50 kilometers from the front line.
All the killed were from one military unit of the Russian Federation: No. 36994 or the 272nd motorized regiment. The journalists of the Suspilne investigative editorial office learned about the murders of at least nine servicemen of this unit in July-December 2024 from a report of the criminal investigation department of the so-called ministry of internal affairs of the occupied part of Luhansk region. We received the document from our sources in the Ukrainian law enforcement. The report states that the murders took place on the instructions of the regiment command.
We have verified the information and confirmed the death of most of the mentioned Russian soldiers. This is not the first time we have published materials about the murders of fellow servicemen by Russians. This story, like the previous one, which was spread in the Russian media and concerned the 6th motorized division, is not only about the events taking place in the occupied part of Ukraine. It shows the attitude of the Russian army and government towards its soldiers and is another reminder of what a cruel and lawless – even towards own people – enemy Ukraine is fighting against.
Shot in the rear
On July 29, 2024, four Russian servicemen of the 272nd motorized regiment – Mikhail Maslov, Andrey Ivanov, Ramil Ganeev, and Yevgeny Borovsky – disappeared from their deployment point. This is recorded in extracts from the order of the regiment commander, Oleg Bobrov.
Four months later, their bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and torso were found by a local resident in a forest near the village of Rudove, Svatyivskyi district, Luhansk region. The forest is 50 kilometers from the front line.
The document from the occupation investigative bodies received by the Suspilne investigative editorial office states that it was Bobrov who gave the orders to kill his subordinates. He instructed Lieutenant Pavel Gudochkin to do this, and Gudochkin then gave orders to other soldiers: Yevgeny Fedotov (call sign Raccoon) and Gennady Kazakov (call sign Yermak).
We found confirmation of the deaths of these Russian servicemen.
In the Russian social network, in two communities dedicated to searching for Russian servicemen who disappeared on the territory of Ukraine, we found identical posts from November 3, 2024 about the disappearance of Ramil Ganeev. They were posted by the man’s sister, Angela Ganeeva. In the conversation with the Suspilne journalists, she confirmed her brother’s death and added that he had already been buried. After the question about the circumstances of his death, the woman hung up.
On September 7, 2024, a Telegram group dedicated to wounded and dead Russian occupiers posted about the search for Yevgeny Borovsky. “Last contact was on July 16, 2024. Near Kupiansk. Kharkiv region. Village of Ivanivka. Squad commander”, the post says.
On January 27, 2025, a post appeared in the Telegram public group “Don’t wait for me from Ukraine”, which publishes information about Russian military personnel who died or were captured in the war in Ukraine. The post stated that Yevgeny Borovsky had died.
We have not found any publications in the media or posts on social networks about the deaths of Mikhail Maslov and Andrey Ivanov. However, we found out that the tax identification numbers of both, according to the data of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, are considered invalid. This indicates their death.
Execution of the killer
At 6 am on September 2, 2024, the already mentioned Yevgeny Fedotov and Gennady Kazakov, as well as Alexander Tonilin, call sign Tony, committed another murder in the occupied part of Luhansk region.
They shot the Niva car belonging to Fedotov. There were three their fellow servicemen inside the car. Two of them, Semen Firtsak and Dmitry Zakharov, were killed. The third, Igor Bondarenko, managed to survive and inform other soldiers about the incident.
A few minutes later, Tony, acting on the orders of Lieutenant Gudochkin, shot Fedotov. According to the report received by the Suspilne journalists, the Niva was blown up with an anti-tank mine.
In April 2025, several local Russian media outlets wrote that Semen Firtsak “died while performing his military duty, defending the borders of the homeland”.
On September 7, 2024, posts appeared on the local Telegram channel and on the page of “volunteers” from Arzamas, Fedotov’s hometown, about his “death while performing a combat mission on September 2, 2024”.
The information about Fedotov’s death is also confirmed by the fact that his tax identification number has been canceled.
According to the document received by Suspilne, Fedotov was involved in the murder of seven servicemen from his regiment. In addition to those mentioned above, he also killed a soldier with the call sign “Fatman”, the document states.
“He shot my son”
Alexander Tonilin, in addition to his involvement in the murder of the soldiers in the Niva car and Fedotov, according to the Russian investigators, shot company medic Denis Knyazev. The latter, by the way, is also suspected of killing his fellow soldier with the call sign “Snail”. The order was supposedly also given by Pavel Gudochkin.
In addition, Tonilin is linked to the shooting of serviceman Alexey Plyukhin. His body was found by the military police of the Russian Armed Forces in December 2024 between the occupied villages of Oborotnivka and Sofiivka in Luhansk region, at the location of the 272nd motorized regiment and the 47th tank division of the Russian Army.
In February 2025, the Russian publication ASTRA, which calls itself opposition, wrote about the fact of killing of two Russian servicemen of the 272nd regiment. According to the journalists, the killed witnessed the “purchase” of evacuations from the battlefield and furloughs due to injuries. One of these servicemen was Alexey Plyukhin.
“There is a soldier named Tony, a scoundrel, he served with my son and he shot my son. And the money went to the commander with the call sign Kirov. They took the money, but did not take my son to the hospital and left him on the front line because they did not want any witnesses,” the mother of one of the killed Russian servicemen told ASTRA.
We found posts on the Russian social media that confirm the information from the report of the so-called law enforcement officers from the occupied part of Luhansk region. One of them claims that Yevgeny Fedotov shot a car with soldiers whom he was supposed to evacuate. The dead were allegedly buried in a garbage dump.
“For any mistake, the guys were sent to the frontline positions, to the forest where Fighter (Yevgeny Fedotov – Ed.) was staying, and no one saw the guys anymore... Evacuations ended with shooting,” another post claims. The post also adds that after Rocky managed to escape from the Niva car, those who “knew, saw, or heard something” began to disappear.
From prison to the war in Ukraine
As we mentioned at the beginning, the document of the Russian investigative bodies indicates that the killings were performed by Lieutenant Pavel Gudochkin, who, according to the Russian investigators, was carrying out the commander’s order and involved his subordinates in this.
In 2016, the Tver regional court of the Russian Federation found Gudochkin guilty of complicity in the murder of a 22-year-old biker from Tver. At that time, the investigation established that Gudochkin and two other people were hired to carry out the murder by a man who owed the victim 1.65 million rubles and did not intend to return it.
The biker was shot with a hunting rifle, and his body was buried in a garbage dump. Gudochkin was then sentenced to 16 years in a strict regime colony, but he did not finish the term because he went to fight in Ukraine.
Call sign “Kirov”
There is little information about the 272nd motorized regiment. Open sources indicate that the unit was created as part of the 47th tank division of the Russian Army in 2022. In March of the same year, Sergeant Anton Medvedev, who died in the war in Ukraine, was buried in Novomoskovsk.
The next public mention of the 272nd regiment’s participation in the full-scale invasion appeared in the autumn of 2023. According to the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in November the regiment operated in the area of Stelmakhivka, Luhansk region. At the end of January 2024, it was transferred further north to the area of Tabaivka and Krokhmalne, Kupiansk district of Kharkiv region. In early May 2024, Russian propaganda reported that the 272nd regiment captured the village of Kotliarivka in Kharkiv region. According to the ISW, at the end of May 2024, the regiment’s assault companies took part in battles near Vovchansk, Kharkiv region.
As of July 2025, according to data from the DeepState project, the regiment was located near Kyslivka in Kupiansk district of Kharkiv region.
In 2024, the regiment was headed by 36-year-old Oleg Bobrov, call sign Kirov.
There is no biography of Bobrov in open sources. However, we were able to establish some details with the information from his social media accounts.
In November 2017, Bobrov shared a post with a diploma of higher education and indicated that it was his second diploma. It is impossible to determine the university and the obtained degree from the cover of the diploma.
In the next post, Bobrov shared a greeting card for the 100th anniversary of the Moscow Higher Military Command School, writing, “Happy holiday to my alma mater”.
In January 2018, Bobrov shared a photo from a room in a military unit or headquarters.
We also examined the social media of Bobrov’s wife, Diana. She, like her husband, is from the city of Kirov. The couple has two children: an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son.
Diana Bobrova, a manicurist and pedicurist, has a rather active professional Instagram page. Due to hundreds of her photos, we were able to follow Oleg Bobrov’s career path before the 272nd regiment.
In 2016, Diana Bobrova posted a photo of a monument to the Pskov paratroopers and wrote, “We are home”. From several other posts, it is clear that the family lived in Pskov for some time, where her husband was probably serving.
Pskov paratroopers are called “elite” in Russia. The 76th airborne assault division is located there, and the servicemen of this division committed war crimes in Kyiv region in February and March 2022.
The Suspilne investigative editorial office proved the involvement of the 104th airborne assault regiment in war crimes in Bucha, revealing details in the investigative documentaries “Bucha 22”, “Bucha: Shooting on Kyiv-Myrotskyi”, and “Bucha: Crew 111”.
From the beginning of 2019, geotags from St. Petersburg, Vyborg, and Kamenka, Leningrad region, began to appear in the woman’s posts instead of Pskov. In the comments under one of the posts, Diana confirmed that she had moved to Kamenka.
As of 2019, the town was home to military unit No. 02511 or the 138th separate guards motorized brigade, which was transformed into the 69th motorized division in 2024. It is most likely that Oleg Bobrov served there.
The family lived in Kamenka until at least February 2022. Then Diana Bobrova’s page was not updated until October 2022. The woman resumed her activity in 2023 with geotags in her hometown of Kirov.
From publicly available data from Russian medical institutions, we were able to establish that in 2022, Oleg Bobrov indicated the location of military unit 20924 in Kolomna (Moscow region) as his address. Currently, the Center for Unmanned Aerial Systems operates there. Through services that allow determining how Bobrov’s phone number is listed in electronic telephone directories, we found several tags “UAV”.
We also found data that during 2022-2023, Bobrov insured himself at his place of work at the Military Academy of Communications of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
According to publicly available data from the Russian express delivery service CDEK, in 2024 Bobrov used a delivery office in Belgorod. This office is one of the closest to the location of the 272nd regiment in the occupied part of Kharkiv region.
In February 2025, relatives of the two killed Russian servicemen told ASTRA that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation had informed them of the alleged arrest of Bobrov (call sign Kirov), Pavel Gudochkin (call sign Fighter), and two other soldiers of the regiment – Akhmed Azizov (call sign Lezgin) and Pavel Bovduy (call sign Kolyma).
We managed to contact Oleg Bobrov’s wife Diana. However, when she heard that we wanted to talk about the accusations against her husband, she refused to comment and ended the conversation. Bobrova did not answer further calls.
On May 16, 2025, which is Oleg Bobrov’s birthday, the woman posted a birthday greeting, in which she indicated that “he will not see this post” and that “they are waiting for him at home”.
Oleg Bobrov himself was last online on the Telegram on March 6, 2025.
This publication was funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
