Aleksey Borisovich Pichko

“By order of the military-field tribunal of the [Donetsk People’s Republic] militia on 17.06.2014,” it reads, “I hereby proclaim that Aleksey Borisovich Pichko, resident of the city of Slovyansk, is sentenced for looting to an exceptional measure of punishment — execution by firing squad — on the basis of the Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “on martial law” from June 22nd, 1941.”

“The sentence has been carried out.”

The documents above outline the case against Alexei Pichko and show that the Russian rebel commander leading the separatist militias, Igor Strelkov, signed off on the decision to execute the 31-year-old Sloviansk man.

Donetsk People’s Republic officials with whom the Kyiv Post spoke on July 10 could not confirm Pichko's death, but one rebel soldier from Sloviansk, who asked that he not be named for fear of reprisals, said he believed "it had been done."

Moreover, on a visit to Pichko's rural neighborhood on July 10, several neighbors told the Kyiv Post one of Pichko’s friends, Valentin, told them that he saw the rebels execute him with a machine gun the same day the sentence was handed down. Valentin could not be reached to confirm his story.

Standing outside her gate on July 10, Maria Vasylovich Pichko, the man's mother, said she had kept up hope that her son would turn up alive, even though she had not seen or heard from him for nearly a month, and the talk of the town was that he had been killed. When the Kyiv Post and two other reporters broke her the news of the decree, she burst into tears.

“They shot him for two shirts,” she said as she wept. She said that her son’s friend, Valentin, had told her “everything would be fine.”

Besides Pichko’s case, documents show two other trials by “military-field tribunal,” including those of Dmitry “Bolgar” Slavov and Nikolai “Luka” Lukyanov. They were convicted under the same Stalin-era law for kidnapping a local man and detaining him in the SBU's basement without obtaining permission from Strelkov. There case had been previously reported, but without signed documents to prove they had been sentenced to death.

The document above is an order by the "military-field tribunal" to execute Dmitry “Bolgar” Slavov and Nikolai “Luka” Lukyanov. 

In a fourth case, a man was accused of shining a flashlight during a gun battle between rebel fighters and Ukrainian forces near Karachun Hill, giving away the rebel's positions. Fortunately for him, he was acquitted. Speaking by phone from a Donetsk hospital, he admitted that he had been interrogated by Strelkov's tribunal and set free after being exonerated.

Pichko wasn't so lucky. In his hand-written testimony and swift three-day trial, Pichko confessed to committing the crime alone and asked to be sent to the front lines instead of being executed. “I want to die as someone who was of use to the DNR,” he wrote. “I also have a pregnant wife, Rydkovskaya Inna Vladimirovna… I want to see her and nurse children and be a useful member of society.”

Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.

Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media.