Al Drago/Reuters
The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it had unsealed war crime charges against four Russia-affiliated soldiers they say tortured and pretended to execute an American civilian in Ukraine.
The charges are the first to ever be filed under the U.S. war crimes statute, a decades-old law that allows the Justice Department to formally file charges against soldiers who commit atrocities against Americans abroad.
Two of the accused soldiers, Suren Seiranovich Mkrtchyan and Dmitry Budnik, were named in full, while two others, Valerii and Nazar, were listed using only their first names in an indictment obtained by The Daily Beast.