Ukrainian special services continue liquidating high-ranking Russian war criminals without pause, and the precision keeps improving. The latest additions to the list make it clear that no rank, no rear-area posting, and no past betrayal grants immunity once the evidence of their crimes stacks high enough.
The New Names on the List
Fanil Sarvarov, lieutenant general, went up in his car on a Moscow parking lot on December 22, 2025. He ran operational training for the Russian General Staff and personally shaped the force packages sent to grind down Ukrainian cities and civilians.
Major General Vladimir Lyapkin was killed in the Kherson area in March 2026. A former SBU turncoat from the Yanukovych era, he built the occupation torture machine there. He ran filtration camps and commanded a BARS unit while Ukrainian families disappeared into basements.
Damir Davidov, colonel in charge of GRAU missile and artillery supply, died in a BMW blast outside Moscow on June 9, 2026. His signature sat on the orders that kept the rockets flying into apartment blocks and power stations across Ukraine.
Valerii Plokhotniuk, another major general, was erased in an August 1 restaurant explosion in Moscow. As former chief of staff of the 49th Army and later a key figure in the Sozvezdie electronic warfare concern, he kept the invasion's command-and-control backbone functioning.
Captain First Rank Robert Shagheev, the traitor who handed over Ukraine's submarine Zaporizhzhia in 2014, caught an IED in a Sevastopol trash bin on August 13. He had spent years helping the Black Sea Fleet launch Kalibrs at civilian targets.
Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Sechkov, chief of staff of the 332nd separate helicopter regiment, was blown up in his Geely in St. Petersburg's Slavyanka district on August 27. His wife survived the blast minus both legs.
Dmitry Neev, deputy head of the Olenivka torture colony, got his car rigged in occupied Donetsk at the end of August. The man who oversaw the systematic beating and humiliation of Ukrainian POWs may still be breathing, but his operational days are finished.
Methodical Accountability, Not Vengeance
The story settles scores. Methodical accountability delivered by a state that refuses to outsource justice to The Hague while the criminals still walk free in Moscow or occupied territory. Every name on this list directly enabled the shelling of hospitals, the mining of farmland, the filtration of civilians, and the deliberate starvation of Ukrainian POWs.
Their removal degrades Russian command continuity. It disrupts logistics chains for precision munitions. The rear is now a dangerous place for officers, sending a signal throughout the entire corps.
The bill for Bucha, Mariupol, Olenivka, and every filtered basement keeps growing, and Ukraine is collecting with interest.
The Kremlin's Propaganda Problem
Moscow's propagandists will scream "terrorism," of course. The same regime that kidnaps Ukrainian children, levels entire cities, and uses its own conscripts as disposable meat has the nerve to cry foul when its butchers start paying personally. Their information warfare machine counts on Western audiences forgetting that this war began with occupation, annexation, and mass graves, not with Ukrainian cars exploding in Moscow.
The pattern is simple. Russia commits the crime, Ukraine records the names and evidence, then Ukraine reaches out and removes the perpetrator. That sequence exposes the Kremlin's deepest fear: that its own personnel are now calculating personal survival against continued loyalty to a losing imperial project.
The Strategic Calculus for the West
Ukrainian long-range strike capacity keeps expanding while Russian logistics at the operational level burn faster every month. By the end of 2026 those mid-range capabilities will multiply several times over, isolating Crimea and turning rear-area staging points into daily target lists. Moscow has already been forced to park Pantsir systems on residential rooftops around the capital, turning civilian buildings into legitimate military targets because the regime values its own skin more than its citizens' safety. The obedient Muscovites stay quiet, kissing the very chains that keep them poor and surveilled.
Helping Ukraine remains a point of contention in the West over whether it is worth the cost. Every successful Ukrainian strike behind enemy lines should end that debate. A direct, tangible investment. The cheapest and most effective way to dismantle a rogue nuclear empire aligned with China, Iran, and North Korea against the entire rules-based order. Ukraine is doing the heavy lifting on the battlefield, degrading the aggressor's manpower at a rate of 35,000 per month. It is burning his fuel depots. It systematically removes the mid-level architects of atrocity. In return the continent gets a chance at genuine long-term security instead of another decade of blackmail, gas cuts, and hybrid sabotage.
Force Is the Only Language They Understand
Zelenskyy's course remains correct: build the defense industry, integrate with NATO standards, strike deep when the intelligence justifies it, and never trade sovereignty for another fake Minsk-style pause. The liquidation campaign proves Ukraine possesses both the will and the technical reach to enforce its red lines.
Force has always been the one language these war criminals understand, and it must be delivered without apology. That force is arriving on their doorsteps, in their cars, and in their restaurants with clinical regularity. Every fresh name crossed off the list is another brick pulled from the crumbling facade of Russian impunity. The war will end when Moscow understands that its empire project costs more lives at the top than it can afford to lose at the bottom. We are accelerating that realization through a series of precision strikes.
