It is widely known for a criminal case opened in connection with numerous serious crimes committed by personnel of the Ukrainian volunteer battalion Tornado during the War in Donbas.

[5] Before its dissolution, fighters of the Shakhtarsk Battalion took part in battles in the area of Mariupol, Marinka, and Pesok, distinguishing themselves by a number of crimes and odious statements.

[6] On October 16, 2014, the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov ordered the disbandment of "Shakhtersk" due to frequent cases of looting, and the former chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Service, General Mykola Malomuzh, confirmed the presence of serious discipline problems in the battalion, which prevent the establishment of normal relations with the local population.

On 2 November 2014, six Tornado fighters were detained in Kyiv by the Security Service of Ukraine with an entire arsenal of weapons, which, according to SBU representatives, were planned to be used for raider actions.

[12] According to the SBU press center, these were the members:... of a particularly dangerous subversive group... former employees of internal affairs bodies" who "had the task of fulfilling a number of private orders of a raiding nature"[13] The Tornado command, these were its fighters, but with old "Shakhtarsk" certificates, who arrived in the capital for humanitarian aid collected by volunteers.

On 12 November 2014, Tornado Company reported that Zaporizhzhia Mayor Oleksandr Sin refused to comply with the order of Interior Minister Avakov to headquarter the Tornado Company in Zaporizhzhia, despite the fact that the Zaporizhia Department of Housing and Communal Services had allegedly already found a suitable garrison and that the materials were also already delivered there.

As a result, during the conversation, which, so to speak, did not take place completely, the Alpha group tried to arrest us, well, let's call it that, plus there were a lot of internal affairs officers and other special forces around.

[16]According to press service of Oleksandr Sin, armed representatives of "Tornado" Company forcibly broke into the office of the mayor, who then called the police.

[23] In mid-June 2015, the Chairman of the Luhansk Administration Hennadiy Moskal accused the Tornado fighters of blocking cargo transportation by rail and demanded that the Ukrainian security forces disarm the battalion.

[33][24] After the discovery of numerous facts of violence and murder, Avakov signed an order to disband the Tornado company, the next day, on 18 June 2014.

[47][48][49] Since the accused Shevchenko admitted guilt, information was spread that his accomplices broke his leg in the pre-trial detention center, but they claimed that he simply slipped on the wet stairs.

[50][4] Furthermore, a soldier of the company Oleksandr Pugachev was charged with the murder of two Dnipro policemen,[51] which, according to the testimony of Georgy Uchaikin, was carried out using a policeman's weapon.

[52] One of the "Tornadovites", under the threat of murder, forced the detainee to suck and lick a plastic tube, imitating the physiological characteristics of oral intercourse.

[24] As stated by the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine Anatolii Matios, the bandits from Tornado carried out torture in a particularly perverted form.

"The trial of the battalion soldiers... casts a shadow on the entire volunteer movement, which personifies the very rise of patriotism in the country, and this is a very painful fact.

On the one hand, it was the volunteer battalions who held the collapsing country together with their own blood, going to fight in the ATO zone with the outbreak of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine in March 2014.

On the other hand, the fighters of the volunteer company "Tornado" kept the whole region in fear, tormented, tortured, raped local residents - and this is difficult to attribute to the war," noted the Center for Civil Liberties.

Meanwhile, the General Prosecutor's Office stressed that the guilt of the fighters was fully proven and that the sentence was too lenient, especially in relation to the three convicted Tornadovites.

Therefore, the sentences imposed by the Obolonsky court for Kust, Hulchuk, Hlyebov and Plamadyala were served in 2020, but they continued to remain in custody for the case of unrest in the pre-trial detention center.

[62] On March 17, the Shevchenko court showed leniency towards Mykyta Kust and Maksym Hlyebov, releasing them under round-the-clock house arrest.