A Russian serviceman attends combat training in Noginsk, outside Moscow, Russia, 13 December 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/YURI KOCHETKOV

A group of Russian servicemen has gone on trial for looting and the murder of a comrade in the Kursk region of southwestern Russia, state-affiliated business daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.

The group of five soldiers was charged with looting, robbery and “murder with particular cruelty”. Sources told Kommersant that the defendants served with an assault unit and had been directly involved in repelling Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region.

A lawyer involved in the case told Kommersant that one charge related to the murder of a fellow soldier with whom the defendants had got into a disagreement. However, the men said in their defence that this was merely their way of “dealing with” the man who had wanted to desert from the frontline.

According to court documents quoted by Kommersant, the soldiers fired at least seven bullets from an AK-74 assault rifle into their comrade’s legs “to inflict maximum suffering on their victim”, and then shot him in the head. “In an attempt to cover up their crime, the men took the body to the basement of an abandoned house, doused it with fuel and set it on fire,” the newspaper wrote.

No other details of the case were given. The servicemen deny the looting and robbery charges. In their words, they merely “took a few small things that could be useful for a soldier’s life” from abandoned buildings.