The SBU has notified former Melitopol police officer Andriy Zinchenko of suspicion; in 2022 he headed the headquarters of the occupying police department and participated in abductions and the torture of civilians in temporarily occupied Kherson region.
This is stated on the website of the Office of the Prosecutor General.
According to the SBU, Andriy Zinchenko had by July 2022 assumed the position of head of the headquarters of the occupying Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Melitopol district of Zaporizhzhia region.
The investigation established that on July 7, 2022, in occupied Kherson, Zinchenko together with Russian military personnel abducted a 24-year-old local resident. At first the man was lured to an ATM under the pretext of «help with a banking transaction», after which he was forcibly put into a car and taken to the river port.
There the abductors demanded information about the whereabouts of the victim’s father — a former SBU employee and ATO participant. After that the man was taken to Velykyi Vilkhovyi Island, where he was brutally beaten, chained with handcuffs to metal structures and left under guard.
Later the victim was taken to the seized building of the Kherson Regional State Administration, where he was forced to sing the anthems of the USSR and Russia, and to answer questions on Soviet history. For «wrong» answers he was beaten again. According to the investigation, Zinchenko was present during the torture.
After this the man was transported to a seized psychiatric facility in the village of Stepanivka, where he was thrown into a concrete shaft without ventilation, bedding or sanitary facilities. In these conditions he was held for eight days, with his food and water restricted.
On July 15, 2022, the victim was taken to the railway station in Kherson and released without any documents.
Andriy Zinchenko is being charged in absentia under Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — cruel treatment of the civilian population during war. The article’s penalty provides for 8 to 12 years of imprisonment.
According to the Center for Journalistic Investigations, Andriy Zinchenko until early 2017 worked as deputy head of the monitoring department of the Melitopol police department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Zaporizhzhia region. After that he retired.
Zinchenko created the occupying “people’s militia” in Melitopol, his wife and daughter live in Crimea.