In the regiment for Babeľ, they subsequently claimed that they were hearing about Žykin’s beating for the first time. They denied that they would shoot at the deserters. The investigative reporter also asked the regiment about Oleksandr Semenov. According to her, the regiment ignored questions related to battles and tying to a quad bike.
Death after three weeks
Anastasia Poleva’s husband, Vitalij Saltan, also ended up in Skela.
She described in March that her husband was mobilized on January 26 of this year. Saltan wrote to the woman four days later that he was feeling sick – he had a cough and a high fever. He was taken to the hospital in the middle of the night on February 15 and died a few days later. Cause of death – bilateral pneumonia. Relatives were convinced that 34-year-old Vitalij Saltan died because the unit did not provide him with medical care in time and kept him in the barracks until the last moment.
His wife claimed that when she began to speak publicly about the man’s death, other women whose men ended up in the same regiment – and died in the same circumstances – also wrote to her.
When the website Babeľ asked about Saltan’s case, they answered in Skela that the man mobilized to the hospital “came on his own and what happened next is the responsibility of the doctors.”
What does the regiment itself say?
Pluk, in connection with the published material, that Babel’s article “raises a number of serious questions that require thorough study and verification.”
“Our position is simple. Each case must be assessed individually. All conclusions must be based on proven facts, documents, inspection results and official procedures,” he said in a statement.
Among other things, he wrote in it that “he cannot agree with the generalizations of authors who reduce the story of the regiment to individual tragic cases.”
“We would like to draw attention to the fact that out of the 26 mentioned deaths, 18 happened in the hospital or on the way to the hospital, and not in the regiment. And these deaths are really related to diseases or the general poor health of the mobilized,” said the regiment, which also noted that it does not deal with mobilization.
In this case, according to him, TCK recruiters and positive medical reports are responsible for who ends up in the training center.
“Among those mobilized in 2026, there are also those who refuse to serve in any position. Most of the claims stated in the material are not based on documents, investigation conclusions or court decisions, but on the testimonies of persons who refused to undergo training, voluntarily left the military units or otherwise violated the law and military discipline,” Colonel Skeľa continued.
The screening began, the commander was suspended
In the meantime, the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation has begun to investigate the bullying and deaths reported by journalists. They already pointed out the deaths in the regiment a few weeks ago. For example, in May, the website brought material about five soldiers from the Ivano-Frankivsk region who died in March 2026. The official cause of death – in this case, lung and heart disease as well.
One of the men died two weeks after mobilization, another after nine days.
Military obmudsman Oľha Rešetylová on the social network that she learned about the cases of fights and bullying of soldiers in Skela last year.
“At that time, in June 2025, we visited the Skeli training center together with representatives of the president’s office. In parallel, the commander-in-chief ordered a background check through the military police inspection. We took 22 soldiers from the regiment who gave testimonies about battles, which were confirmed by a lie detector,” the ombudsman explained.
According to her, together with the specialists, they managed to identify a group of instructors who organized bullying on the training grounds. However, according to Rešetylová, the inspection management did not take measures to bring the group of instructors in question to court.
“Based on the results of the inspection, an official investigation was subsequently ordered by the command of the ground forces, and based on its results, a report on the commission of a crime was sent to the law enforcement authorities. We still do not have the result of the investigation,” she pointed out.
The Office of the Ukrainian Ombudsman is also planning a combat regiment.
According to the commander of Skeli, Jurij Harkavý, after the outbreak of the case, the regiment commander was temporarily removed from his post.
Babel opened another topic that resonates
The material of the Babel website is currently very popular in Ukraine. The previous investigation by the aforementioned editors, which warned in April, had a similar one.
The young woman was tortured by her sadistic mother in her childhood. In addition, she and her then 10-year-old sister Darija were sexually abused by two brothers who serve in the 3rd assault brigade. Darija died under mysterious circumstances in 2004, while the family managed to pretend that the girl was still alive for several years.
In one of its older PR videos, the mentioned brigade portrayed this family as heroic – the video brought the story of a mother whose seven sons defend the country. After Nadija Vikarijová publicly described what two of them and her mother did to her as a child, the brigade pulled the video from circulation.
According to the website, the aforementioned family has not publicly commented on the case. Journalists managed to get in touch only with Vikarija’s eldest brother, who denied the accusations and declared that the family would not participate in a “media campaign”.
According to the website Babeľ, one of the brothers filed a lawsuit to protect his honor.
