MFA confirms that two killed Ukrainians in Bavaria were Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that two Ukrainian citizens who were stabbed to death in Germany on Saturday were Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen undergoing rehabilitation.

Source. Deutsche Welle writes about new details of the high-profile case.

A 57-year-old Russian citizen is suspected of killing the Ukrainians. The police detained him at his registration address, not far from the murder scene.

"When he came home, he was drunk as usual. But he was in a good mood. When the police came to pick him up, he was even laughing," a neighbour of the detainee told the German regional news portal Tag24. According to the woman, she saw her neighbour "more often drunk than sober".

Another neighbour called the murder suspect aggressive.

"Every month, on the first day of the month, when the money came, he would put his hand to the glass to the fullest. He listened to music loudly and swore at passers-by through the window," Tag24 quoted the woman as saying. The suspect's place of residence is described by the journalists as "socially disadvantaged".

The Frankfurter Rundschau, in turn, citing the police, writes that the suspect had previously had problems with the law.

The investigation has not yet considered a political motive as the main one. However, the prosecutor's office, answering DW's questions, clarified that political motives in this case "cannot be ruled out", which is why the relevant agencies were involved, the prosecutor's spokesman said.

Volodymyr K., 36, and Vyacheslav B., 23, were servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and were undergoing rehabilitation in Germany after being wounded, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

The administration of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen told DW that the two Ukrainians "were in Murnau for medical purposes". It was not specified what kind of treatment they were undergoing. According to Spiegel Online, one of them had been treated at a local trauma clinic since August 2023, and the other since December 2023. The publication, citing the county administration, reported that the treatment of the Ukrainians in Murnau had already been completed at the time of their murder, and the men were living in a refugee camp.

At least one local resident told Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) that he had seen the Ukrainians drinking beer with a Russian shortly before the murder.

"One of them lived nearby. The Ukrainians were friends with him, sitting here, drinking beer," the witness said in the TV report, pointing to the murder scene. BR, citing police sources, reports eyewitness accounts that an argument broke out between the attacker and the victims.

Already on Sunday, without waiting for the results of the investigation, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann suggested that alcohol, rather than politics, was the main factor in the crime.

"There are eyewitness accounts of the three men being seen together at this place. There is information that all participants in the events were under the influence of a significant amount of alcohol. All this needs to be clarified," Herrmann said.

According to him, investigators do not yet have convincing evidence that the murder was politically motivated. On Monday, 29 April, the Bavarian Interior Ministry did not respond to DW's request whether the results of the blood tests of the suspect and his victims for alcohol content were already known.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko calls this information a Russian fake news, which was picked up by the German media.

"Ukrainians in Murnau, with whom we spoke and who saw the victims just a few hours before the murder, claim that they knew these guys and had never seen them drunk. According to Ukrainians in Murnau, the Z-snatch repeatedly provoked other Ukrainian refugees and even threatened them with physical violence because of their beliefs.

We appeal to all witnesses of the murder of Ukrainians to immediately contact the German police and help establish the truth about this crime," Tsaplienko said.

Background. As reported earlier, a Russian man killed two Ukrainians in Bavaria: the suspect has been detained.