The commander of Ukraine's 155th Brigade allegedly led his own soldiers to kidnap two civilian brothers, murder them, and dump the bodies in Poltava Oblast. Then, with investigators closing in, he abandoned his unit and disappeared. This is somehow not the first time this particular brigade has had its commander arrested.
What Actually Happened on the Night of June 27
According to the Kyiv Independent, a group of seven soldiers broke into a yard in Kyiv Oblast in the early hours of June 28. They seized two brothers and took them across the country to Poltava Oblast, where the men were killed. Sources in Ukrainian law enforcement told the outlet Ukrainska Pravda that both brothers are dead.
The military's law enforcement service announced on July 11 that Stanislav Luchanov, commander of the 155th 'Anne of Kyiv' Brigade, had been formally charged with criminal offenses related to illegal detention and intentional murder. Nine soldiers from the brigade have been detained, according to Hromadske, which cited law enforcement sources. Luchanov himself is not among them. He ran.
The General Staff has already stripped Luchanov of his title, referring to him as 'former commander' in official communications. All servicemembers connected to the incident have been suspended. Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi personally directed both the military's internal security agency and Kyiv Oblast police to open an investigation.
The Brigade That Cannot Stop Imploding
Here is where the story gets genuinely hard to believe. The 155th Brigade was supposed to be a showcase. France and other foreign partners poured training and equipment into it as part of a Ukrainian military modernization effort. It was meant to demonstrate what a modern, well-supported Ukrainian unit could look like.
Instead, it became a running disaster. The Kyiv Independent has tracked the brigade's collapse in detail. Large-scale desertions. Allegations of catastrophic leadership failures. An investigation that led to the arrest of former commander Dmytro Ryumshyn. Then Luchanov stepped in as the replacement commander in February 2026, presumably because someone thought things could only get better.
They did not get better. Luchanov is now a fugitive wanted for murder, and the brigade that was supposed to be Ukraine's proof of concept for NATO-style modernization is, once again, a crime scene.
The Guy Who Replaced the Arrested Commander Was Already Connected to Another Scandal
Before taking command of the 155th in February, Luchanov served as chief of staff of the 425th Separate Assault Regiment, known as Skelia. The Kyiv Independent reports that Skelia's own commander was suspended just weeks ago amid an investigation into alleged abuse of soldiers, abuses that may have contributed to 26 noncombat deaths within that regiment.
So Ukraine pulled its fix for the 155th from a unit that was itself collapsing under allegations of systemic abuse. Whoever made that personnel decision is having a very bad week. To be fair, Ukraine is fighting a war of attrition against a much larger army and making thousands of difficult staffing decisions under impossible pressure. But still. Twenty-six noncombat deaths. That was on the resume.
Syrskyi has announced he will implement new measures to prevent similar incidents, including what the military police described as a 'strengthened system of preventive and control measures' aimed at stopping abuse of authority by military personnel. The statement is what it is. Whether it produces anything different remains to be seen.
The Bigger Problem Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
The Kyiv Independent frames the Luchanov case within a pattern that has been building for months: reports of unit-based abuses, criminal behavior, and misconduct have increased as the war drags past four years of full-scale fighting. This is not a single bad commander or a single bad unit. It is a systemic pressure fracture.
Ukraine is in the middle of a serious manpower crisis. Units get ground down in brutal fighting, replacements are hard to find, and the people doing the recruiting and commanding are themselves exhausted, traumatized, and working within institutions that are being stretched past any peacetime standard. That does not excuse kidnapping and murder. Not even slightly. But it does explain how a military that started this war with genuine discipline and public trust can end up with a situation like this.
The soldiers detained so far face serious criminal charges. The commander is at large. The brigade is, once again, in chaos. And Ukraine still has to hold the line tomorrow.
The Dingo Take
Let's be clear about what the 155th Brigade represents at this point. It is not a story about a few bad apples. It is the story of a flagship unit, one that Western partners specifically invested in as a model for what Ukrainian military reform could look like, producing two consecutive commanders who ended up under criminal investigation. One was arrested. The other is on the run after allegedly ordering the murder of two civilians. The French military officials who spent months training these soldiers deserve a very uncomfortable phone call from someone.
Ukraine's defenders have earned enormous moral credit fighting a war of survival against a genocidal invasion, and that is not in dispute here. But accountability cannot become a casualty of that war. The General Staff said 'those responsible will be held accountable regardless of their position or previous merits,' which is exactly the right thing to say and now needs to be exactly the thing that happens. Luchanov needs to be found. The investigation into Skelia needs to go wherever it leads. And whoever decided that the chief of staff of an abuse-plagued regiment was the right fix for a brigade already destroyed by leadership failures needs to answer some questions.
The hardest thing about this story is that there is no clean angle. Ukraine is fighting for its survival. Its military is under impossible strain. And some of the people inside that military are doing things that are simply criminal. Both of those things are true at the same time, and pretending otherwise helps nobody, least of all the two brothers who were taken from their home in the middle of the night and never came back.
