An arson attack has destroyed the office of a Ukrainian judge presiding over the case of two Russian nationals charged with fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine's chief military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said the attack on the Kyiv office of Judge Mykola Didyk was carried out around 3 a.m. on April 8.
Matios said Didyk’s office was destroyed but added that legal documents related to the case of the two Russian nationals were not damaged.
Matios said the attack was "an attempt to frighten" Didyk.
Didyk is the presiding judge in the cases of Aleksandr Aleksandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, Russian nationals who were arrested in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region in May last year and charged with fighting alongside Russian-backed separatists.
Aleksandrov's lawyer, Yuriy Hrabovskiy, was found murdered in Ukraine last month. Ukrainian authorities arrested two people in connection with the killing.
Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev first admitted in a video that they were on active duty with the Russian military when they were captured, but later retracted that.
Moscow contends the two men were not serving in the country's armed forces when they were detained by Ukrainian forces.