Not every crime in war is the enemy's doing. Ukraine has arrested ten of its own soldiers - among them a former brigade commander - suspected of kidnapping and murdering two brothers. A story that shows the breakdown of discipline in war doesn't pick a side.

According to the investigation, on the night between 27 and 28 June, a group tied to the 155th „Anne of Kyiv" brigade broke into a house in the village of Kalynivka, Kyiv region, kidnapped the brothers Maksym and Roman Moseichuk, took them to the Poltava region and killed them there. Among those detained is the former brigade commander, arrested in Kyiv while travelling with his lawyer. The irony is bitter: the father of the murdered brothers died serving in the Ukrainian army, and Maksym himself was a former soldier.

President Volodymyr Zelensky promised a thorough investigation: „Everything they did will be examined in detail. This is not a case that concerns only one community or only the Kyiv region." Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi was even sharper - the guilty „will answer for every crime committed, regardless of rank or previous service".

But this is not an isolated incident. The same 155th brigade, presented as a modernisation project with French and international support, has been drowning in scandals for months - poor leadership, mass desertion, earlier accusations of abuse. This commander's predecessor was arrested under similar circumstances. And here is the lesson rarely said out loud: war doesn't only make heroes, it makes monsters too - and from within its own ranks. When a state hands weapons and power to people without control, some of them will turn that power against exactly those they were meant to protect.