Potential SDN designations arising from the Bucha massacres
A quick look at potential sanctionable individuals involved in the Bucha massacres
SDN CANDIDATES:
31st Guards Air Assault Brigade
Colonel Dmitry Ovcharov
331st Guards Parachute Regiment and current commander
SDNs, or Specially Designated Nationals, are sanctioned individuals and entities. They're people we put on our international list of shame. We seize their assets, we ban their travel, we ban U.S. institutions from working with them, and U.S. Treasury and Department of Justice agents are tasked with, essentially, ensuring that they have very, very bad days.
We cut SDNs off from the civilized world and take their things. It is one of the most serious things our country can do to individuals short of killing them.
At least four SDN designations appear to arise out of the Bucha massacres.
Two weeks ago while massacres were happening in Bucha, there were five Russian units in the Bucha/Irpin area, according to an OSINT account, “Jomini of the West”, that tracks Russian units by their individual designations, as of March 18th:
First is the 31ST GUARD AIR ASSAULT BRIGADE (WikiPedia); it has a unit history dating back to World War 2 (GlobalSecurity).
Multiple low-quality Wiki and blog sources (the most reputable is SOFREP, which isn't saying much) state the 31st Guards' commander is DMITRY OVCHAROV, who was appointed commander of 102nd Military Base near the Turkey/Armenia border on 9/9/21 according to multiple foreign sources (1, 2, 3).
Second is the VDV, or Russian airborne (Wikipedia). The VDV is a known quantity; they are essentially another form of "elite" in-regime security force.
The VDV unit involved here appears to be the 331ST GUARDS PARACHUTE REGIMENT.
On April 1st, Daily Mail indirectly confirmed the 331st Guards in a story about two brothers from the unit dying on the same day. BBC reported the 331st Guards involved in heavy fighting near Irpin and Bucha on April 2nd, on April 3rd, Forbes confirmed.
The commander of the 331st Guards, Sergei Sukharev, died in combat on or around March 18th (Newsweek, Forbes, TheHill). Members of his command staff, including his major, appears to have died alongside him. I do not know, from what is available on the public web, who replaced him.
Whoever that is, he’s an SDN candidate now too.