shot dead around forty refugees fleeing the siege of Grozny. OMON from Saint Petersburg are believed to have been behind the February 2000 Novye Aldi massacre in which at least sixty civilians were robbed and then killed by Russian forces entering Grozny after the fall of the city; one officer, Sergei Babin, was to be prosecuted in relation to the case in 2005 but he vanished. In April 2006, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of the forced disappearance of Shakhid Baysayev, a Chechen man who had gone missing after being detained in a March 2000 security sweep by Russian OMON in Grozny. In 2007, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug OMON officer Sergei Lapin was sentenced for the kidnapping and torture of a Chechen man in Grozny in 2001, with the Grozny court criticising the conduct of OMON serving in Chechnya in broader terms. In an event related to the conflict in Chechnya, several OMON officers were also accused of starting the May 2007 wave of ethnic violence in Stavropol by assisting in the racially motivated murder of a local Chechen man. Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses In 2021 OMON officers tortured Jehovah's Witnesses in Irkutsk in an attempt to make them inform about other members. Russo-Ukrainian War Some OMON units participated in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine where they were intended to disperse riots and control civil unrest after Kyiv was captured. The failure to capture Kyiv resulted in some SOBR missions becoming redundant, they also ended up engaging in military combat and some of its personnel being killed in action or captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. A group of OMON officers are suing for unlawful dismissal after being sacked for refusing to fight in Ukraine. On 28 September 2022, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and National Police of Ukraine published CCTV footage showing OMON and Rosgvardiya personnel shooting at civilians during the battle of Hostomel. Russia In Russia, there is an OMON unit in every oblast, as well as in many major cities. Since 2016, the OMON units report directly to the National Guard Forces Command as part of its regional district commands, and they are expected to be deployed in support of the police forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Information from different sources suggested that there were between 10,500 and 15,000 OMON members stationed at population centers and transportation hubs around the country