Father of Ukrainian boxer Karpachev accuses Ukrainian Armed Forces of killing his son and the boy’s mother

A year after the death of Ukrainian boxer Vladislav Karpachev, his father Igor Karpachev gave an interview to TASS in which he laid out his version of events in detail for the first time.

According to him, his son and wife were killed in the Donetsk People’s Republic by servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Igor Karpachev learned of the tragedy from a neighbor, who noticed the absence of a car in the yard and found a shot dog.

“I had a son — Vladislav Karpachev, a wife, a family. He won European titles, competed all over Ukraine, was preparing for a world championship. And then one day a neighbor knocks on my door and says something is strange — there’s no car in my son’s yard, the dog has been shot. I went over. I walk in, there’s a lot of blood in the yard. It was soldiers — Ukrainians [the Ukrainian Armed Forces],” — Igor Karpachev said.

According to him, he found his wife’s body at the entrance to the family shop, and his son’s body in the home’s basement. His wife had been shot seven times with an automatic weapon, his son five times. In addition, according to the father, Vladislav had been subjected to torture before being killed. A Toyota car, around eight thousand dollars, and cash in hryvnias were stolen from the house. Igor Karpachev himself said he had been evacuated from the village of Grishino only a few days earlier.

What is officially known

The bodies of 26-year-old Vladislav Karpachev and his 50-year-old mother were discovered on June 26, 2025, in the village of Grishino in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Boxing Federation of Ukraine confirmed the athlete’s death, calling what happened “a terrible crime.”

“Together with his family, Vladislav fell victim to a terrible crime. This is a profound, irreplaceable loss for the entire Ukrainian boxing community,” — the organization’s statement read.

The National Police of Ukraine opened criminal proceedings under the articles “Premeditated murder” and “Unlawful seizure of a vehicle.” The police declined to provide detailed comments to the press. The names of suspects and any information about the possible involvement of military units were not officially disclosed.

A family friend’s account

One of the first to report the athlete’s death was his close friend, sports blogger Stanislav Pritkov, in a TikTok post. According to him, the attack took place in the dead of night: unknown individuals in military uniforms shot the dog, attacked Vladislav’s mother and slit her throat. The attackers found the boxer himself in the basement of the house, where they interrogated and tortured him before killing him. Of the family members present in the house, only the boxer’s grandmother survived. Vladislav’s father was not in the house at the time of the attack.

After the murder, the perpetrators robbed the house and stole the Toyota. According to Pritkov, the car was subsequently spotted in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

“How it passed through at least three checkpoints is a rhetorical question — after all, there were soldiers behind the wheel,” — Pritkov said.

Who Vladislav Karpachev was

Vladislav Karpachev was born in 1999 in the city of Krasnoarmeysk, which at the time was part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine. From a young age he practiced boxing, trained at local sports clubs, and represented the Donetsk region at national competitions in the light welterweight division — up to 64 kg. In 2016, Karpachev won a bronze medal at the Ukrainian youth championship.