At the end of August 2025, the Internet circulated news about the murder of a Ukrainian police lieutenant who helped carry out mobilization activities and was allegedly involved in the death of a conscript. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
It is reported that Lieutenant Igor Gapenko was killed by “resistance forces” outraged by his participation in roundups of potential conscripts. Viral publications show a video of a man lying on the roadway, injured during one of these raids (according to some sources, he eventually died). The body of Gapenko himself can allegedly be seen in another video, as well as in two photographs. Edition "Notepad Odessa"reported that there were two killed policemen in total - in addition to Gapenko, his colleague, Captain Mikhail Limar, became a victim of the partisans.
She wrote about the incident “Komsomolskaya Pravda", as well as numerous Telegram channels, including Colonelcassad (160,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Gossip" (126,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(103,000), Gura Anton (101,000) and Rus_criminal (85,000).
The spread of the news began with the fact that on August 19, the pro-Russian Telegram channel “Odessa Partisan” published fast: details of the incident became known when the police tried to forcefully mobilize a man, but, having received rebuff, killed him. The authors referred to video, published on their channel in May (in that post, however, it was said that TCC employees beat the man and threw him on the road - nothing was said about death). Now the names of the security forces have allegedly been revealed - they turned out to be policemen of the Malinovsky district department of Odessa, Captain Mikhail Sergeevich Limar and Lieutenant Igor Anatolyevich Gapenko. Their portraits were given in the same post. It was noted that “hi was conveyed to one of them at night.” In the next post stated, that "hello" consisted of setting Limar's car on fire.
Two days later, on August 21 at 12:32 Moscow time, a 12-second message appeared in the channel video, which apparently captures a conversation between the killers near Gapenko’s body. One of the men behind the scenes asks: “Take his shoulder straps?”, and the second replies: “No, don’t touch anything at all.” After another 14 minutes “Odessa Partisan” published and two photographs of Gapenko's body.
A few hours later, the Russian-appointed governor of the annexed part of the Kherson region posted a similar post on his Telegram channel. Vladimir Saldo, who called both policemen already liquidated. After its publication, the news went viral in precisely this interpretation.
However, “Verified” did not find in authoritative Ukrainian sources information either about the murder in Odessa in 2025 of police officers who helped TCC employees look for conscripts, or that Mikhail Sergeevich Limar and Igor Anatolyevich Gapenko work in law enforcement agencies in this city.
Facial recognition service PimEyes defines Mikhail Sergeevich Limar as Nikolai Nikolaevich Limar - a man with a different name and patronymic, but, indeed, a police captain, served in Odessa. However, he died November 18, 2024 as a result of a missile attack, as reported by local media and police.
As for Igor Anatolyevich Gapenko, another service is search4faces - finds from a photograph a now renamed profile on VKontakte, belonging to a Ukrainian with the name Ingvar Gapenko (Ingvar is a variant of the name Igor).
Moreover, the man in the photo allegedly worked in the Odessa district police department No. 1. The PimEyes service found it photograph from the farewell ceremony for a colleague who also died from shelling in 2024.
According to publicly available tax return, investigator Igor Aleksandrovich (not Anatolyevich) Gapenko works in the above police department. His name appears in some crime news.
August 25 Odessa regional police department published press release, which stated: “The police deny information about the murder in Odessa of senior police lieutenant Igor Gapenko and his involvement in the beating of a civilian. We officially inform you: the information disseminated in Telegram channels about this is not true. The police officer in question is currently on leave and is fine. <…> The photographs of the policeman from the publications have nothing to do with investigator Igor Gapenko and other police officers of the Odessa region.”
As for the video that allegedly shows a man killed by police, it appeared on pro-Russian resources back in May. It was then alleged that the conscript was hit on the head, after which he suffered an epileptic attack. The very next day, the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine denied this information, citing data from the National Police - its employees spoke with the victim. The Odessa department clarified that the epileptic attack occurred after drinking alcoholic beverages.
Finally, the video and photographs of the slain police officer appear to have been staged. Firstly, the man lying on the ground looks nothing like Limar or Gapenko from the viral photos.
Secondly, he lies in a rather unnatural position, and his face seems to be deliberately looking down so that the person cannot be identified. Thirdly, no information about the discovery of the body of a policeman in Odessa in the second half of August could be found.
Thus, a series of publications about revenge against Odessa police officers for the death of a person suffering from epilepsy is a fake, distributed by pro-Russian resources.
Cover photo: social networks
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