Ukraine accuses 2 brothers of betraying their former neighbors by helping Russia fire a missile on their hometown café killing 59

• A Russian missile hit a village in northeast Ukraine last week, killing 59 people.
• Ukraine now accused two brothers of passing Russia information to plan the attack on their hometown.

Ukraine has accused two brothers of helping Russia orchestrate a deadly missile strike on their hometown, which killed over 50 people.

Ukraine's security service (SBU) named brothers Volodymyr and Dmytro Mamon and said they have been charged with treason. It called them "traitors."

A Russian Iskander missile struck a cafe in the village of Hroza, in the Kharkiv region, on October 5 as people gathered for the funeral of a fallen Ukrainian soldier.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram that 59 people were killed, all civilians, and some from multiple generations of the same family.

He said that almost every family in the village of 330 people had at least one relative at the gathering, per The Financial Times.

The deaths mark one of the biggest civilian casualties of any Russian strike since the war began.

Prosecutors said the Mamon brothers collaborated with Russian occupiers in the region in 2022 and were given official positions working with Russian police.

When the region was liberated they fled with the their families to Russia.

After that, the pair began to form a network of informants and, "under the guise of friendly conversations," would inquire about the deployment of Ukrainian forces in the region and other information to feed back to Russian forces, prosecutors allege.

Prosecutors allege that Volodymyr alerted Russian forces about the upcoming funeral of soldier Andriyi Kozyr, knowing they would attack and kill their former neighbors and friends.

The security service published text messages from Volodymyr which suggest he had a grudge against one of the funeral attendees, The Guardian reported, with him writing: "Tell me when he is dead."

One of the victims of the attack was Natalia Mamon, who shares a surname with the brothers, Politico reported. It's unclear what her relation was to them, but a Ukrainian citizens' registry said that she lived at the same address as at least one of the brothers.

Along with treason, Volodymyr was also charged with assisting Russians to violate the laws and customs of war.

Authorities said they were working to locate the brothers, who are Russian passport holders and are believed to be in Russia, per the FT.