A WITNESSED RUSSIAN SOLDIER TO FACE WAR CRIMES TRIAL

 

… Ukrainian soldiers that deal with unexploded shells are called “De-Miners.”  This De-Miner, wearing protective gear, works in an area where unexploded devices were found after shelling by Russian forces in the town of Maksymilyanivka, Ukraine.

 

There are over 10,000 alleged war crimes committed by the Russian soldiers.

 

In the Ukrainian town of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s top prosecutor disclosed plans for the first war crimes trial of a captured Russian soldiers.  All this as fighting raged in the east and south of Ukraine.  This occurred while the Russian Kremlin left open the possibility of annexing a corner of the country it seized early in the invasion.

 

Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said her office charged Russian Sgt. Vadin Shyshimarin, 21, in the killing of an unarmed 62-year-old civilian.  The civilian was gunned down while riding a bicycle, only four days into the war.

Shyshimarin, the soldier, served with a tank unit, and was seen firing on the man in the northeastern village of Chupakhivka.  Prosecutor Venediktova said the soldier could get up to 15 years in prison. 

She did not say when his trial would start.

 

Venediktova’s Prosecutor Office has said it has been investigating more than 10,700 alleged war crimes committed by these Russian forces and has identified over 600 suspects.

 

Many of the alleged atrocities came to light last month after Moscow’s forces aborted their bid to capture Kyiv and withdrew from around the capital.  They left exposed mass graves and streets and yards strewn with human bodies in towns such as Bucha.  Residents told of killings, burnings, rape, torture and dismemberment.

 

Volodymyr Yavorskyy of the Center for Civil Liberties said the Ukrainian human rights group will be closely following Shyshimarin’s trial to make sure it is fair. “It’s very difficult to observe all the rules, norms and neutrality of the court proceedings in wartime,” he said.

 

On the economic front, Ukraine shut down a pipeline that carries Russian gas across the country to homes and industries in Western Europe, marking the first time since the start of the war that Kyiv disrupted the flow westward of one of Moscow’s most lucrative exports.

 

But the immediate effect is likely to be limited, in part because Russia can divert the gas to another pipeline and because Europe relies on a variety of suppliers.

 

Meanwhile, a Kremlin installed politician in the southern Kherson region.  "The site of the first, and only, major Ukrainian city to fall in the war," said the installed officials that want Russian President Vladimir Putin to make Kherson a “proper region of Russia.”  That is, if Russia plans to annex the region.

 

“The city of Kherson is Russia,” said Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Kherson regional administration that was, of course, appointed by Moscow.  This is what he told the Russian RIA Novosti news agency.

 

That raised the possibility that the Kremlin would seek to break off another piece of Ukraine as it tries to salvage their invasion that has gone so poorly.  

 

In an earlier war, Russia had annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which borders the Kherson region.

Copyright G. Ater 2022