A Ukrainian court on Monday sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier to life in prison for the murder of a Ukrainian civilian.
The sentence was handed down in the first-ever war crimes trial held since the Russian invasion of Ukraine which began last February. Sergeant Vadim Chichimarin was accused of shooting a Ukrainian civilian in the head at the start of the war. He pleaded guilty and said he shot the man after being ordered to.
Shortly after, a Russian diplomat to the United Nations in Geneva said he had resigned, protesting against what he called the war of aggression unleashed by President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
Boris Bondarev, 41, explained that in his 20-year diplomatic career he has seen various turning points in Russian foreign policy, but never was he so ashamed of his country as on February 24 this year, making referring to the date of the Russian invasion.
Boris Bondarev’s resignation amounts to a rare public admission of discontent over Russia’s war in Ukraine among the Russian diplomatic corps.
Attendees of the World Economic Forum, which kicked off Monday morning in Davos, Switzerland, could hear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling for maximum sanctions against Russia during a videoconference speech. In his view, sanctions must go further to stop Russia’s aggression and must include an oil embargo, blocking all its banks and completely cutting off trade with Russia. He said it’s a precedent that will work for decades to come.
President Zelensky also pushed for the complete withdrawal of foreign companies from Russia to prevent supporting his war and said Ukraine needed at least $5 billion in funding per month.
He also called for more weapons for his country, regretting that the support from the international community had not always been quick enough. “If we had received 100% of our needs in February, the result would have been tens of thousands of lives saved. That’s why Ukraine needs all the weapons we ask for, not just the ones that have been supplied,” he said.
For his part, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country has opposed Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO membership, on Monday called on Sweden to take concrete steps that would mitigate the Turkey’s security problems. Turkey opposes the two Scandinavian states joining the alliance, citing their alleged support for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other groups Turkey considers terrorists.
In his speech, President Erdogan made no reference to Finland. Sweden has a large community of Kurdish exiles.
A Russian-installed governor in Kherson region in southern Ukraine said that from Monday the region will officially become a dual-currency zone of Russia and Ukraine. Vladimir Saldo also said that an office of a Russian bank would open in the region.
Russian forces took control of the Kherson region, bordering the Donetsk region to the east and Crimea to the south, at the start of the war and set up a pro-Kremlin administration there.
Meanwhile, a Mariupol official on Monday sounded the alarm over the growing threat of an outbreak in the ravaged port city that was captured by the Russians, pointing to unsanitary conditions made worse by the weather.
Mayor’s adviser Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram that sewers and storm drains cause rainwater to spill into the city along with rotting garbage and leachate from corpses. He added that Mariupol desperately needs a new wave of evacuations.
As for the Ukrainian fighters from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol who were captured by Russian forces, they are being held in the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk and will face an international tribunal there, according to Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist region. He said 2,439 people from Azovstal were in detention, including some foreign citizens, although he did not provide details.
British military officials say Russian forces in Ukraine suffered a death rate similar to that suffered by the Soviet Union (USSR) during its nine-year war in Afghanistan. Britain’s Ministry of Defense added on Monday that the high casualty rate is due to poor tactics, limited air cover, a lack of flexibility and a command approach that reinforces failure and repeats mistakes.