(Kharkiv) In the liberated areas taken over by the Ukrainian army from the Russian forces, the investigators begin the long work of listing war crimes. In the Kharkiv region alone, the second largest city in Ukraine, more than 1,400 cases have already been identified.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Sitting under one of the trees in the main square of Malaya Rohan, a town not far from Kharkiv, Natalia seems to have survived a hurricane.
One evening during the bombardments, my daughter and I took refuge in the school with other inhabitants. A Russian soldier broke in the window, made everyone kneel down and forced my daughter upstairs with him. He raped her all night, slashed her face and shaved her hair.
Natalia, victim of war crimes
The Russian army, which occupied the village for four weeks, leaves in its wake a multitude of shattered lives.
On the outskirts of the village, whose streets are strewn with charred tanks, bomb craters and gutted houses, four villagers dig the ground of a farm to exhume the remains of Inna Bobrynceva, a septuagenarian killed by gunfire. Russian artillery. A team of police officers supervises the scene and collects clues.
“Shooting at civilians is a war crime,” explains Maxim Klimovets, the young prosecutor in charge of the investigation. We are collecting shrapnel to determine the type of military unit that committed this crime. From there, we will see with the intelligence which battalions were present in the surroundings at the time of the facts. »
By her side, Vadim, the victim’s husband, is inconsolable. “During the first weeks of occupation, my wife and I locked ourselves in the basement,” he explains. On March 12, as the frequency of the detonations decreased, we went out for the air. But the bombardments suddenly resumed, this time right on our house. Retreating, the Russians bombarded the village. My wife was fatally shot in the head. »
Constantly interrupted by new explosions, it will take Vadim six days before he can bury the mother of his children, behind their vegetable garden.
Prostrated under a tree, in the background, his son Pasha, 36, refused to attend the exhumation of his mother’s body. Too painful, especially since the police had to open the coffin to identify the body.
“My mother refused to evacuate because she didn’t want to abandon her pets, which she cared about more than anything. My father finally gave in, and they stayed,” murmurs Pasha as he watches the forensic scientists load his mother’s body into a van bound for the Kharkiv forensic institute. “What the Russians did to my parents is a horrible war crime. »
A complex task
Bringing to justice the Russian soldiers responsible for the martyrdom of Malaya Rohan will be difficult. In addition to the difficulty of apprehending suspects, Ukraine faces a dizzying array of alleged war crimes. During a recent visit to The Hague, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova announced that her country had identified some 15,000 war crimes cases and 600 suspects.
In the area under my jurisdiction alone, we have identified 1,400 war crimes. Moreover, 22% of our region is still occupied, and we cannot know what crimes are being committed there, especially since it appears that the Russians are trying to erase the traces of their acts.
Aleksandr Vasilyevich, prosecutor of the Kharkiv region
On the outskirts of Kharkiv, dozens of minibuses arrive from territories occupied by Moscow. Despite the war, the belligerents organized the passage of 5,000 civilians that day wishing to reach western Ukraine.
After 12 hours of a high-risk journey, these refugees all testify to the harshness of the yoke of the Russian army. “Our neighborhood was shelled by the Russian army, several of our neighbors died,” says Karina, 19, accompanied by her sister Masha and brother Kolya, 10-year-old twins. Several survivors also recount a phenomenon of systematic looting.
The soldiers “engage in real raids, taking away everything that comes to hand: cars, household appliances, cash. They particularly target businesses,” says Yliena, a resident of Volchansk, near the Russian border.
Aleksandr Vassilievich, whose teams will take charge of the depositions of the evacuees, stresses the importance for Ukraine of reconquering all of its territory.
“Until the whole country is liberated, thousands of Ukrainians will not get justice”, he recalls. Kharkiv, still pounded daily by the Russian army, has not finished listing its war crimes.