Vladimir Putin: War Criminal -- Russian Military: War Crimes

"The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians."

"[We have documented] several cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations [in the regions of Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv.]"

Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director, Human Rights Watch

In Malaya Rohan, a village in he Kharkhiv region occupied by Russian forces abused women spoke of their horrific experiences at the hands of Russian soldiers. Seeking shelter from incessant artillery attacks and bombs, families would gather in basements. Knowing this, some Russian soldiers would force their way into the shelters, their rifles at the ready. To intimidate those sheltering there, separate young women from the groups in upstairs rooms and rape them.

"Those freaks searched for people in basements and killed them."

"Those who survived said that the Russian military were able to rape children and the elderly and even corpses."

Katya, 16, writing of Mariupol residents forced to live with the bodies of their dead relatives

"The whole time he held the gun near my temple or put it into my face."

"Twice he shot at the ceiling and said it was to give me more motivation'."

"I am lucky to be alive."

Olga, 31, Kharkiv 

 

"We have had several calls to our emergency hotline from women and girls seeking assistance, but in most cases it’s been impossible to help them physically. We haven’t been able to reach them because of the fighting."

"Rape is an underreported crime and stigmatized issue even in peaceful times. I am worried that what we learn about is just going to be the tip of the iceberg."

Kateryna Cherepakha,  president , La Strada Ukraine charity supporting survivors of trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault

Ukrainian servicemen attach a cable to the body of a civilian while checking for booby traps in the formerly Russian-occupied Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine, April 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

 

When Russian troops entered Berlin in the final days of World War II, a horrific episode of indiscriminate rapes took place with Russian soldiers hunting down German women and girls of all ages wherever they tried to hide their presence. The mass atrocity was described by one correspondent as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. The Soviet war correspondent Natalya Gesse, wrote that Soviet soldiers raped German females from eight to eighty years old

War crimes have become a specialty in this 'special invasion' that Russian President Vladimir Putin has mounted against Ukraine. In Russia itself it has become a crime with a punishment of up to 15 years in prison for even using the word 'war' to criticize the government's decision to invade Ukraine. Ukrainian's military has fought back in a manner obviously never realized by Putin that they would be capable of. A number of towns and villages on the approach to Kyiv, the Russian military's target, have now been liberated from Russian control.

 

Evidence of horrific atrocities carried out by Russian soldiers in the Kyiv region is growing (Picture: AP)

What met the Ukrainian servicemen's eyes was distinct and deliberate atrocities committed on the civilian population; people in their cars, people riding bicycles, cut down and murdered. Other instances of men with their hands tied behind their backs riddled with bullets and left to decompose where they lay, in the streets. In undertaking to remove them for burial, Ukrainian servicemen fearing the bodies to be booby-trapped with explosives, have taken to dragging them with cables to avoid anti-personnel mines.

 

Horrific images from Bucha have led to calls for even tougher sanctions against Russia by the West (Picture: Getty Images)

With all of these war crimes being revealed to the world at large, Russia has requested the UN Security Council to be convened for the purpose of discussing, according to Moscow, a provocation by Ukrainian "radicals", in Bucha, a liberated town where a mass grave had been discovered, and bodies of  dead Ukrainians littered the streets. Photos and videos from the town, according to the Russian defence ministry represent a "staged performance" to vilify Russia, as though it hadn't already done just that, to itself.

In defence of its "special military operation", Moscow claims not to have targeted civilians, rejecting claims of war crimes. It is, after all, intent merely on demilitarizing and 'de-nazifying Ukraine. Reuters-affiliated war correspondents saw for themselves bodies in a mass grave and others lying in the streets. Bucha's mayor Anatolly Fedoruk showed reporters corpses with white cloth tied around their arms, one shot in the mouth.

A body of a civilian man with hands tied behind his back lies in the street as a communal worker prepares a plastic body bag to carry him to a waiting car in town of Bucha, not far from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on April 3, 2022. (Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP)

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's aide Olekaly Arestovych informed the reporters that  Ukrainian troops had discovered bodies of women who were raped and set on fire. The bodies of local officials and children were also found; altogether the mayor said, 300 residents had been murdered in the month-long occupation by the Russian military. 

In the southern port city of Odessa, Russia bombed and destroyed an oil refinery that was used by the Ukrainian military. This is the same Russia that had complained bitterly a few days back that Ukrainian forces had bombed and destroyed an oil depot inside Russia's border with Ukraine, wreaking havoc on Russia's use of the facility in Belgorod, Russia, to supply its forces inside Ukraine.