By KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine has collected evidence of 109,000 Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine, Politico reports citing Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin.
The ezine said that Kostin told POLITICO on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday of about 109,000 war crimes committed by the Russian Federation, including physical crimes and cyber attacks. “Ukrainian officials have identified more than 400 suspected perpetrators of these crimes. Around 300 have been indicted, and 66 convicted,” Politico quoted Kostin as saying.
“The wide range, the big scale of these incidents and war crimes requires a lot of work and a lot of new approaches … It’s our commitment to decide to document, prosecute each and every incident, because each and every incident of war crimes has its victims,” the prosecutor general said during the forum.
According to Politico, Ukraine is collecting evidence of war crimes, including for consideration by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The vast majority of the charges being prosecuted were considered crimes against humanity, such as the mass executions of Ukrainians in Bucha in 2022. Kostin’s figures also include 265 investigations into crimes against the environment, such as the Russian attack on the Ukrainian Nova Kakhovka Dam earlier this year that led to the evacuation of thousands of Ukrainians,” the message reads.
Also, according to the prosecutor general, four cases so far have also been opened into cyber war crime charges. Kostin said the inclusion of cyber crimes and crimes against the environment for the ICC evidence is a new initiative by Ukraine during this war.
Politico says that he also acknowledged the challenge of convicting Russian citizens who may not be in Ukraine or have evaded capture, though he noted that some have been brought to trial. “The bigger part is Russian war criminals who we charge and who we try in absentia. This is a quite longer process because it requires more procedural actions,” Kostin said, adding that all of them are provided with protection, since Ukraine’s position is to ensure a fair trial for all.
