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Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine: UN investigators

GENEVA: U.N. investigators say there is evidence that Russian forces who invaded Ukraine in February 2022 committed war crimes. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine presented its findings Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The commission centered its inquiry on events from late February and March in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, […]

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Ukraine war: EU leaders back immediate candidate status for Kyiv

JUNE 17: "Ukraine belongs to the European family," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a joint briefing in Kyiv. But he added that Ukraine still had to meet the accession criteria in full. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed the 27-member EU would stand by Ukraine until its victory against Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described Russia's continuing aggression as a war "against the united Europe", adding that the "most effective weapon" was unity. And he again appealed for more heavy weapons to be sent urgently for Ukraine to be able to defend itself more effectively and liberate territories seized by Moscow since the start of the invasion on 24 February. Earlier on Thursday, the four EU leaders visited the devastated town of Irpin near Kyiv, which for several weeks was occupied by Russia. Ukraine accuses Russian soldiers of committing war crimes by killing hundreds of civilians in Irpin and nearby towns such as Bucha - a claim denied by Moscow. The visit to Kyiv comes as Russian troops are continuing their assault on the key city of Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine. Capturing Severodonetsk - and its twin city of Lysychansk - has for weeks been a top military goal for Russia, as the Kremlin seeks to control all of the wider Luhansk region. President Macron and Chancellor Scholz, together with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, visited Ukraine for the first time since the war began. The trip came a day before the European Commission is due to make a recommendation on whether to give Ukraine an EU candidate status. All 27 EU leaders will then discuss the issue at a summit on 23 and 24 June. Some of the bloc's members have been lukewarm about Ukraine's accession to the EU, and the words of support from France, Germany and Italy - the three EU heavyweights - could sway their position. However, candidacy status will only be the next step on the road to the full membership, which may take years. Before the Kyiv visit, Ukrainian officials repeatedly criticised France, Germany and Italy for being slow in delivering weapons and placing too much focus on appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this month, Mr Macron said it was vital that Russia was not humiliated over its invasion, suggesting that Mr Putin should have a way out of what he called a "fundamental error". Meanwhile in Moscow, Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, on Thursday criticised the EU leaders' trip on Twitter, using a dismissive slur relating to stereotypes of three of the EU nations' cuisines. "European fans of frogs, liverwurst and spaghetti" loved visiting Kyiv, he wrote. "With zero use." With inputs from BBC

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Ukraine war: UK to send Ukraine M270 multiple-launch rocket systems

JUNE 6: Ben Wallace said the M270 multiple-launch rocket system will help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. The UK government has not confirmed how many weapons will be sent, but the BBC understands it will be three initially. The decision was co-ordinated with the US, which announced last week it was also supplying a rocket system. The move by the US has already angered Moscow and on Sunday Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to expand the list of targets Russia will attack in Ukraine if Western countries send long-range weapons to Kyiv. The UK government said the Ukrainian military will be trained in how to use the launchers in the UK in the coming weeks. Announcing the move, Mr Wallace said the UK was taking a leading role in supplying Ukrainian troops with the "vital weapons they need to defend their country from unprovoked invasion". He said: "As Russia's tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine. "These highly capable multiple-launch rocket systems will enable our Ukrainian friends to better protect themselves against the brutal use of long-range artillery, which Putin's forces have used indiscriminately to flatten cities." Britain and America have led the way in supplying weapons to Ukraine, but giving it advanced long range rockets marks a significant shift, said the BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Beale. It is also a recognition that Ukraine is struggling to compete against Russia's vast artillery arsenal, he added. The UK's multiple launch rocket system can fire 12 surface-to-surface missiles within a minute and can strike targets within 50 miles (80km) with pinpoint accuracy - far further than the artillery Ukraine currently possesses. It is similar to the system the US is sending, the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Last week Washington said it would supply four HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine - following receipt of guarantees they would be used for defensive purposes only and not to strike targets inside Russia. In an interview on Russian state TV on Sunday, Mr Putin said: "In general, all this fuss about additional arms supplies, in my opinion, has only one goal - to drag out the armed conflict as long as possible." The Russian leader said what the US was supplying was "nothing new". But he warned against sending missiles with longer ranges: "If they are supplied, we will draw appropriate conclusions from this and use our weapons, of which we have enough, to strike at those targets that we are not striking yet." The warning came as explosions shook parts of Kyiv on Sunday in the first assault on the capital city for weeks, while fierce fighting for control of key towns and cities in the eastern Donbas region continues. Russia refocused its military efforts on the Donbas at the end of March after pulling back from the Kyiv region. Some of the fiercest fighting is currently in the eastern city of Severodonetsk. Capturing the city would deliver the Luhansk region to Russian forces and their local separatist allies, who also control much of neighbouring Donetsk. The two regions form the heavily industrial Donbas. On Sunday, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he had visited front-line troops in the eastern Donbas region to the city of Lysychansk and the town of Soledar. Britain and the US have are among the leading nations giving arms to support Ukraine since Russia invaded in February. The UK has also delivered more than 5,000 next generation light anti-tank weapons - known as Nlaw - which analysts believe have been critical to Ukraine driving back Russian ground assaults since the war began. Other weapon systems delivered by the government include short-range Brimstone 1 missiles, Mastiff armoured vehicles and Starstreak missile air defence systems - with the overall military support to Ukraine costing £750m so far, the government said. Several other countries have pledged to send advanced weapons to Ukraine. Germany has promised to send its most modern air defence system - the Iris-T - to enable Ukraine to shield an entire city from Russian air attacks. Support for war crimes investigation Meanwhile, a specialist team of lawyers and police officers will be offered to assist the chief prosecutor investigating alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, the Justice Secretary Dominic Raab announced on Monday. The offer will include a Metropolitan Police officer stationed in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in the Netherlands - who will provide the ICC's prosecutor Karim Khan with greater access to British police and military expertise. On top of this, seven lawyers experienced in international criminal law will be offered to help uncover evidence of war crimes committed in Ukraine and prosecute those responsible. The ICC has already begun an investigation that may target senior Russian officials thought to be responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. Atrocities and mass graves have been reported in towns and cities around Ukraine previously occupied by Russian forces - who withdrew from around the Kyiv and other areas they previously occupied to focus their offensive in the east. Civilian massacres have been discovered in places like Bucha, a town near the Ukrainian capital, with people found dead in the street, having been allegedly bound, gagged and executed by retreating Russian soldiers. Ukraine has so far reported 15,000 suspected war crimes, including Ukrainian women alleging being raped by Russian troops. Some 600 suspects have been identified and 80 prosecutions have begun, with one tank commander already sentenced to life in prison in May, after being found guilty by a Kyiv court of shooting a 62-year-old civilian in the back.

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Ukraine conflict: 'Russian soldiers raped me and killed my husband'

Warning: This report contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence In a quiet, rural neighbourhood 70km (45miles) west of Kyiv, we spoke to Anna, who is 50. We have changed her name to protect her identity. Anna told us that on 7 March she had been at home with her husband when a foreign soldier barged in. "At gunpoint, he took me to a house nearby. He ordered me: 'Take your clothes off or I'll shoot you.' He kept threatening to kill me if I didn't do as he said. Then he started raping me," she said. Anna described her attacker as a young, thin, Chechen fighter allied with Russia. "While he was raping me, four more soldiers entered. I thought that I was done for. But they took him away. I never saw him again," she said. She believes she was saved by a separate unit of Russian soldiers. Anna went back home and found her husband. He had been shot in the abdomen. "He had tried to run after me to save me, but he was hit by a round of bullets," she said. They both sought shelter in a neighbour's house. They couldn't take her husband to hospital because of the fighting. He died of his injuries two days later. Anna never stopped crying while telling us her story. She showed us where she and her neighbours buried her husband in the backyard of their home. A tall, wooden cross stands at the head of the grave. Anna told us that she is in contact with the local hospital and is receiving psychological support. The soldiers who saved her stayed in her house for a few days. She says they would point their gun at her and ask her to give them her husband's belongings. "When they left, I found drugs and Viagra. They would get high and they were often drunk. Most of them are killers, rapists and looters. Only a few are OK," she said. Down the road from Anna's house, we heard another chilling story. A woman was allegedly raped and killed, and neighbours say it was done by the same man who raped Anna, before he went to Anna's house. The woman was in her 40s. She was taken out of her home, say neighbours, and held in the bedroom of a house nearby whose occupants had evacuated when the war began. The well-decorated room, with ornate wallpaper and a bed with a golden headboard, is now a disturbing crime scene. There are large bloodstains on the mattress and duvet. In a corner, is a mirror which has a note written on it with lipstick - "Tortured by unknown people, buried by Russian soldiers," it says. Oksana, a neighbour, told us it had been left there by Russian soldiers who found the woman's body and buried her. "They [Russian soldiers] told me she had been raped and that her throat was either slit or stabbed, and she bled to death. They said there was a lot of blood." The woman was buried in a grave in the garden of the house. A day after we visited, the police exhumed her body to investigate the case. The body was found without clothes, and with a deep, long, cut across the neck. Andrii Nebytov, the police chief of the Kyiv region, told us about another case they're investigating in a village 50km (30 miles) to the west of Kyiv. A family of three - a couple in their thirties and their young child - lived in a house on the edge of the village. "On 9 March, several soldiers of the Russian army entered the house. The husband tried to protect his wife and child. So they shot him in the yard," said Mr Nebytov. "After that, two soldiers repeatedly raped the wife. They would leave and then come back. They returned three times to rape her. They threatened that if she resisted they would harm her little boy. To protect her child she didn't resist." When the soldiers left, they burnt down the house and shot the family's dogs. The woman escaped with her son and then contacted the police. Mr Nebytov says his team has met her and recorded her testimony. They have been gathering evidence at the family home - only its shell is now left. Just a few signs of a previous peaceful, ordinary life lie in the charred ruins. We saw a child's bicycle, a stuffed horse, a dog's leash and a man's fur lined winter shoe. The husband was buried in the garden by neighbours. The police have now exhumed his body for examination. They plan to take the case to international courts. Ukraine's ombudsman for human rights Lyudmyla Denisova says they're documenting several such cases. "About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant," she said. "Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn't want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children." She says they are receiving several calls on support helplines - and also getting information through channels on the Telegram messaging app. "A 25-year-old woman called to tell us her 16-year-old sister was raped in the street in front of her. She said they were screaming 'This will happen to every Nazi prostitute' as they raped her sister," Ms Denisova said. We asked if it was possible to assess the scale of sexual crimes committed by Russian troops during the occupation. "It is impossible at the moment because not everyone is willing to tell us what happened to them. The majority of them currently call for psychological support, so we cannot record those as crimes unless they give us their testimony," Ms Denisova said. She says Ukraine wants a special tribunal to be set up by the United Nations to try Vladimir Putin personally for allegations of war crimes including rape. "I want to ask Putin, why is this happening?" said Anna, the woman who told us she was raped. "I don't understand. We're not living in the Stone Age, why can't he negotiate? Why is he occupying and killing?" With inputs from BBC

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Ukraine war: Ukraine investigates alleged execution of civilians by Russians

APRIL 5: Bucha and Irpin were symbols of resistance to the Russian invasion, but they are now becoming synonymous with the war's most serious abuses. Ukrainian authorities say the bodies of 410 civilians have been found in the areas around Kyiv so far. Russia, without evidence, says the photos and videos are "a staged performance" by Ukraine. But what officials and reporters have seen there in the wake of the Russian withdrawal has left many in deep shock. What happened in Bucha? Two or three days after Russia launched the 24 February invasion of its neighbour, a column of Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APC) that had arrived in Bucha was attacked by Ukrainians, stalling the advance. The Russians reinforced and stayed in the area on the outskirts of the capital, unable to move forward much, until they began pulling out on 30 March. Many civilians had fled the area - but some stayed behind, trying to avoid the Russians. It is during this period that Russians reportedly started going house to house. Witnesses have described how Russian soldiers fired on men fleeing after refusing to allow them to leave through humanitarian corridors. Officials and reporters who went in after the Russians had left saw tanks and APCs, alongside at least 20 dead men lying in the streets. Many had extensive wounds - some had been shot through the temple, as if executed. Some had their hands - or legs - tied. Others had clearly been run over by tanks. Satellite images taken by Maxar show a 14m (45ft) mass grave in Bucha near the church of St Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints. The company says the first signs of excavation were spotted on 10 March - not long after the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And Bucha residents have said the first bodies were buried there in the first few days of the war, as Russians killed scores by "shooting everyone they saw". Estimates of those buried range from 150-300. 'Shot in the back of the head' Human Rights Watch has gathered evidence of alleged war crimes in Bucha and other cities and towns under the control of Russian forces. In a report published on 3 April 2022, it recorded an account of an incident in Bucha on 4 March in which Russian soldiers forced five men "to kneel on the side of the road, pulled their T-shirts over their heads, and shot one of the men in the back of the head". And more gruesome details continue to emerge. The BBC's Yogita Limaye visited the basement of a home in Bucha where the bodies of five men wearing civilian clothes were left. They had their hands bound behind their backs and appeared to have been shot dead. The Ukrainians say similar accounts are surfacing elsewhere and will be investigated. In the nearby village of Motyzhyn, a BBC team were taken to see a shallow grave - four bodies were visible, and Ukrainian officials said there could be more. Three of the bodies have been identified as that of the head of the village Olga Sohnenko, her husband and her son. The fourth has not been identified yet. It is unclear when they were killed. The areas around Kyiv now back under Ukrainian control include the commuter town of Irpin, where heart-breaking images showed civilians fleeing under Russian fire for days on end. There were cases of people being shot at as they did so. On 6 March four civilians - a woman, her teenage son, her daughter of around eight years of age, and a family friend - were all killed by mortar fire as they tried to cross a battered bridge. In another incident, a mother and son were also killed and buried by neighbours in the courtyard of the block of flats. On 7 March, drone footage showed a car on a road outside Kyiv, from which a man emerges with hands raised. His body falls to the ground. Maksim Iovenko, 31, was shot dead by Russian forces that were positioned at the roadside. His wife Ksenia, who was in the car, was also killed. The HRW report includes the case of a mother in the city of Kharkiv, who was raped by a 20-year-old Russian soldier inside a school where civilians were sheltering. And many more. Accusations of war crimes and genocide President Volodymyr Zelensky has no doubt that Russian troops are committing war crimes and even genocide against his people. Genocide is understood by most to be the gravest crime against humanity. It is defined as a mass extermination of a particular group of people - exemplified by the efforts of the Nazis to eradicate the Jewish population in the 1940s. "The world has already seen many war crimes. At different times. On different continents. But it is time to do everything possible to make the war crimes of the Russian military the last manifestation of such evil on earth," Mr Zelensky said on Sunday, as evidence of the murders of Bucha became public. He told US network CBS's Face the Nation programme: "Indeed. This is genocide. "The elimination of the whole nation, and the people. We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities." Many Western countries have expressed their horror at the images of bodies strewn on city streets. But Russia remains defiant. It says its operation - which they refuse to call a war of invasion - is proceeding according to plan, and that accusations of war crimes are all fake. With inputs from BBC

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First major city falls as Russian attacks continue

March 3: It's been one week since Russia invaded its neighbour, Ukraine, and attacks are intensifying on key cities. Russian forces have taken control of Kherson in the south - the first major city to fall. Kherson is the first major city to be taken by Russia, after heavy fighting, since it invaded a week ago. Its mayor, Igor Kolykhaev, said Russian troops had forced their way into the city council building and imposed a curfew on residents. Several cities have come under intense shelling, with Wednesday one of the most destructive days of the fighting. An investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine has been launched by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Russia has for the first time admitted taking heavy military casualties during its attack on Ukraine, with 498 troops killed and a further 1,597 injured. Ukraine says Russia's losses run into the thousands. Ukraine reports that more than 2,000 civilians have died since the invasion began last Thursday. The conflict has also caused more than a million people to flee Ukraine, according to the UN. In a Facebook post, Mr Kolykhaev said Russian forces were in control of Kherson, a port on Ukraine's southern Black Sea coast with a population of more than 280,000 people. He urged Russian soldiers not to shoot at civilians, saying there were no Ukrainian forces in the city. If they capture more southern cities, Ukrainian forces could be cut off from the sea. In Mariupol, a strategic port near the Russian border, hundreds are feared killed by shelling. Kyiv remains in government control and a large Russian armoured convoy remains some distance away. More than one million people have already fled the country, the UN says. Vladimir Putin's foreign minister warns a third world war would be nuclear but says Russians are not thinking about this. Russian and Belarusian athletes are barred from the Winter Paralympics.

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