Russian War Crimes

April 4, 2022 – Kira Rudik, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, describes the horrors she witnessed and learned about visiting Bucha, Ukraine and the accountability Ukrainians intend to bring to Russia for bringing this war.

April 8, 2022 – A missile hit a train station in eastern Ukraine where thousands had gathered Friday, killing at least 52 and wounding dozens more in an attack on a crowd of mostly women and children trying to flee a new, looming Russian offensive, Ukrainian authorities said.

April 8, 2022 – The civilian death toll is climbing in Ukraine. Officials said a Russian rocket attack in the eastern Donetsk region killed at least 50 people and wounded about 100 more. Russian forces are accused of attacking a train station that was being used as a hub to evacuate civilians. CBS News foreign correspondent Debora Patta is in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with more on this.

April 8, 2022 – Russia has intensified its assault on eastern Ukraine, striking a train station packed with refugees trying to flee. At least 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the attack. This comes as new evidence of atrocities by Russian forces has emerged. Meanwhile, Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall is speaking out for the first time about his horrific injuries after his vehicle was hit by shelling. NBC’s Molly Hunter reports for TODAY from Bucha.

April 8, 2022 – More than 39 people have been killed after Russian rockets hit a railway station filled with thousands of evacuees trying to flee the eastern city of Kramatorsk, the state railway company has said. Over 87 people were also wounded in the strike, many seriously, as civilians tried to evacuate to safer parts of the country ahead of a suspected Russian assault on the Donbas region. The Mayor of Kramatorsk said there were about 4,000 people at the city’s railway station at the time of the attack and that most were elderly, women and children.

Four children are confirmed to be among the dead. Photographs and video footage posted on the Telegram messaging service showed multiple bodies in civilian clothes lying amongst suitcases on the station platform. The Telegraph counted at least eight bodies in one still image. Following the attack, President Volodymr Zelensky described Russia as an “evil with no limits”, adding that “they are cynically destroying the civilian population”.

April 9, 2022 – At least 52 people, including children, were killed on Friday after a train station in Ukraine’s Kramatorsk was struck by a missile in a Russian attack. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy called the attack “evil without limits.” NBC’s Molly Hunter reports for Saturday TODAY.

April 9, 2022 – Russian rocket attack, a horrible war crime atrocity committed at the railway station in the city of Kramatorsk.

April 10, 2022 – ITV News has heard accounts of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners being killed by Russian soldiers retreating from occupied towns and villages. It comes as Ukraine’s top prosecutor said the bodies of more than 1,200 civilians have so far been discovered in areas reclaimed from Russian troops. Our team travelled to several villages close to the town of Makariv, west of Kyiv, and heard repeated claims of men of fighting age being shot in the head.

April 13, 2022 – Clear evidence shows that a cluster bomb was used in an attack on a Ukraine railway station, a BBC investigation has found. These weapons, banned by many countries under international law, deliver a payload of bomblets that spread out and explode over a wide area. More than 50 people died when the missile struck Kramatorsk station, which was crowded with people trying to leave the east of the country, on April 9. More than 120 countries have agreed to a treaty prohibiting the use of these weapons, but not Russia or Ukraine.

May 12, 2022 – When Leonid Pliats and his boss were shot in the back by Russian soldiers, the killing was captured on CCTV cameras in clear and terrible detail. The footage, which was obtained by the BBC, is now being investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors as a suspected war crime. “My dad was not a military man… he was a pensioner,” Leonid’s daughter said.

May 13, 2022 – Once again, the cruel acts of the Russian Army in Ukraine have been captured on CCTV. As war arrived on the outskirts of Kyiv, rumors began to circulate of the horrific war crimes carried out by Russian troops. This is the hard proof. While trying to break into a car dealership in the Ukrainian capital, two Russian soldiers are stopped by the owner and a security guard, both in their 60s. Little do the two civilians know, these are among the last steps they would ever take. With their arms up, they calmly approach and strike up conversation with the armed men, even sharing their cigarettes with them.

May 17, 2022 – Ukraine‘s defenses have managed to repel Russian forces from several parts of the country, liberating towns and cities from Russian control. But as the soldiers have retreated, Ukrainians have returned to find areas destroyed by shelling and signs of possible war crimes, with many residents recounting scenes of torture, execution and sexual violence. Bel Trew has travelled across Ukraine, finding a trail of destruction and Ukrainians trying to find out about the fate of loved ones, documenting what’s happened and trying to put their lives back together.

July 16, 2022 – In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian soldiers were ordered to fire on civilians traveling on a roadway: but one of the women shot at survived. Karolina Perlifon is alive because two soldiers refused to carry out the command to kill Ukrainians on the spot. The soldiers were hit by gunfire soon afterwards, with one dying from the injury. Perlifon’s 51-year-old mother lay dead next to her from a Russian bullet, yet she decided to drive the other soldier to safety. As the 29-year-old lawyer continues to cope with her loss, she remains confident what she did was right. Sean O’Shea reports from Ukraine.

August 22, 2022 – Scott Pelley reports on the innovative group that’s been exposing Vladimir Putin since 2014.

August 24, 2022 – A Russian rocket attack on a train station in eastern Ukraine resulted in dozens of casualties. The attack comes six months after the start of Russia’s invasion and as Ukraine marks its Independence Day. Debora Patta reports.

August 24, 2022 – Ukraine investigates growing number of alleged Russian war crimes | USA TODAY. Under constant threat of Russian airstrikes and shelling, Ukrainian prosecutors work to investigate the growing number of suspected war crimes cases. A team of war crimes investigators had already begun the work they believed would do just that. Within an hour of the explosion, they were on the ground with cameras, measuring tapes and clipboards for notes. Their goal is to investigate and document alleged crimes committed by Russia’s military. For now, the work is focused on the Russian military’s everyday violence against civilians as opposed to the higher-stakes effort to build a case against Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

August 25, 2022 – Russian bombs have killed at least 25 people, including two children at a Ukrainian train station and a near-crisis at a Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been averted.

August 26, 2022 – A RUSSIAN missile attack on a train station in eastern Ukraine killed at least 25 people, local media reported on Thursday. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Office of the President, said that the attack targeted the Chaplyne railway station in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Ukraine’s state news agency Ukrinform. Two children were among those who lost their lives while 31 others were also wounded in the attack, the agency added. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced at a meeting of the UN Security Council via video link that Russian troops launched a missile attack on the Chaplyne railway station.

August 30, 2022 – In Borodianka, a Ukrainian town in the Bucha district, northwest of Kyiv, 81-year-old Taisia Herasymenko says her son was shot dead by Russian soldiers. She is seeking justice and hopes a trial will come soon. The case is one of many that Ukrainian and international officials are investigating in the Bucha area where mass graves were discovered. Reuters follows investigators as they try to put the pieces together and look for any evidence of executions and torture.

September 16, 2022 – Rebroadcast April 15, 2023 – The Russian military failed to take Ukraine’s capital at the start of its invasion. But Kyiv’s suburbs became ground zero for Russian war crimes. That’s where NBC Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel met 10-year-old Andriy, weeks after his parents were murdered in front of him. Another young survivor, Yehor, just 9 years old, witnessed Russian atrocities in his hometown of Mariupol and wrote it all down in a notebook that’s been compared to Anne Frank’s Holocaust diary.

October 20, 2022 – We’re in Biliaivka, Kherson region. For more than six months it was under the occupation of the Russian military, but in October the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated it. Biliaivka is now very destroyed and almost empty. Only in a few houses from all the locals remained to live. The material was created in frame of “Life in War” project with the support of Public Interest Journalism Lab and IWM.

October 25, 2022 – In a 90-minute special investigation, FRONTLINE and The Associated Press go inside Russia’s war on Ukraine and uncover harrowing evidence of potential war crimes. “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes” draws on original footage; interviews with Ukrainian citizens and prosecutors, top government officials and international war crimes experts. This work includes a vast amount of previously unpublished evidence obtained and verified by the AP — including hundreds of hours of surveillance camera videos and thousands of audio recordings of intercepted phone calls made by Russian soldiers around Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv.

From award-winning director Tom Jennings, producer Annie Wong, AP global investigative reporter Erika Kinetz and her AP colleagues, the 90-minute documentary traces a pattern of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, focusing on areas near Kyiv, such as Bucha, where some of the most shocking carnage was found. FRONTLINE and the AP uncovered exclusive evidence that links possible war crimes in Bucha through the chain of command to one of Russia’s top generals — evidence that prosecutors hope might help build a case against Russian President Vladimir Putin in court. This joint investigation also explores the challenges of trying to hold Putin and other Russian leaders to account.

Investigating war crimes in Ukraine and tracking down Russian soldiers – The Fifth Estate.

November 6, 2022 – People told me very scary stories about how they were beaten, raped, and put in wooden boxes. “And you do everything in order to protect people, to get them out of captivity,” says human rights activist Oleksandra Matviychuk. Up to date, the team at the Center for Civil Liberties, which she heads, has documented 18,000 war crimes. People are waiting for justice, even though it is delayed in time. Therefore, her team is promoting the initiative to create a tribunal for Putin and war criminals.

The story about her path, achievements, and difficulties encountered can be seen in our special project, Women’s Power. The stories were created in cooperation with the UN Women Ukraine project “Decentralization Reforms and Community Security: Transformative Approaches to Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women in Ukraine,” funded by the Government of Denmark. The partner project is implemented on the basis of advertising rights.

November 19, 2022 – The war in Ukraine has been grinding on since February, and this week saw a massive up tick in missile attacks by Russia. But Ukraine’s forces have been making spectacular gains, surprising many observers. Russian troops have retreated from several Ukrainian territories that they’d occupied for much of the year. DW’s Mathias Bölinger takes us to a Ukrainian town near the border with Russia that was occupied by Russian invaders earlier this year. They may no longer be there, but what they did remains.

December 29, 2022 – Today Russia unleashed one of its largest missile strikes against Ukraine since the start of the war. Over one hundred and twenty missiles hit major Ukrainian cities, with civilian infrastructure once again being the main target. Millions are out of power due to Russian barbaric attacks.

January 11, 2023 – The Russian Empire, the USSR, and now the Russian Federation created a myth about the unique qualities of Russians – deep moral and high-spirited. This myth emerged in the late 19th century and has been planted and cultivated by propaganda for more than a century. But in February 2022, the world saw a completely different kind of Russians: saber-rattlers and executioners. Executions of civilians, torture of prisoners, rape of old men, women and children – all with the encouragement of relatives of the occupiers. How the myth of the great Russian soul turned out to be an empty shell and why the soldiers of the Russian army are so cruel.

January 15, 2023 – Russia launched its 10th wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian civilians two nights ago. A residential apartment building in Dnipro was destroyed and there are more than a hundred civilian casualties as rescuers still search for survivors. Russia is a terrorist nation and this war can only end once Ukraine is given all the weapons they need to win the war.

January 16, 2023 – In parts of northeastern Ukraine that have been liberated from Russian occupiers, police are facing an uphill battle when it comes to restoring rule of law. Our correspondent Max Zander joined a police team near the Russian border, and has this report on the difficulties they encounter, on the job.

January 16, 2023 – “Putin is saying here, you can defeat us on the battlefield, but we can still inflict damage.” Russian missile attacks on Dnipro have killed at least 30 people amid an increase in cruise missile strikes on civilian infrastructure since December, explains Richard Spencer.

January 16, 2023 – Dozens of people are dead after a Russian missile strike on an apartment block in Dnipro, Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said. CNN Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen reports live from the scene.

January 16, 2023 – CNN military analyst Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) tells CNN’s Kate Bolduan what type of missiles he believes Russia used in its attack on an apartment in Dnipro, Ukraine, and what Ukraine’s next move should be.

February 3, 2023 – Tetyana Honcharova never thought she’d survive the Russian assault on Kamyanka, a country town of about 11,000 people in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine, about 300 kilometers (190 miles) southeast of Kyiv on the bank of the Tiasmyn River. Tetyana says the invading Russian army looted and burned its way through the village in the eastern Kharkiv region. The March 2022 battle marked part of Russia’s failed efforts nearly a year ago to move in quickly and take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

February 24, 2023 – Ukrainian authorities say they are investigating almost 70,000 war crimes committed by Russian forces. Tetiana Sichkar was 20 years old when her mother was shot dead as the family walked home from their grandmother’s house in Bucha. She tells Sky’s Mark Austin how the Russian occupation has impacted her life in the most unimaginable way and how she’s fighting to get justice for her mother.

February 25, 2023 – Vans Without Borders (VWB) is a British humanitarian group, that delivers essential food and medical supplies to civilians who are left with no choice but to live near the Ukrainian-Russian frontline. The team have been braving countless dangers and driving down bombed-out roads since March 2022. Bringing relief to vulnerable people, recently liberated from Russian occupation and left to starve in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

VWB were one of the first humanitarian groups to visit Bucha and Irpin after the March 2022 massacre. They witnessed the devastation the Russian army had unleashed upon the local population during their occupation. “We saw multiple vehicles riddled with bullets and blood on the backseats, as well as the usual booby traps, landmines and unexploded bombs. It was heart-wrenching to go there.” Said Jack Ross, who heads the aid group VWB. “It’s devastating, it’s something that will stay with me until I die.”

He added. During a return visit to Bucha in June 2022, the VWB team met Bogdan, 20, and his family. Bogdan’s disability proved challenging when the family had to get Bogdan’s wheelchair to the safety of the basement, accessible only by ladder, just before their family home was reduced to rubble by shelling that spring. While the family were underground, the house was hit and collapsed on top of them. Like so many others in the area, they were trapped and had to text other people in the area to come and rescue them.

“They had to get help from the local community to get Bogdan out because they couldn’t lift him out in his wheelchair.” Said Jack. Nearly a year after the grim memory of occupation, Bogdan and his family have a shell of a house forming that will soon be fit for purpose with wheelchair ramps and a large garden. Bogdan is a member of the Bucha Children and Adults with Disabilities group, who asked VWB to bring them a speaker so they could resume hosting activities and events for disabled people in the local community.

February 25, 2023 – In the year since Russia invaded their country, Ukrainians have remained resilient in the face of what the U.S. calls crimes against humanity committed by Russian forces. With the support of the Pulitzer Center, Nick Schifrin reports on what prosecutors and investigators documenting Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine have found.

March 14, 2023 – One month into living under Russian occupation in northern Ukraine, Marina cycled cautiously through her village. She was five doors from her elderly parents’ blue garden gate when three soldiers ordered her to stop. Grabbing her hair, they dragged Marina into a neighbor’s empty house. “They forced me to strip naked,” the 47-year-old said, picking at the skin around her fingernails. “I asked them not to touch me, but they said: ‘Your Ukrainian soldiers are killing us’.” Marina paused, wiped her tears and tried to steady her shaking hands. “They were shooting their guns inches away from my head so I couldn’t move or run,” she said. “Then they started raping me.”

Weeks after a Ukrainian town is liberated, its civilians are visited by sexual violence prosecutors and asked an indirect question: “Did the Russians behave?” The answers have been harrowing; men’s genitals have been electrocuted, women forced to parade naked, and children as young as four orally raped. The use of rape in war has existed for as long as there has been conflict. It’s used to terrorise and degrade a community, and has been committed in 17 ongoing conflicts around the world. Yet although it is deemed a war crime under international law, it mostly remains undisclosed and hidden under layers of stigma and fear. Now, Ukraine has become the first country to begin documenting the mounting evidence while its troops battle on.

“We have seen forced nudity, rapes, sexual torture, children forced to watch rapes,” said Iryna Didenko, the lead prosecutor of the new unit, speaking in a heavily guarded government building lined with sandbags in Kyiv. “Women have been told by Russians: ‘Say hello to your husband for me’ while being raped.” Cases have been reported in all regions occupied by Russia over the past year; Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson, she said. Officially, 171 victims have agreed to start legal proceedings, though investigators believe the number is “much, much higher”. The victims are aged four to 82, and include 39 men, and 13 children.

March 17, 2023 – An arrest warrant has been issued by the International criminal court (ICC) for Russian president Vladimir Putin, as well as Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights. The ICC has stated that it has sufficient evidence to suggest that Putin is criminally liable for the ‘war crime of illegal deportation of population (children)’ and ‘unlawful transfer of population (children)’ from Ukraine’s occupied regions to Russia. The ICC has also found evidence to suggest that Lvova-Belova bears individual responsibility for the same crimes.

March 17, 2023 – As many as 16,000 children have been forcibly removed to Russia since the full scale war began, according to Ukrainian officials – some under the guise of “humanitarian evacuation” from Russian occupied cities like Mariupol and not all of them orphans. Hundreds have already been adopted by Russian families – with others sent to “re-education camps.” Now President Putin and his childrens’ rights commissioner have been indicted for war crimes – as Ukraine said it was “just the beginning.”

March 17, 2023 – The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. That means Putin will not be able to travel to any possible future peace talks if they are held in a country that recognizes the ICC. And it raises questions over how realistic it is to expect that the Russian leader will appear in the dock.

April 6, 2023 – The missile attack on the Kramatorsk railway station on April 8, 2022, is one of the bloodiest attacks by Russia against the Ukrainian civilian population. 61 people were killed, and more than 120 people were injured as they tried to leave for safer regions. At 10:28 a.m., when more than 3,000 people were at the station, the Russians struck with a 9M79-1 guided missile (“Tochka U”). The use of weapons of such precision and the nature of the injuries suggest that the strike was intended to cause maximum damage to people and actually disrupted the evacuation. The “Station Kramatorsk” documentary is dedicated to everyone who was at the station that day: the dead, the wounded, those who saved others, and those who lost a loved one or saw the worst.

It is an attempt to convey those terrible moments, to show what it means to be in the epicenter of such an attack. It is about the cruelty of the perpetrators of the tragedy and the incredible strength of the survivors and those who fought for their lives. The film’s protagonists are the surviving passengers Katia Iorgu, Olha Lialko, Ivan Popov, local volunteers Vitalii Osmukha and Olena Sementsova, local administration employees Anton Maliuskiy and Lilia Zolkina, and the head of the Kramatorsk railway station, Liubov Paziura. The film was created as part of The Reckoning Project, an initiative of Ukrainian and international journalists, analysts, and lawyers to document war crimes — the team of the Public Interest Journalism Lab’s team. Authors: Anna Tsygyma, Nataliya Gumenyuk.

00:00-00:43 – Intro

00:43-03:31 – Surviving witnesses of the shelling (Katia Iorgu, Olena Sementsova) about why they had to leave Donetsk and Luhansk regions in April 2022

03:31-10:58 Volunteers, station staff, and passengers about the evacuation from Kramatorsk station

10:58-14:04 Morning of April 8 before the shelling

14:04-18:55 Strike on Kramatorsk with a “Tochka U” guided missile, what people saw

18:31-26:15 Consequences of the shelling according to eyewitnesses: searching for relatives, providing assistance, treatment

26:15-28:44 What kind of weapon was used by the Russian Federation, why is it a war crime, and what was the purpose of the attack

28:44-33:09 How the survivors Katia Iorgu, her family, and Olena Sementsova live after the tragedy: treatment, realizing the death of loved ones

33:09-35:57 Restoration of the Kramatorsk-Kyiv train, Olha Lialko’s poem about her dead sister, final credits

April 18, 2023 – The operator of the pro Russian social media brand Donbass Devushka is apparently a US Navy veteran by the name of Sarah Bils and she has been lying for over a year about being a woman from the Donbas region. Sarah Bils has fooled and done collaborations with all of Russia’s largest English language propagandists even while she was still serving in the United States Navy. Two former Wagner mercenaries also admit in a detailed interview that they were ordered by Prigozhin to execute Ukrainian civilians and children in Bakhmut and Soledar.

June 16, 2023 – Ukrainian prosecutors will soon begin the country’s biggest single war crimes case and put on trial fifteen Russian soldiers. It comes after an entire village in northern Ukraine was held captive below ground in dark, freezing temperatures with little electricity. They were starved of food and water, tormented and tortured by their kidnappers. Sky’s Alex Crawford reports from Yahidne, Chernihiv Oblast, with cameraman Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and producer Artem Lysak.

July 21, 2023 – As always, it’s Ukraine’s civilian population that bears the brunt of the war’s burden. A report compiled by the Associated Press now alleges Russia is holding thousands of Ukrainians in detention centers in Russia and occupied areas of Ukraine. Hundreds of civilians are said to be used for slave, forced to dig trenches and other fortifications for the enemy army. And in line with the findings of other reports, the AP has recorded accounts of routine torture and mistreatment of arbitrarily detained civilians at the hands of Russian troops.