German intelligence says it has intercepted radio exchanges between Russian soldiers who discussed killing civilians outside Kyiv, potentially bolstering evidence that Kremlin forces carried out atrocities, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday.
German officials say the intercepts indicate that the murder of civilians in the town of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital was not an act by rogue forces, but may have been part of a deliberate strategy to foment terror. Russia has said that images of civilian corpses found in Bucha after the Kremlin’s withdrawal were staged.
Meanwhile, Ukraine itself has also accused Russia of serious war crimes, which Russia has typically rejected. Russia’s claim that the images of civilian dead bodies found in Bucha were staged reminds us of what happened in Syria, where Russia and forces of its ally Bashar al-Assad carried out similar war crimes against civilians, and when Russian officials were confronted with evidence, they shamelessly claimed that it’s all staged and fake. Once again in Ukraine, the Russians are using the same playbook. Russia claims the evidence of civilian executions is a cynical ploy by Ukraine and its Western allies, who according to Moscow are blinded by anti-Russian paranoia or ‘Russophobia’, a term pro-Kremlin trolls often use on the internet.
An Amnesty International report published on April 7th confirmed that Russian military forces have extrajudicially executed civilians in Ukraine in apparent war crimes. Amnesty’s report is based on new testimony following on-the-ground research.
On the same day, PBS published its own report on Russian war crimes in Ukraine, prepared by PBS reporters from a small village outside Kyiv.
An excerpt from the PBS report:
As many as 20 villagers didn’t survive the month the Russians were here, including a 12-year-old girl and her stepfather who died in their car as they tried to flee. The rest of the villagers, nearly 380 people, were held against their will in the basement of the school, used as a human shield by Russian troops, who made it their headquarters.
On Friday, at least 50 people, including five children, were killed after Russian forces carried out a missile strike on a railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, that was being used by civilians trying to flee the fighting, Ukrainian officials reported to the media. Ukrainian officials say thousands of people were waiting for evacuation trains Friday morning, desperate to flee heavy Russian shelling across the wider Donetsk region when the missile strike took place.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the regional military administration in Donetsk, where the attack took place, said that 98 wounded people — 16 children, 46 women and 36 men — were taken to local hospitals.
Both Ukraine and Russia have since blamed each other for the deadly attack. Independent analysts and researchers however agree that Russia is responsible for the missile strike.
A senior U.S. defence official has told Voice of America correspondent Jeff Seldin that the U.S. is “not buying the official denial by Russians” and that the U.S. believes Russians carried out the missile strike. The official further stated that the U.S. believes Russia used the SS-21 ballistic missile, also known as OTR-21 Tochka.
In an address to Finland’s parliament on Friday, Zelensky said that the “Russian military hit the railway terminal,” adding: “There are witnesses, there are videos, there are remnants of the missiles and dead people.”
He said that “people (were) crowded waiting for the trains to be evacuated to the safe territory” at the station. “Why do they need to hit civilians with missiles? Why this cruelty that the world has witnessed in Bucha and other cities liberated by the Ukrainian army?” Zelensky asked lawmakers.
Ukrainian leaders have warned that the fighting in the Donbas, where Russia has been engaged in military operations for years, is expected to be brutal and could potentially resemble World War II battles. Meanwhile, local authorities have urged civilians in Ukraine’s east to evacuate while they still can.
So far Russia has faced devastating losses in the war, which Russia’s disinformation machinery tried its best to cover up initially. But thanks to the internet and dedicated open-source intelligence researchers, a large number of Russian losses were visually confirmed and archived, leaving no chance of denial. This eventually prompted Kremlin to finally acknowledge that it has faced “significant losses” in Ukraine.
Russia’s justice ministry said on Friday it had revoked the registration of 15 foreign organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The Russian units of the organisations, which also included the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “were excluded due to the discovery of violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation,” the ministry said in a statement.
This comes after both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused Russia of carrying out war crimes in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the U.S. wants to see Putin and the Russian army lose the war in Ukraine.
Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins, along with Chris Truax, wrote in a USA Today Opinion piece:
Bellingcat has created a database of geolocated photographs and videos showing incidents of civilian harm that currently includes hundreds of incidents that can be viewed by simply clicking on a map.
And just as with the Jan. 6 attack, all this information can be used to identify and prosecute real people. Bellingcat investigated a single incident of Russian forces shelling a Ukrainian city – Mariupol – in January of 2015 that killed about 30 civilians. Not only did Bellingcat document the attack, it identified, by name, 11 Russian officers and militants responsible, right down to the officers directly in charge of the artillery batteries, Alexander Valeryevich Grunchev and Sergey Sergeyevich Yurchenko.
Open-source intelligence researchers and analysts have played a very important role in not just data-based coverage of the overall war but also in documenting losses on both sides and debunking false claims.
Bellingcat is not alone in this effort. In addition to the many NGOs working to ensure accountability, multiple governments are now committed to seeing war criminals brought to justice. The United States has formally recognized that the Russian military has committed war crimes in Ukraine. Dominic Raab, the United Kingdom’s Justice secretary, has pledged to provide the International Criminal Court with the technical support it needs to bring “those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine to justice.”
Two former British prime ministers, Gordon Brown and John Major have called for a Nuremberg-style international tribunal to hold Russian soldiers and politicians accountable for their actions in Ukraine. And, of course, the Ukrainians, like the Israelis before them, will work to bring war criminals to trial themselves.
The piece closes by noting:
There are even reports of mass graves that may contain hundreds of bodies.
None of this is acceptable. Intentionally killing civilians is both murder and a war crime regardless of the weapon used or the scale on which it is practiced.
Russian soldiers may think the anonymity of their uniforms will protect them. It will not. Bellingcat will work to identify anyone involved in attacks on civilians.
There is no statute of limitations on war crimes. Any soldiers committing atrocities in Ukraine will be the concentration camp guards of the 21st century, hounded for their crimes to the end of their days. They will be held accountable, no matter how long it takes.
So again, Russian soldiers, beware. If you commit a war crime, the world will know. You will be identified. And you will be punished. The process has already begun.Â
As more and more evidence emerges of grave Russian war crimes in Ukraine, it is important for U.S., UK and EU to also hold Putin directly responsible for these war crimes. Putin is running a one-man show in Moscow and is directly responsible not just for starting the war but also for the turn the war has taken. Moreover, all examined evidence suggests that the policy of targeting civilians comes from the very top. It will be pointless to only blame his military generals or soldiers without also addressing Putin’s central role in the war and the resulting war crimes.