On the Outskirts of Kharkiv, Evidence of Russian War Crimes Piles Up

KHARKIV, Ukraine — At a landfill in Ukraine’s second-largest city, evidence of some of the worst crimes committed by the Russians against civilians is piling up. Federal prosecutors at Kharkiv — one of the worst-hit regions in Ukraine — plan to use it against President Putin and his government in an international court after the war ends. The area has seen more than a thousand Russian rockets used to target residential areas in Kharkiv — which is illegal, according to international treaties. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, officials of the regional prosecutor’s office have been collecting the missiles that targeted their city. Once the rockets arrive at the “missile cemetery,” they are classified by type. Yet, these are only part of what Russians have thrown at them. On Thursday, the Russians shelled a cafe and a shop at the village of Groza in Kharkiv. It killed at least 48 people, according to a Telegram message by President Zelensky. One of the victims was a 6-year-old boy, the region’s governor, Oleh Synehubov, said.The evidence in the cemetery will be used against Russian officials on judgment day, which Ukrainian officials are positive will happen, the spokesman for the Kharviv prosecutor’s office, Dmytro Chubenko, tells the Sun. Local and international prosecutors have already looked at the evidence, he adds.According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it’s considered a war crime when a country intentionally targets a civilian population, towns, villages, or buildings that are not military objectives. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have ratified the Rome Statute. Kyiv, however, agreed to allow the ICC to collect evidence of war crimes in the country. S-300 missiles are the latest addition to the landfill. Russians have been using them lately to target the city. From the moment they are launched, it takes 40 seconds for a missile to hit a target at Kharkiv. There are also the remains of Smerch systems, which are used to carry cluster bombs, internationally banned in 2008 by the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Both sides of the war in Ukraine have used cluster bombs. America announced it would deliver thousands of them to Kyiv this year to give its ally an advantage in its counteroffensive against Moscow’s troops. America, Ukraine, and Russia have not signed the 2008 treaty. The field also includes Iranian-made Shahed drones. All of these weapons have been launched by Russia into areas where there apparently were no military personnel or infrastructure. An independent nonprofit organization that exposes human rights abuses, the Centre for Information Resilience, has been identifying Russian attacks in civilian areas of Kharkiv since February 2022. They caught, on camera, several residential targets, such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship. They were also able to locate from where the shells were fired. In addition, it identified the unit and the commander who gave the order for the bombings at Kharkiv during the first months of the invasion — Colonel General Alexander Zhuravlyov. He was also part of Russia’s 2016 bombing campaign in Syria. Amid Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, the Kremlin fired General Zhuravlyov in October last year.A Kharkiv native, Yaroslav Prykhodko, who lives in an area at the northeast of the city known as Saltivka, tells the Sun her apartment building was hit twice since the full-scale invasion. The region has been one of the most damaged of Kharkiv, and it’s mostly composed of residential buildings. “I can say with confidence that if you pick in that area any random square 100-by-100 meters, you’ll find at least one shell impact in that square, and usually it’s many more,” Ms. Prykhodko says. The prosecutor’s office has created a map of Russia’s military chain of command. “It helps us understand who is in charge of each branch and gives the orders,” Mr. Chubenko says. The commander in chief is President Putin.Mr. Chubenko is certain judgment day will arrive for Mr. Putin and his officials one way or another. In one possible scenario, he foresees Mr. Putin either dies or is weak and does not appear in court. Another scenario includes someone from inside Russia sparking a revolution against the government, taking charge, and handing over the war criminals to Ukraine. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, more than 2,000 civilians have died in the Kharkiv region, including 77 children, the head of Kharkiv’s Regional Military Administration, Oleh Syniehubov, said in an interview in July. Almost 3,000 were injured, of which 240 were children, he added.

On the Outskirts of Kharkiv, Evidence of Russian War Crimes Piles Up

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