A U.S. ambassador compared the investigations into alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine to the Nuremberg trials that took place at the conclusion of World War II.
Ambassador Beth Van Schaack, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, described the current situation in Ukraine as “truly a new Nuremberg moment,” adding “just as the Allies at the end of the Second World War advanced the imperative of justice and ushered in a new era of accountability for the worst imaginable crimes,” during an event at the McCain Institute on Wednesday.
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Ukraine’s prosecutor general office has identified “thousands” of incidents that may constitute war crimes, many of which were only uncovered after Russian forces had to retreat from territories that they were occupying.
Van Schaack reiterated many of the findings that have already been uncovered, including forced deportations, torturing and executing Ukrainian military personnel and civilians, and sexual violence. Russians have “interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, this including 260,000 children, all from their homes to Russia,” she said, citing a “variety of sources.”
“The horrifying litany of atrocities continues to grow. Credible reports of Ukrainian citizens killed execution-style with their hands bound, body showing signs of torture, video showing civilians being shot in the back without justification. Reports of detainee abuse and mutilation, including a video of a POW being castrated, and horrific accounts of gender-based violence, including sexual violence against women and children. There’s also growing bodies of evidence that Russia’s forces in Ukraine are torturing and summarily executing Ukraine’s military personnel and noncombatants.”
U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Michael Carpenter said that they “are seeing many commonalities in terms of the horrors being discovered” in recently liberated cities, such as Izyum, and those that were liberated in the spring, such as the communities north of Kyiv.
United Nations investigators concluded last week the Russian military had committed war crimes during the seven-month war in Ukraine. The Independent Intentional Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine investigated the Russian military’s actions, mainly in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy regions, and it visited 27 towns and settlements, interviewing more than 150 victims and witnesses.
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The investigators documented a “large number of executions” in 16 towns where there was a pattern of “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats,” and they said, “We were struck by a large number of executions and other violations by Russian forces, and the Commission received consistent accounts of torture and ill-treatment.”
“The Commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined. Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons,” Commission Chairman Erik Mose said to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday. “The exposure to repeated explosions, crimes, forced displacement, and separation from family members deeply affected their well-being and mental health.”
The United States, other Western countries, and the NATO alliance have “swiftly activated a range of accountability mechanisms in the global systems of justice” to help Ukraine prosecute alleged war crimes, Van Schaak added.
