Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office is investigating roughly 5,800 allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russian forces.
Iryna Venediktova, the prosecutor general, said her office has 500 suspects whom they’re investigating, including “top politicians, top military, and top propaganda agents of the Russian Federation,” she explained in a CNN interview on Monday.
“With every day, we start more and more proceedings,” she added.
FORMER MARIUPOL RESIDENT ‘CAN’T DESCRIBE THE HORROR’ SHE WITNESSED IN UKRAINE
In the six weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to accomplish his goals, mainly to topple the government, and has resorted to indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas. Russia has been accused of executing Ukrainian civilians.
“We want to prosecute these war criminals in our Ukrainian courts, named by Ukraine,” Venediktova said, mentioning the International Criminal Court.
In recent days, she visited Bucha, one of the cities where war crimes allegedly occurred. A mass grave filled with hundreds of bodies was discovered there, while other civilians were found shot and killed with their wrists bound behind them. Russia has denied that its forces were responsible for these killings.
The town is “still exhuming the dead bodies from the mass grave,” Venediktova said, adding, “It is not only war crimes. Now we can say — a lot of crimes against humanity.”
Days ago, the prosecutor general’s office and forensic experts exhumed nine bodies from a mass grave on church grounds in Bucha.
Her office released a statement on Monday saying 183 children have been killed since the invasion began in late February, but she estimated that the actual figure was likely to be much higher. The United Nations, which releases daily counts of civilians killed and injured, shares a similar sentiment in noting that the actual death totals are likely much higher than currently reported due to the fog of war.
Venediktova referenced the southeastern city of Mariupol as one location where the death toll is unknown because fighting there continues, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky estimated it to be in the “tens of thousands” on Monday. The Mariupol City Council accused Russian forces of using a mobile crematorium to cover up their actions in the city after there was global condemnation for alleged actions in Bucha.
Before the alleged Russian acts in Bucha, Moscow also shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, bombed a Mariupol theater that was serving as a shelter, even though locals had spelled out the word “children” in Russian in the front and back of the facility to prevent such an attack, and bombed a school that was housing hundreds of people in the city.
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The United States is supporting a multinational team of international prosecutors in the region at the request of the prosecutor general of Ukraine, who created a war crimes unit and is putting together criminal cases. American experts are in the region to support the unit but are not within Ukraine.
President Joe Biden has called for a war crimes trial against Putin and decried him to be a “war criminal.”
