Ukraine’s top prosecutor has revealed plans for the first war crimes trial of a captured Russian soldier, as fighting raged in the east and south and the Kremlin considered annexing a corner of the country.
Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said her office had charged Sergeant Vadin Shyshimarin, 21, with the murder of an unarmed 62-year-old civilian who was shot while riding a bicycle in February, four days after the start of the war.
Shyshimarin, who served in a tank unit, was accused of shooting through a car window in the northeastern village of Chupakhivka.
Ms Venediktova said the soldier could receive up to 15 years in prison. She did not say when the trial would begin.
His office said it has been investigating more than 10,700 suspected war crimes committed by Russian forces and has identified more than 600 suspects.
Many of the alleged atrocities came to light last month after Moscow forces aborted their attempt to capture kyiv and withdrew from the outskirts of the capital, exposing mass graves and corpse-strewn streets and courtyards in cities like Bucha.
Residents spoke of murder, arson, rape, torture and dismemberment.
On the economic front, Ukraine has shut down one of the pipelines that carry Russian gas through the country to homes and industries in Western Europe, the first time since the start of the war that kyiv has disrupted the westward flow of one of the world’s largest exports. lucrative Moscow. .
The immediate effect is likely to be limited, in part because Russia can divert the gas to another pipeline and because Europe relies on a variety of suppliers.
Meanwhile, a Kremlin-based politician in the southern region of Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city to fall to the war, said regional officials want Russian President Vladimir Putin to make Kherson a “proper region” of Russia, that is, to annex it.
“The city of Kherson is Russia,” Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.
That raised the possibility that the Kremlin was seeking to break up another part of Ukraine as it tries to salvage an invasion gone wrong. Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which borders the Kherson region, in 2014, a move denounced as illegal and rejected by most of the international community.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “after all, it would be up to the residents of the Kherson region to decide whether such an appeal should be made or not.” He said any move to annex territory would have to be closely scrutinized by legal experts to make sure it was “absolutely legitimate, as it was with Crimea.”
Moscow annexed Crimea after holding a referendum there on whether it wanted to become part of Russia.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak scoffed at the idea of annexing Kherson, tweeting: “Invaders can ask to join even Mars or Jupiter. The Ukrainian army will liberate Kherson, no matter what puns they play.”
Kherson, a Black Sea port of about 300,000 people, provides access to fresh water for Crimea and is seen as a gateway to broader Russian control over southern Ukraine.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian officials said a Russian rocket attack targeted an area around Zaporizhzhia, destroying unspecified infrastructure. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The southeastern city has been a refuge for civilians fleeing the Russian siege in the devastated port city of Mariupol.
Russian forces continued to strike at the steel plant that is the last bastion of the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, its supporters said. The Azov Regiment said on social media that Russian forces had carried out 38 airstrikes in the previous 24 hours on the Azovstal steelworks grounds.
The plant, with its network of tunnels and bunkers, has housed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians during months of siege. Dozens of civilians have been evacuated in recent days, but Ukrainian officials said some may still be trapped there.
Reference-www.thenorthernecho.co.uk