Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – A 21-year-old Russian soldier was on trial in Kyiv on Friday for the murder of an unarmed Ukrainian civilian.
The soldier, a captured member of a tank unit, is accused of shooting a 62-year-old Ukrainian man in the head through an open car window in the northeastern village of Chupakhivka in the early days of the war.
Scores of journalists and cameras gathered in a small courtroom of Solomyansky District Court in the Ukrainian capital, where suspect Sgt. Vadim Shyshimarin was seated in a glassed-in area, wearing a blue and gray hoodie, sweatpants and a shaved head.
He faces life imprisonment under a section of Ukraine’s Penal Code dealing with the laws and customs of war. Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, with the help of foreign experts, is investigating allegations that Russian forces have violated Ukrainian and international law by possibly killing, torturing and ill-treating thousands of Ukrainian civilians.
Friday’s hearing in the Shyshimarin case was brief. A judge ordered him to provide his name, address, marital status and other identifying details. He was also asked if he understood his rights, and answered quietly, “Yes,” and if he wanted a jury trial, which he declined.
The judges and attorneys discussed procedural issues before the judges left the courtroom and then returned to say the case would continue on May 18.
Defense attorney Victor Ovsyanikov acknowledged the case against the soldier is strong but said the court will make the final decision on what evidence to admit. Ovsyanikov said Thursday that he and his client have not yet decided how he will plead.
After Friday’s hearing, Ovsyannikov said he was hired to defend Shishimarin as counsel for the Center for Free Legal Aid. His client “certainly knows all the details” of what he is accused of, Ovsyannikov said. The attorney declined to give details of his defense strategy.
As the first war crimes case in Ukraine, Shyshimarin’s indictment is being closely monitored. Investigators have gathered evidence of possible war crimes to bring before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The office of Attorney General Iryna Venediktova has said it is investigating more than 10,700 potential war crimes involving more than 600 suspects, including Russian soldiers and government officials.
Many of the alleged atrocities came to light last month after Moscow forces ended their attempt to seize Kyiv and withdrew from the capital, exposing mass graves and streets and courtyards littered with bodies in cities like Bucha.
Volodymyr Yavorskyy, coordinator of the Civil Liberties Center in Kyiv, said activists will monitor the Russian soldier’s trial to ensure his legal rights are protected. It can be difficult, he said, to maintain the neutrality of judicial proceedings during wartime.
“It is surprising that a war crimes suspect has been found and brought to trial. Charges of this nature are usually brought in absentia,” he said. “This is a rare case where we have managed in a short time to locate a soldier who violated international rules of war.”
It is believed that Russia is preparing similar trials for Ukrainian soldiers, Yavorskyy said. When asked about Shyshimarin’s case on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I have no information about this trial and this incident.”
Last week, Prosecutor General Venediktova, her office and the Security Service of Ukraine, the country’s law enforcement agency, released some details from the investigation into Shyshimarin’s alleged actions on social media.
On February 28, four days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Shyshimarin was among a group of Russian troops fleeing Ukrainian forces, according to Venediktova’s Facebook account. The Russians reportedly shot and impounded a private car, then drove to Chupachivka, a village about 200 miles east of Kyiv.
On the way, the prosecutor general claimed, the Russian soldiers saw a man walking on the sidewalk talking on his phone. Shyshimarin was ordered to kill the man so he could not report her to the Ukrainian military authorities. Venediktova did not identify who gave the order.
Shyshimarin fired his Kalashnikov rifle through the open window, hitting the victim in the head.
“The man died on the spot, just a few tens of meters from his home,” Venediktova wrote.
The Security Service of Ukraine, known as SBU, released a short video on May 4 in which Shyshimarin speaks on camera and briefly describes how he shot the man. The SBU described the video as “one of the first confessions by the enemy invaders.”
“I was ordered to shoot,” Shyshimarin said. “I shot one (round) at him. He falls. And we kept going.”
Vadim Karasev, an independent political scientist from Kyiv, said it was important for the Ukrainian authorities to “show that the war crimes are being solved and those responsible are being brought to justice in accordance with international standards”.
While the speed with which Shyshimarin was brought to justice is unusual for a nation at war, the case is not without precedent.
A Bosnian Serb soldier, Borislav Herak, was imprisoned by Bosnian Army soldiers in November 1992 after accidentally straying from Serb-held territory. During his interrogation and three-week trial in March 1993, he confessed to 35 murders and 14 rapes, and was eventually convicted of genocide and crimes against civilians.
Herak was sentenced to death. His initial death sentence was reduced to 20 years in prison after Bosnia abolished the death penalty.
Senad Kreho, who was president of a district military tribunal in Sarajevo in 1993, said on Friday indicting war criminals during the fighting does not mean the justice system will not function properly.
“Numerous subsequent reviews of (Herak’s) case by international and domestic legal experts concluded that he received a fair trial,” Kreho said.
“The only change was that his sentence was reduced but he served it in full,” he added.
The 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, which pitted its main ethnic communities – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs – against one another, killed 100,000 people, most of them civilians, and more than 2 million, or more than half the country’s population, were displaced their houses.
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Lardner reported from Washington. Sabina Niksic in Sarayevo, Bosnia contributed to this.
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