Ukrainian Law Enforcement Officers Open Over 42,000 Criminal Proceedings for War Crimes Committed by Occupiers

Since the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, Ukrainian investigators have already identified about 168,000 Russian servicemen who participated in the war against Ukraine, and launched more than 42,000 criminal proceedings for war crimes committed by the occupiers, Deputy Head of the National Police of Ukraine Maksym Tsutskiridze has reported.

According to him, investigators have recorded war crimes in three directions. The first includes crimes committed on the territory temporarily not controlled by the Ukrainian government. The second is the recording the consequences of massive shelling, missile strikes, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, which result in the death of the civilian population and the destruction of infrastructure. The third covers crimes that are revealed by the police after the liberation of the territories by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In particular, investigative actions are ongoing in the deoccupied territories of the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions, as well as in part of the territory of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.

“Probably, in this case, we face the biggest horror: we discover mass burials of civilians, including people who carried out the evacuation from these areas. We found 37 places where civilians were forcibly detained. This is only in de-occupied territories. We know that there are 27 more such places in our occupied territories and seven in the territory of the Russian Federation, where our citizens are being tortured,” Tsutskiridze said.

He added that the police had established the identities of some torturers and already informed them of suspicion in absentia. At the same time, the department’s employees identified 6,600 dead civilians who were shot or tortured by the Russian military. Investigators, together with specialists of the State Scientific Research Forensic Centre (SSRFC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine,.are identifying the dead.

In addition, the National Police has created a “War Criminal” database containing information on 168,000 identified servicemen of the Russian army.

Bohdan Marusyak