Prosecutor General’s Office investigates crimes of Russians in Ukraine in three main areas

Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said this during an online conference under the auspices of the influential Brussels-based think tank Center for European Policy, Ukrinform reports.

"The PGO (Prosecutor General’s Office) is currently investigating in three main areas: the crime of aggression, the crime of genocide and war crimes. Undoubtedly, waging an aggressive war leads to war crimes and mass atrocities, it is defined as the main international crime that concentrates all other crimes, and this is a quote from the documents of the Nuremberg Tribunal," the Prosecutor General emphasized.

He noted that the main evidence of the crime of aggression is Putin's actions as President of the Russian Federation and Commander-in-Chief of its armed forces, who ordered the military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and continues his criminal acts.

"This is a crime of leadership that entails other international crimes. Therefore, the main suspects in this crime are the political and military leaders of the Kremlin regime who planned, prepared, organized and executed this act of aggression," Kostin explained.

The Prosecutor General noted that from the first day of the invasion, the Russian invaders began to use hybrid means of warfare against peaceful cities, where civilians were the main targets. It was them who became victims of indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, and the months-long siege of cities and towns where the occupiers artificially created a terrible humanitarian situation. This tactic of terror against the civilian population of Ukraine was further developed in October, when Russian troops began to deliberately destroy civilian critical infrastructure in order to leave people without electricity and water before the winter cold.

"A week ago, we saw Russia launch another missile attack against peaceful cities in Ukraine. There is no doubt that these deliberate attacks are part of a terrorist tactic aimed at intimidating the population in order to paralyze Ukraine," Kostin said.

Another cruel dimension of this war, according to the Prosecutor General, is the treatment of civilians by Russians in the occupied territories: murder, torture, and sexual violence. Graves discovered in many liberated cities confirm the massive nature of these crimes.

The third group of crimes concerns the denial of the very national identity of Ukrainians. The Russian invaders are trying to change the demographic situation in the temporarily occupied territories by forcibly deporting and displacing the population, including children (about 16 thousand such cases have been identified to date), Kostin adds.

Currently, the Prosecutor General’s Office has registered more than 66 thousand cases of war crimes: from indiscriminate shelling of civilians to the use of torture and sexual violence.

"Unfortunately, the scale of these crimes is truly devastating. The number of civilian deaths caused by them already exceeds 9,000, including more than 460 children. The number of civilians injured exceeds 12,000, including more than 900 children. Therefore, our main task is to ensure accountability for these international crimes, not only at the level of specific perpetrators, the Russian military, but also those who gave them orders and organized this criminal invasion and act of aggression," he emphasizes.

• On January 26, a meeting of the Core Group for the establishment of a special tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression against Ukraine was held in Prague. It was attended by representatives of 20 countries.
• The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution stating that the military and political leadership of Russia and Belarus involved in the war against Ukraine should be brought to justice by a special international tribunal.