Russia may veto UN war crimes tribunal in Ukraine

The shops are full again. The bullet holes were smeared over, the canvas torn by caterpillars was repaired. The dead now rest in carefully cared for graves.

But a year later, this once pastoral suburb of Kyiv became the slogan horrific wartime atrocitiesscars remain, and the path to achieving any kind of responsibility, even years later, is still littered with obstacles.

During the Russian occupation in early days of the warthe city of Bucha has become the scene of what human rights groups and investigators describe as a systematic campaign of killing and torturing Ukrainian civilians.

Like jagged rocks exposed by a receding tide, utter horrors loomed as the Russian troops retreated: bodies left on the streets and sidewalks, in kitchens and cellars, in gardens and houses. common burials. Corpses with their hands tied, or bearing wounds and broken bones, or telling a silent, dark story of being shot at point-blank range.

In total, about 500 people died in Bucha. Even now, a full year later, from time to time another body is found nearby, dug up from an abandoned grave or removed from a storm sewer.

“Sometimes it feels like the very air is poisoned,” says Maria Josefina, a 72-year-old pensioner from Bucha, shouting over the roar of a nearby generator and leaning heavily on a cart handle. “And we continue to breathe it every day.”

Women walk past a billboard and read "Bravery is a Ukrainian brand."

Women walk past a patriotic billboard in Kyiv. December 24, 2023 marks the one year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)

Five people, all in black winter clothes, stand together.  Some hold their hands over their hearts and some hold flowers.

Mourners sing the anthem of Ukraine before laying flowers at the cemetery. February 24, 2023 in Bucha, Ukraine.

(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)

Like death and damage mount in UkraineBucha has become a sort of template for war crimes: a place of pilgrimage for visiting foreign dignitaries, the epicenter of the investigative forests, a crucible of doubts and hopes about whether meaningful prosecutions will take place.

Ukrainian authorities say there are more than 71,000 suspected war crimes across the country, some with multiple victims. While the country’s legal system is seen as the primary mechanism for dealing with individual atrocities by Russian soldiers, there have been fewer than 100 indictments, with about a third of those cases resulting in convictions, most of them in absentia.

In addition to the foot soldiers, Ukrainian prosecutors maintain detailed dossiers on more than 600 high-ranking Russian suspects, including military leaders and politicians, who are believed to be behind the atrocities in Bucha, the southern city of Mariupol and elsewhere.

Adding to the potential momentum for an investigation, a United Nations-backed investigation published Thursday found that attacks on civilians in Ukraine amounted to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Ukraine also called for the creation of a special UN tribunalsimilar to the special bodies established to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and other countries. But such a move would require either the approval of the Security Council, where Russia has a veto, or a majority vote in the General Assembly, which Moscow could prevent.

Alexandra Matviychuk stands with her long hair thrown over her shoulder and her hands clasped in front of her.

Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian human rights group that shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, stands as she is applauded after her speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, January 1. 26

(Jean-Francois Badias/Associated Press)

It is unlikely that Russia will hand over the suspects for trial to any third party court. For criminals, a conviction in absentia could lead to their placement on international watch lists, making travel outside Russia difficult, if not impossible, a result far from what victims and human rights organizations would consider commensurate with the worst of crimes.

“We have to break this circle of impunity,” said Oleksandra Matviychuk, director of the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian human rights group that won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. “We will never have sustainable peace without justice.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who was asked on Tuesday about news reports that the International Criminal Court in The Hague was to issue arrest warrants for unspecified Russian officials, responded with a show of defiance. Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, he said, adding that Moscow would use military means to achieve its goals in Ukraine.

Western leaders, including President Biden, have repeatedly insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin will personally answer for this war. The latest such confirmation came from a visit by Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who said during a press conference in Kiev last week that the Russian leader would be held accountable for the little-verified crime of aggression, which includes war against a sovereign state.

“Putin knows that he will have to answer for his crime of aggression,” Marin said. “The future tribunal must effectively administer justice and meet the legitimate demands of Ukrainians.”

In the early days of the war, many in Ukraine and beyond believed or tried to believe that it would be a conflict that would primarily involve armies on the battlefield—that civilians, as always in war, would be endangered rather than deliberately targeted. . .

Bucha changed everything. It was one of the first settlements to come under Russian occupation since last February’s full-scale invasion, and one of the first to be liberated when Muscovite troops aborted an ill-fated month-long attempt to capture the capital.

Image of a diptych: On the left - a grassy area densely dotted with Ukrainian flags;  and right;  woman with a little boy.

The flags, each representing a fallen Ukrainian soldier, have been left; and parishioners taking part in the service on the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the Cathedral of St. Andrew’s Church, Feb. February 24, 2023 in Bucha.

(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)

President Volodymyr Zelensky marked his anguish when he was asked at a press conference last month marking the first anniversary of the invasion what was his worst moment.

“Bucha,” he said, looking drawn. “We learned that the devil is not somewhere underground – he walked among us.”

The population of the city – about 37,000 before the invasion – changed along with military successes. More than half fled before the Russians took over; many returned after the liberation of Bucha. But ahead of this winter, fearful of power outages from Russian bombing of Ukrainian infrastructure, authorities have urged residents of the Kyiv region to stay away if they can find shelter elsewhere, inside or outside the country.

Investigations into some alleged crimes committed in the vicinity of the capital a year ago are only now gaining legal force. Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday that Ukrainian authorities accused a group of Russian soldiers of committing crimes last March in the Brovarsky district near Kiev, including the rape of a 4-year-old girl and the gang rape of her mother.

The number of alleged war crimes across the country continues to rise as investigators in recent months have been able to reach previously Russian-occupied areas retaken by Ukrainian forces — cities like Kherson in the south, where civilians have reported torture and imprisonment for eight long months of occupation, and Izyum in the east, where the retreating Russians left behind the city a forest of graves.

A young woman in a light coat with a hood stands leaning on a tall wooden cross.

At a cemetery in Bucha in 2022, 26-year-old Irina Chebotok holds a cross that will point to the grave of her grandfather Vladimir Rubailo, who died at the age of 71. Chebotok said her grandfather was shot in the head by Russian soldiers as he was leaving. your house to buy cigarettes.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

Almost every day, new evidence of potential war crimes emerges on social media in Ukraine and around the world, including this month’s macabre video clip of an unarmed Ukrainian soldier being executed by Russian-speaking kidnappers.

Standing in a shallow grave, a doomed man identified as a 42-year-old sniper named Oleksandr Matsiyevsky puffs out a plume of cigarette smoke before proclaiming “Glory to Ukraine,” a near-permanent wartime refrain. — and then riddled with bullets.

Massive air attacks on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure also resumed in March after a nearly month-long hiatus, a potential war crime. On March 9, Russian forces fired dozens of rockets and drones into major cities, including Kyiv, killing at least nine civilians. At least half a dozen of the rockets fired were hypersonic, known as “Daggers” (“daggers”), which fly at five times the speed of sound and cannot be countered by the air defense system currently possessed by Ukraine.

The Kremlin repeated its standard claim that the targets were military installations and installations, a claim ridiculed by authorities in Kyiv.

“No military targets, just Russian barbarism,” Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba tweeted hours after the shelling. “The day will come when Putin and his associates will be brought to justice by a special tribunal.”

A priest, dressed in a black cassock, black cap and with a large cross on a chain, poses for a portrait.

Priest Alexander Pronik, St. St. Nicholas Church in the village of Lubyanka poses for a portrait on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. St. Andrew’s Church in Bucha in February.

(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)

Ukrainian officials say the actions against civilians — killings, sexual abuse, kidnapping children to Russia — are essentially revenge for Moscow’s battlefield failures dating back to the earliest days of the war.

In the second year of the war, which Kremlin planners envisioned as a short and decisive march to victory, civilian casualties are expected to rise along with Russian discontent.

“The occupiers can only terrorize civilians,” Zelenskiy said in a recent overnight address to the country. “That’s all they can do.

Last month in Bucha, as mourners commemorated the first anniversary of the invasion, Orthodox priest Alexander Pronik said that since the occupation of the area, even the most fervent of his flock have struggled to find signs of a divine presence watching over them.

In the windswept lands of St. Andrew, where a mass grave with dozens of bodies was discovered a year ago, Pronik, whose parish is in the nearby village of Lubyanka, said he, in turn, struggled with the idea that he could offer parishioners some real comfort.

“No one can come to terms with what happened here; no one can accept it,” he said. “All anyone can do is try to find their own way to God’s grace and mercy.”