62 Yr Old Russian Soldier Pleads Guilty to Shooting A civilian Dead

 

 

KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian soldier pleaded guilty in a Kyiv court on Wednesday to having shot a civilian, in the first trial Ukraine has conducted for an act that could be considered a war crime since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

The soldier, Sgt. Vadim Shyshimarin, pleaded guilty to shooting a 62-year-old man on a bicycle in the village of Chupakhivka in the Sumy region, about 200 miles east of Kyiv, four days after Russia’s full-scale invasion began on Feb. 24.

Asked by the presiding judge whether he accepted his guilt, Sergeant Shyshimarin said: “Yes. Fully yes.”

The trial has drawn widespread media and public interest. On Wednesday, the courtroom and an overflow room were crowded with members of the local and international news media, and the trial is being broadcast on YouTube.

The prosecutor, Andriy Sinyuk, described the hearing as an “unprecedented procedure” in which “a serviceman of a different country is accused of murdering a civilian of Ukraine.”

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, dismissed the proceedings on Wednesday, telling reporters that accusations leveled against Russian soldiers by Ukraine were “simply fake or staged.”

“We still have no information,” Mr. Peskov said. “And the ability to provide assistance due to the lack of our diplomatic mission there is also very limited.”

The hearing takes place as Ukraine seeks the transfer of its own soldiers who were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol in recent days. The fighters, more than 50 of whom were “seriously injured,” are currently in Russian custody.

Ukraine hopes to trade the soldiers for Russian prisoners of war. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv has released details about a potential prisoner exchange. But any prisoner transfer could complicate the efforts of Ukrainian prosecutors to hold Russians suspected of war crimes accountable. 

Deteriorating sanitation gives rise to new worries for the 100,000 civilians still in besieged Mariupol.

Heavily damaged residential buildings last week in Mariupol, Ukraine.Credit...Pavel Klimov/Reuters

 

A dearth of medicine. A power grid ablaze. Water flooding through mass graves that has raised the fear of diseases like cholera.

As hundreds of Ukrainian fighters are being taken out of Mariupol after their surrender of its besieged steel plant, the city’s mayor made a plea to the world on Wednesday to help the 100,000 civilians who remain inside the Russian-controlled southern port city under rapidly deteriorating sanitation and health conditions.

Although several humanitarian corridors have been negotiated to help civilians flee, the mayor, Vadym Boichenko, called for new international efforts to create opportunities for safe passage for the thousands who still want to flee.

“We have thousands of residents — most of them have been calling the hotline of the municipality and they were begging to be sent, begging to have evacuation,” he said, speaking via online video conference to journalists.

Mr. Boichenko cited concerns over the potential spread of cholera, dysentery and other epidemiological crises because of rapidly worsening public health conditions. Russian forces occupying the city, while trying to repair the public water system, had accidentally caused flooding in the streets, he said. That water now risks flowing through the mass graves dug for the more than 20,000 people he said had been killed there.

“In the summer,” he said, “this will be a very big problem.”

World Health Organization officials cited similar concerns on Tuesday.

Mr. Boichenko also said that summer rains raised the risk of disease spreading at a time when doctors have little means to tackle them.

“The city today has no conditions for providing health care,” he said. “There’s no medicine.”

Power is still not working in the city because of another accident that he blamed on Russian forces. “Essentially,” he said, parts of the power system “were burned down, because they didn’t test the power grid, and they caused a fire.”

The mayor said he could not share any new information on the process of evacuating the Azovstal steel plant, where an undisclosed number of fighters remain. The factory was the Ukrainians’ last bastion in the city, and Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that hundreds more of the fighters had surrendered to Moscow’s forces.

The ministry did not specify where the latest batch of fighters had been taken, but Ukraine’s General Staff said earlier that its soldiers had been transported to two Ukrainian towns that are under Russian control. 

Russia used auxiliary forces from Chechnya in its long battle for Mariupol, Britain’s defense ministry said on Wednesday. The deployment demonstrates Russia’s “significant resourcing problems” in Ukraine and is “likely contributing to a disunited command,” the ministry said.

 

RUSSIA AND UKRAINE AT WAR (Reuters by by Linda Noakes)

Nearly 700 more Ukrainian fighters surrendered at the Mariupol steelworks in the past 24 hours, Russia said, but leaders were reported to still be holed up inside, delaying the final end of Europe's longest and bloodiest battle for decades.

Finland and Sweden meanwhile formally applied to join NATO, bringing about the very expansion that Russian President Vladimir Putin has long cited as one of his main reasons for launching the "special military operation" in February

Even as the Kremlin prepares to take full control of the ruins of Mariupol city, it faces the growing prospect of defeat in its bid to conquer all of Ukraine's eastern Donbas because its badly mauled forces lack the manpower for significant advances. 

Peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have stagnated, officials said, with both sides trading blame and Moscow indicating a return to talks may be difficult.

The U.S. State Department announced the launch of a new program to capture and analyze evidence of war crimes and other atrocities allegedly perpetrated by Russia in Ukraine, as Washington seeks to ensure Moscow is held accountable for its actions.