Russia War Crimes Diary – Ukraine edition 15

As Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine nears its one-year anniversary, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy undertook a high-profile European tour this week which he is expected to top off by requesting more military aid from its western allies to face down a fresh offensive by Moscow’s forces.

Zelenskyy’s tour took him to the U.K., France, and on Thursday Brussels where he addressed legislators in the European Parliament and requested expedited membership to the European Union. Zelenskyy said his country shares a “common European history” and went on to label Russia the “biggest anti-European force of the modern world.”

Ukrainian intelligence said Thursday that Russia has already begun to ramp up its offensive in the east of the country. 

But as Ukraine continues to resist Moscow’s forces, a series of disasters have also struck. Just as Ukraine was reeling from a missile strike on a civilian building in Dnipro, which killed at least 46 people, three senior officials from its interior ministry died in a helicopter crash in a Kyiv suburb, in which 14 people died. 

Ukraine’s Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into the crash, which occured next to a kindergarten, over the possible involvement of unauthorized persons. 

But behind the high-level diplomacy and tragic accidents, the brutality of war continues to play out. War crimes continue to be logged organisations, journalists, and citizens in the hope of holding those responsible for war crimes to account.

Disclaimer: this material contains information with a strong emotional impact.

Phone call with Russian alleged to have launched Dnipro attack

Two days after a missile hit a multi-storey residential building in Dnipro, Ukrainian investigators released the names of military personnel it alledges were involved in the missile’s launch, which killed at least 46 people. 

The editors of Important Stories contacted several soldiers from the 52nd Brigade it believes was behind the attack, to ask them what they thought about the attack in Dnipro, and whether they felt sorry for the people caught up in it.

“You must be from Ukraine. In Russia, journalists don’t ask such questions. Journalists don’t ask questions at all,” one of the Russians answered.

• Read the full details of this conversation, here.

Ukrainian citizen describes Russian filtration as hell

In order to leave the occupied and destroyed Mariupol, every Ukrainian had to go through a filtration camp organized by the Russian military to identify alleged fascists and Nazis on the part of Ukrainians. 

Bigus.info talked to people who went through this process, which they say entailed humiliation, torture, and psychological pressure. One couple, a husband and wife, were ready to commit suicide to spare themeselves and their child from being captured by the Russians. 

“First he would slit his wife’s wrists, then his own and then quickly the child’s, so that her cries would not attract the attention of the military,” a volunteer shares the story of the family.

• You can find out more details about how the filtration process worked, here.

Neo-Nazi Russian group in Ukraine made up of “perverted and very violent marauders”

The Molfar OSINT community has conducted a chilling investigation into a state-funded Russian military unit, the DShRG Rusich, which it says is operating in Ukraine and describes as a criminal, fascist organization made up of “perverted and very violent marauders.”

“They come to kill and loot, cut off ears and put heads on sticks, carve ‘swastika pattern’ on their cheeks, rape women in front of their children,” the investigation begins, attributing the words to the group’s leader and his two closest henchmen. “They justify torture and castration of prisoners … become mesmerized from the “smell of burnt Ukrainian people” and become sexually aroused by murder.”

The DShRG Rusich group, the piece claims, has participated in many of Russia’s conflicts, but as an independent group and as a separate unit within the infamed Wagner Group, whose forces are also active in Ukraine. 

Investigators gathered historical and biographical data that reveals alarming pervertions among the military group. The Molfar OSINT community says it has evidence that the Russia officially funds the neo-Nazi group.

• You can read the full investigation, here.

In Zaporizhzhia, correctional center workers persecuted, tortured

At a correctional center in the village of Ozerne in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, an area occupied by Russians since it invaded nearly a year ago, Ukrainians who refused to cooperate  were persecuted and tortured.

Oleksandr Fursa, who worked at the Veselivske Correctional Center, was imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with the Russian authorities who had taken over the facility.

“There is a speaker under each cell, and the music plays from waking up to bedtime. The morning starts with the Russian anthem,” Fursa told Slidstvo.info. “This is to prevent screaming. But sometimes they did such things there that the music didn’t help either.”

A shop assistant at the same correctional center, who refused to vote in a so-called referendum by the Russian occupiers, was tracked down and forced to walk across a minefield.

• You can read the full story, here.

Russian army officer admits forces totured Ukrainians

A former Russian military officer alledged in anexclusive interview with the BBC that Russian forces in Ukraine carried out brutal interrogations of Ukrainian men, who were shot and threatened with rape. 

Using photographs and military documents, the BBC verified that Yefremov was in Ukraine near the start of the war said that at one site in southern Ukraine, “the interrogations, the torture, continued for about a week”.

„Every day, at night, sometimes twice a day,” the former army officer, who is now viewed as a traitor in Russia and has since fled, said.

• You can read the full BBC story, here.

Edited by Stephen McGrath
Photo source: Vitaliy Klychko/ Telegram