Russia has increased the number of executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war over the past year. These are not isolated crimes, but a deliberate policy, Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said in an interview with Belgian newspaper La Libre, excerpts of which were cited by the Prosecutor General's Office.
The enemy also uses torture as a weapon of war, intimidation and destruction. Ukraine can prove that this is an organised activity.
‘For example, we have an audio recording of a Russian officer ordering his troops not to take prisoners on the battlefield but to kill Ukrainians,’ he said.
According to Andriy Kostin, one of the key tasks for justice is to hold the Russian leadership accountable for the crime of aggression, without which there would be no more than 140,000 war crimes.
Most Russian war criminals were sentenced in absentia, but these decisions are important for the process of restoring justice, he said. Ukraine documents all the crimes of the occupiers.
‘Investigating war crimes during the conflict is certainly extremely difficult. We document, investigate and prosecute every crime committed by the aggressor in national courts. But our task goes much further. We are implementing a methodology for prosecuting more specific crimes, such as sexual violence, crimes against children and environmental crimes,’ Kostin explained.