The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said it has uncovered a “few thousand” cases of war crimes in the eastern Donbas region. Kyiv’s top prosecutor also said it has identified over 600 Russian war suspects and started prosecuting around 80 of them. During a news conference in The Hague, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said the list of war crimes suspects “includes top military, politicians and propaganda agents of Russia.” Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia have joined an international investigation team in Ukraine dedicated to finding information related to war crimes. The International Criminal Court has deployed dozens of investigators, forensic experts and support personnel to Ukraine to aid in these efforts. “We should collect and protect everything in the right way. It should be acceptable evidence in any court,” Venediktova said.
Two Russian soldiers have been sentenced to 11 years and six months in jail for shelling Ukrainian villages, a court in central Ukraine has ruled. Russians Alexander Bobykin and Alexander Ivanov pleaded guilty to the war crimes last week. The two men acknowledged that they had fired at positions in the Kharkiv region from Russia. According to prosecutors, the shelling destroyed an educational facility in Derhachi, but left no casualties. “The guilt of Bobykin and Ivanov has been proven in full,” Judge Evhen Bolybok said. Bobykin and Ivanov were described as an artillery driver and gunner respectively. They were detained after crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Russian troops now control “around half” of the critical city of Sievierodonetsk, according to Oleksander Stryuk, the head of the city’s military administration. “Half of the city has been captured by the Russians and fierce street fighting is under way,” Stryuk told the AP news agency. “The situation is very serious and the city is essentially being destroyed ruthlessly block by block.” Stryuk said Ukrainian forces are still defending the city, which is key for Russia’s ambitions in the eastern Donbas region. “The Ukrainian military continues to resist this frenzied push and aggression by Russian forces,” he said.
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