War crimes

Polish special prosecutors have requested the U.S. extradite a man living in Minnesota accused of Nazi war crimes .

The 98-year-old man, identified by the Associated Press as Michael Karkoc, is a former commander whose Nazi-affilited unit allegedly burned Polish villages and murdered civilians during the Second World War.

Born in 1919, Karkoc led a unit in the Ukranian Self Defense Legion, which worked with the German army, and is accused of taking part in two massacres in Poland in 1944.

Karkoc’s family said he is suffering from Alzheimer’s and deny he had any involvement in war crimes, but the Polish prosecutors sent a request for his extradition to Poland’s Embassy in Washington last month requesting he be handed over to U.S. justice authorities, AP reported.

Told of the accusations against his father back in May, Karkoc’s son Andriy Karkoc said in comments carried by The Daily Mail : “Do they have any evidence on which to base that?”

“We call on the judge to release all evidence that he has that supports this unjust, inappropriate and immoral action,” he added.

The prosecutors believe Karkoc was involved in massacres during the Holocaust, and the Polish government-affiliated National Remembrance Institute confirmed on Tuesday that his extradition had been requested.

Back in May, Poland had clarified they would be requesting the extradition of Karkoc, although they did not give a date when they intended to do so, and earlier had requested the U.S. aid them in carrying out a medical exam to ensure Karkoc was fit to stand trial.

However, a previous attempt to extradite Karkoc was dropped by German prosecutors after they found he was not fit to stand trial, his lawyer handing over medical documents from the U.S. geriatric facility that treated him.

The Nazis occupied Poland during WW2, with historians estimating up to 3 million Polish Jews and 2.77 million ethnic Poles were murdered by the Nazis during that time.

A tank commander has become the first Russian soldier to be convicted of a war crime by a Ukrainian court since Moscow’s invasion of the country began on February 24.

Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin, a 21-year-old tank commander from the Siberian region of Irkutsk, was sentenced to life in prison by a Kyiv court on Monday.

Shishimarin last week pleaded guilty to killing an unarmed 62-year-old man in the northeastern Ukrainian village of Chupakhivka on February 28. Shishimarin said he had been ordered to shoot at the man from a car in which he was traveling.

Shishimarin had apparently confessed to the killing in a video released earlier this month by the Security Service of Ukraine, also known as the SBU. “I was ordered to shoot,” Shishimarin said in the video. “I shot one [round] at him. He falls. And we kept on going.”

Last week, the defendant said he was “nervous” at the time of the shooting and “didn’t want to kill” victim Oleksandr Shelipov when he was ordered to do so. Shelipov was on his bike and speaking on his phone when killed, the court heard. Shishimarin said he was ordered to kill him for fear that the civilian might reveal their position.

“I’m truly and sincerely sorry,” Shishimarin told the court. “I didn’t want that to happen, I didn’t want to be there, but it happened. I would like to apologize once again. And I will accept all the measures of punishment that I will be offered.”

Shishimarin’s lawyer Viktor Ovsiannikov told the court that his client refused twice to carry out the kill order, but did so when ordered again fearing his own safety if he continued to resist. Only one of the three or four rounds fired struck Shelipov, Ovsiannikov said.

Ovsiannikov told The Guardian that his client had “an absence of intent here.” He said: “It was an execution of an order […] he didn’t want to kill him, and this has certain legal meaning.

“I would single out those bastards that shot at the back of civilians’ heads in Bucha during the occupation,” Ovsiannikov said, referring to the apparent summary executions of unarmed civilians in Kyiv’s suburbs during Russia’s occupation of the area. “It’s quite different from the circumstances my client was in.”

“He was sitting at the window of a car…the car was moving at high speed with a punctured tire,” Ovsiannikov said. “I conclude that Shishimarin fired aimless shots and did not intend to kill the civilian, and that he carried out the order not with the aim of killing the person, but formally, with the hope that [the rounds] would not hit.”

“I personally think that it should not be this young man in the dock, but the senior leadership of the other country that I think is guilty of unleashing this war.”

Prosecutor Andriy Siniuk disputed this account. “The person who gave an ‘order’ wasn’t his commander,” Siniuk said. “He was aware of that. The person who gave the instruction was aware of that. Before they got into the vehicle they didn’t know each other.”

The Kremlin said Monday it had no way of helping Shishimarin, and previously said it had not been informed that his case was going forward. Ovsiannikov has said that his client had no contact with any Russian officials.

“We have no way to protect his interests on the ground,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Moscow would pursue “other channels.”

It is possible that Shishimarin might eventually be included in a prisoner swap. The victim’s wife, Kateryna Shelipova, told the court she would not oppose Shishimarin being swapped for Ukrainian fighters besieged in the devastated eastern city of Mariupol.

After witnessing the first two weeks of the war in Ukraine , I went back to the region of Kyiv a month later, to find a very different atmosphere.

Life was slowly resuming in the Ukrainian capital following the retreat of Russian troops from the region only a fortnight earlier. I knew the sight of people walking the streets again, and the bright beds of tulips blooming in Maidan Square would contrast starkly with what awaited me on the outskirts of the city.

I had come back to document alleged war crimes in the area. The scale of destruction was startling. What used to be peaceful suburbs and villages had been turned into heaps of ruins, behind which lay the open wounds of those who had lived through weeks of horror.

Located at the gates if the capital, the town of Irpin stands as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian offensive. This is where I met Sasha, a 29 year old construction worker. He walked me through the nightmare he had endured in his neighbourhood, describing the summary executions of several of the residents. A shadow overcame his eyes when he showed me the spot where he had witnessed his friend, Sania, being shot in the head by a Russian soldier. It would have been Sania’s birthday that day.

The accounts of those who wanted the world to know their stories grew only more sinister as I followed my journey through the unspeakable. In Borodyanka, one of the most heavily bombed towns on the outskirts of Kyiv, searches were still continuing for bodies crushed under collapsed buildings.

“There were children, grandmothers, they were everywhere”, roared Sasha, showing me the rubble under which he had extricated corpses. In another part of the city, I witnessed one of the many exhumations of bodies of civilians that had been temporarily buried in yards and gardens during the occupation. “Look at how handsome he was!” cried out Nadiya, showing me a picture of her 34-year-old son Constantin, whose body was now lying at our feet, unrecognisable. Her tears flowed, at she leaned over the unbearable sight of what remained of her son, his mouth gaping in a grimace of pain.

‘They’re beasts! It’s not an army!’

Moving on, amidst the ruins and carcasses of burned-out vehicles piled up along the roadsides, we stopped in the village of Andriivka, which had been under occupation for a month. The main street was strewn with remnants of Russian weaponry, nails from fragmentation bombs, and heads of shells, some of which were still unexploded. There I spoke to Mykola, a soft-spoken farmer, grieving for his son, who had been shot down in the street. “They said he was passing on information through his phone, about the Russian tank column’s position” he sighed. “They’re beasts! It’s not an army! An army doesn’t attack children and grandmothers, but they do!”, he went on, before adding, in a frown of anger and spite: “They were kids, 18 years old. Some of them were crying, saying they didn’t want to come here, that they were forced to, and told it was only for two days, to train!”

Kilometre after kilometre, the tales of atrocities kept coming. In Makariv, we were called to another exhumation: the remnants of a family that had burned in their car. They had come under fire while their convoy was making its way out of the city, through a so-called green corridor. Watching the scene, a man took us aside. He wanted me to meet a woman living nearby, who had been raped by a Russian soldier. She was not at home. As I stood in her empty yard, the simple thought of what had happened brought shivers down my spine.

After being told Olesia was at work, we found her at the local hospital. She gathered her strength to tell me her story so that the world would know. Her voice choked as she described the scene, letting go of her tears as she remembered the two days of agony that her husband went through – shot down as he tried to defend her. Russian intelligence forces going passed the house finally freed her from her tormentor. “After the liberation, I learned that those who did this to me had caught another woman; they raped her and slit her throat. If it were not for the Russian intelligence men I would not be alive”, she concluded, in a whisper.

A rare testimony. Trauma and fear are such that few rape victims are willing to testify, Larisa, a lawyer, told me. She is helping several victims of rape by Russian soldiers. But there are increasing accounts of gang rapes carried out over several days – and often involving torture. Among her clients, a mother and daughter, raped for days in front of each other’s eyes. Their hands were broken by their aggressors, making it impossible for them to defend themselves or escape. It’s one of many cases and evidence that rape is systemic, used as a weapon of war, insists Larisa.

‘They liberated us from life itself’

It’s a war that will haunt Olga forever. Now living alone with her grief at her home in Bucha, the city that has become infamous for some of the worst atrocities committed in the Kyiv region. In a slow and steady voice, her pale blue eyes gazing at what seemed the infinite depth of the horror, she calmly explained how her husband, last seen coming out of a food distribution centre during the occupation, was found 10 days later in a morgue. “They broke his skull, they broke his bones, he had multiple fractures”. Unwrapping her memories, Olga went on, describing the roar of gunfire and explosions, the procession of Russian tanks, the terror. “They killed, they tortured, they did such horrible things!” Olga cried out, hiding her face in her hands. Before uttering, slowly and bravely looking up to the camera again: “They said they came to liberate us, but from who and from what? They liberated us from life itself. I wait for my husband to come back home from work every day. But he will never come back. Never”. Tears were shed not only by Olga as her words died in the thick of our silence.

‘I want the world to know what happened’

Silence, however, is something 20-year-old Tetiana refuses to let happen after her mother was shot between the eyes by a Russian sniper, in front of both her and her father. Tetiana found the courage to take us to the scene of her mother’s killing. Breathing for air, she described the gunshot, the fall of her mother, and the blood flowing onto the tarmac. “I cannot keep silent”, she says. “I want the world to know what happened. Maybe one day we will know who did it. And so there will be justice.”

So far more than 11,000 cases of alleged war crimes by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians have been documented by the General Prosecutor’s Office in Ukraine. Since my latest return from Ukraine, criminal proceedings for war crimes have been launched against several Russian soldiers.

As the war continues to rage, the sinister list keeps growing by the day. As our report is about to go on air, I think of the courage of Tetiana, Olga, Sasha, Nadiiya, Mykola and all the others, who in their quest for justice, want the world to know their stories.

Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine has taken a steep toll on the country’s young residents, according to new figures released Friday.

In a Telegram post , Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said juvenile prosecutors have determined that 343 children had died as a result of Russia’s months-long assault on her country.

Her office said that the death and injury counts it reported were not final, “as work is ongoing to establish them in places of active hostilities, in temporarily occupied and liberated territories,” according to an English translation of the post.

Although Russia has denied that it has been targeting civilians since the war began in late February, civilian casualties reported by Venediktova and the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights indicate that the impact on Ukrainians has been very high. The OHCHR recently said that it recorded 4,731 civilian deaths from February 24, when the invasion started, to midnight on June 26. This included 134 girls, 155 boys and another 41 children whose sex was unknown, for a total of 330 children killed in the conflict.

Venediktova’s office, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and some U.S. officials , has also accused Russian troops of committing war crimes in Ukraine. In May, Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin became the first Russian soldier to be convicted of a war crime by a Ukrainian court since Russia’s invasion began.

But this conviction may only be a drop in the bucket in terms of Russia’s alleged war crimes. Venediktova said in a tweet on June 26 that her office records between 100 and 200 Russian war crimes every day.

She said Friday in the Telegram post that more than 978 children, including the 343 who died, have been injured in Ukraine as of July 1. Of the remainder, 635 survived their injuries, her office said.

The OHCHR reported that as of midnight on June 26, 5,900 people had been injured in Ukraine. This included 131 girls, 174 boys and another 184 children whose sex was unknown, for a total of 489, a lower child injury count than that reported by the prosecutor general days later.

The war has also reportedly taken an extensive toll on Ukraine’s education institutions . Venediktova said that 2,102 had been damaged by Russian bombing and shelling, including 215 that were fully destroyed.

Newsweek was not able to independently confirm the child death and injury toll in the war. The prosecutor general’s office and Russia’s Defense Ministry were contacted for comment.