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has become a Russian commander first military officer being accused of being organized and coordinated war crimes related to Bucha massacreOne of the bloodiest atrocities of the war in Ukraine.
Yuri Vladimirovich Kim, 28, a lieutenant platoon commander of the 76th Air Assault Division, is suspected of being criminally responsible for ordering troops to commit war crimes, including the intentional killing of civilians during the illegal occupation. bush In the initial phase of a full-scale invasion of Russia between 7 March and 1 April 2022.
Kim is suspected of being responsible for 17 murders and four cases of deliberate ill-treatment by forces under his command.
Ukrainian officials said 458 bodies were recovered from pogroms in Kyiv Oblast, including nine children under the age of 18. Horrific photographs of Bucha published at the time showed bodies scattered on the road, wrapped in bin bags and buried in mass graves.
The International Criminal Court was called on by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Ukrainian authorities to investigate the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.
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The notice of suspicion against Kim, issued by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office (OPG) and the National Police of Ukraine, with the support of the international law foundation Global Rights Compliance (GRC), marks a start. Investigation A pre-trial period seeking to hold Russian military leaders accountable for alleged war crimes.
Investigators used witness testimony, crime scene reconstructions, identification parades, crime scene forensics, maps, and open-source intelligence to identify Kim as one of the six suspected Russian soldiers who committed atrocities at Bucha. They claimed to have detected instances where the commander specifically ordered his forces to hunt down, harm, and kill individuals who supported or assisted the Ukrainian armed or security forces.
The commander then allegedly ordered his subordinates to burn some of the bodies to conceal the crime. According to the GRC, if Kim is brought to trial, he could face a sentence ranging from 20 years to life in prison. Independent The Russian Defense Ministry has been contacted for comment.
GRC legal counsel Jeremy Pizzi indicated that this notice of suspicion was one of several to come that will reveal how Russia’s atrocities were carried out under a command structure.
He said, “This notice of suspicion is a building block, one of many to come. It refutes the narrative that Russian atrocities in Bucha were the product of opportunistic criminals and highlights how the atrocities were carried out following specific criminal plans to target particular sectors of Ukrainian society essential to national deterrence.” “Given the extent of these patterns, we can begin to turn our attention to Russian leadership collusion.”
Kim was accused of inciting his subordinates to commit atrocities and persuading them to act with impunity. According to the translation of the notice of suspicion, seen by IndependentThe commander organized a reporting system through which he was aware of all the actions of his subordinates in the occupied territories and with real opportunities to prevent crimes or punish those who committed them. According to the notice, violence against the residents of Bucha became the norm for the entire unit.
As part of the large-scale, complex investigation of the massacre, approximately 330 victims and witnesses have been interrogated, as well as 59 investigative experiments, 86 identifications by photographs, 89 inspections of crime scenes and three exhumations of dead bodies.
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First Deputy Chief of the National Police of Ukraine – Head of the Main Investigation Department, Maksim Tsutskiridze, said the investigation is a step towards understanding the chain of command involved in war crimes committed in Ukraine.
“The investigation of war crimes in Boucha is not just about bringing justice for past crimes – it is about our ability to uphold justice in the highest sense. We have moved beyond holding low-grade criminals accountable – we are now exposing the chain of command decisions through which general orders turned into the mass execution of civilians,” he said.
“Behind every evidence collected by our investigators is the life of a person killed in his own home or on the streets of his city. We have no right to make mistakes, because his memories compel us to be impeccable.”
He said the police’s mission is “to create a system that guarantees the inevitability of punishment for international crimes and strengthens global confidence in Ukrainian justice”.
“We make every effort to pursue truth, justice and the restoration of the dignity of every person killed in Bucha,” he said.