Elena Becatoros and John Gambrell, Associated Press Published on Wednesday, May 11, 2022, 6:19 AM EDT Last Updated on Wednesday, May 11, 2022, 5:28 PM EDT
ZAPOROZHYE, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine’s chief prosecutor on Wednesday unveiled plans for the first war crimes trial against a captured Russian soldier as fighting raged east and south and the Kremlin left open the possibility of annexing a corner of the country that took the early invasion. .
Chief Prosecutor Irina Venediktova said her office had indicted a sergeant. Vadin Shishimarin, 21, was killed in the killing of an unarmed 62-year-old civilian who was shot while riding a bicycle in February, four days after the war.
Shishimarin, who serves in a tank unit, was accused of shooting at a man in a car window in the northeastern village of Chupahivka. Venediktov said the soldier could face up to 15 years in prison. She did not say when the trial would begin.
Venediktov’s office said it had investigated more than 10,700 alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces and identified more than 600 suspects.
Many of the alleged atrocities came to light last month after Moscow’s forces stopped trying to take Kyiv and withdrew from the capital, revealing mass graves and streets and courtyards littered with bodies in cities like Bucha. Residents reported killings, burns, rapes, torture and dismemberment.
Vladimir Jaworski of the Center for Civil Liberties said the Ukrainian human rights group would closely monitor the trial against Shishimarin to see if it was fair. “It is very difficult to follow all the rules, norms and neutrality of wartime court proceedings,” he said.
On the economic front, Ukraine has closed one of the pipelines carrying Russian gas through the country to homes and industries in Western Europe, marking the first time since the start of the war that Kyiv disrupted the flow west of one of Moscow’s most lucrative exports.
But the immediate effect is likely to be limited, in part because Russia could divert gas to another pipeline and because Europe relies on different suppliers.
Meanwhile, a Kremlin-installed politician in the southern Kherson region, the site of Ukraine’s first major city to fall in the war, said officials there wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin to make Kherson Russia’s “right region” – that is, annex it.
“The city of Kherson is Russia,” Kirill Stremusov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration appointed by Moscow, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.
This has raised the possibility that the Kremlin is seeking to secede from another piece of Ukraine as it tries to save a confused invasion. Russia has annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which borders the Kherson region, following a disputed referendum in 2014, a move declared illegal and rejected by much of the international community.
Kherson, a Black Sea port of about 300,000 people, provides Crimea with access to fresh water and is seen as a gateway to broader Russian control over southern Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “in the end, residents of the Kherson region will decide whether such an appeal should be made or not.” He said any move to annexed territory would have to be carefully assessed by legal experts to make sure it was “absolutely legitimate, as it was with Crimea”.
Adviser to Ukrainian President Mykhailo Podoliak scoffed at the idea of annexing Kherson, tweeting: “Invaders may even want to join Mars or Jupiter. The Ukrainian army will liberate Kherson, whatever word games it plays.
Inside Kherson, people took to the streets to condemn the Russian occupation. But a teacher who gave only his first name, Olga, for fear of Russian revenge, said such protests were impossible now because Moscow’s troops “kidnapped activists and citizens just to wear Ukrainian flowers or ribbons.” She said “people are afraid to speak openly outside their homes” and “everyone is walking fast on the street”.
“All the people in Kherson are waiting for our troops to come as soon as possible,” she added. “No one wants to live in Russia or join Russia.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian authorities said a Russian missile attack was aimed at the area around Zaporozhye, destroying unspecified infrastructure. There are no immediate reports of casualties. The southeastern city was a refuge for civilians fleeing the Russian siege of the devastated port city of Mariupol.
Russian forces have continued to strike at the steel plant, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, its defenders said. The Azov Regiment announced on social media that Russian forces had carried out 38 air strikes on the territory of the Azovstal steel plant the previous day.
The plant, with its network of tunnels and bunkers, has sheltered hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians during a month-long siege. Dozens of civilians have been evacuated in recent days, but Ukrainian authorities say some may still be trapped there.
In a speech on Tuesday, President Vladimir Zelensky suggested that the Ukrainian military was gradually pushing Russian troops away from Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and key to Russia’s offensive in Donbass, the Kremlin’s eastern industrial region. . .
Ukraine is also targeting Russian air defenses and supply ships on Snake Island in the Black Sea in a bid to disrupt Moscow’s efforts to expand control over the coastline, according to the British Ministry of Defense.
Separately, Ukraine said it had shot down a cruise missile aimed at the Black Sea port city of Odessa.
Ukraine’s natural gas pipeline operator has said it has stopped blocking Russian gas through a compressor station in part of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists because enemy forces are interfering with the station’s operation and sucking gas.
The hub processes about a third of Russia’s gas passing through Ukraine to Western Europe. But analysts said much of the gas could be diverted through another gas pipeline from Russia, which crosses Ukraine, and there were indications that it was happening. In any case, Europe also receives natural gas from other pipelines and other countries.
“We are losing a few percent of total gas supplies to Europe, given both imports and domestic production,” said Tom Marzek-Manser, an analyst at market intelligence firm ICIS. “So this is not a big disruption to gas supplies” to Europe.
It was also unclear whether Russia would suffer an immediate blow, as there are long-term contracts and other ways to transport gas.
However, the disruption highlighted the wider risk to gas supplies from the war.
“Yesterday’s decision is a small overview of what could happen if gas plants are affected by a live fire and face the risk of prolonged downtime,” said gas analyst Zongqiang Luo of Rystad Energy.
Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Jessica Fish in Bakhmut, David Keaton in Kyiv, Juras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkov, Lolita S. Baldor in Washington, Kelvin Chan in London and AP staff around the world.
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