The International Criminal Court is considering two cases because of the war in Ukraine.
The first is about the kidnapping of children, and it was in this case that The Hague issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest. The second is about the shelling of civilian infrastructure. And here, too, there will be arrests, writes The Guardian.
The publication spoke with Ukrainian investigators collecting evidence against Russian war criminals. The journalists were shown a giant board on which they record the hierarchy of Putin’s army.
The circuit is 4 m wide and 1.5 m high. It contains both the “Mariupol massacre”, and the “Bucha massacre”, and aviation commanders, and Putin himself, says the Grunt publication, which translated the British material.
Dossiers have already been collected in Ukraine on 600 Russians, including political and military officials. The list of suspects includes officials, including Defense Minister Shoigu himself, and a lesser-known colonel responsible for some of the most brutal air attacks.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened two war crimes cases related to the Russian invasion. The Guardian spoke to defense officials and former military personnel to describe some of the commanders and generals accused by Ukraine.
We started mapping Russian commanders and generals last year. And we continue to update it week after week,” says Oleksandr Filchakov, chief prosecutor of the Kharkiv region, who, along with colleagues from other regions, has been working on the scheme since the start of the full-scale invasion.
“Mariupol butcher”
If we highlight the episode that most clearly describes the brutality of the Russian war, then this is undoubtedly the three-month siege of Mariupol. According to official figures from the Ukrainian authorities, 22,000 people were killed then. The destruction of the city was compared to the attack on Aleppo in Syria. With their bombardment, the Russians reduced the city to rubble after joining the war in 2015 on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.
Both Russian military campaigns were led by Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev. The British government imposed sanctions against Mizintsev back in March 2022, pointing to his role in the bombings of Mariupol and Aleppo.
Mizintsev was the first head of the National Defense Control Center of Russia and was engaged in the creation of a pretentious command center located in the very center of the Kremlin.
He is known as a very good organizer,” says a former Defense Department spokesman on the condition of anonymity. In addition, the general had close ties with the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Valery Gerasimov.
In Mariupol, Mizintsev used experience gained in Syria, where he oversaw the brutal bombing, military experts say. As in Aleppo, he first cut off Ukrainian forces from supply lines and then began to squeeze them street by street. At the same time, the Russians used indiscriminate bombing, due to which civilians could not leave the city. After that, the colonel-general received the nickname – “Mariupol butcher”.
Even at the beginning of the invasion, it became clear that among the soldiers fighting in Ukraine there were many who had experience from Syria. For example, 61-year-old Yury Stavitsky, head of the engineering troops of the Russian armed forces, was known primarily as the leader of the demining of Palmyra. In 2016, the name of Stavitsky was mentioned in the Panama Papers (this is the outcome of confidential information from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in working with offshore companies, when information was disclosed about the assets of politicians and other public figures from different countries – “Rakurs”). The documents showed that Stavitsky was the owner of the company Asante Trade & Finance SA, registered in the British Virgin Islands.
There was a big scandal in the ministry. Stavitsky almost lost his job and was forced to apologize, the source says.
Kharkov under cluster bombing
Kharkiv region is one of the regions most damaged by Russian troops. In particular, illegal weapons were used there, killing hundreds of civilians.
Fragments of RBC-500 cluster munitions and 300-mm shells from the Smerch MLRS were found in areas where there were no military units or military infrastructure.
The Center for Information Resilience (CIR), which is dedicated to exposing human rights violations, not only identified the places of arrival of cluster munitions in the Kharkiv region and the positions from which the fire was fired, but also the commander responsible for this. His name is Alexander Zhuravlev, a colonel-general who helped Mizintsev during the bombing of Aleppo in 2016.
Zhuravlev, 57, became a Soviet officer back in the 1980s, went on missions to Syria three times, and received one of Russia’s highest military awards, Hero of Russia.
In addition, numerous data indicate that Zhuravlev was the only high-ranking Russian officer who could sign the order to shell Kharkov with Smerchs from Belgorod.
When Ukraine launched a surprise counter-offensive and recaptured almost the entire territory of the Kharkiv region, the Kremlin fired Zhuravlev and replaced him with Lieutenant General Roman Berdnikov.
House in Dnipro, shopping center in Kremenchug: who manages air raids
On June 27, a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber took off from the Russian Shaikovka airbase in the Kaluga region. He was carrying a long-range anti-ship missile X-22, which he launched from the territory of the Kursk region. At 15:52, a rocket hit the large Amstor shopping center in Kremenchuk, burning it to rubble. At least 20 people died then.
According to Ukrainian prosecutors, the strike was carried out by the 52nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment, commanded by 51-year-old Colonel Oleg Timoshin.
Ukrainian intelligence agencies also accuse Timoshin of involvement in a rocket attack on a residential building in Dnipro that killed at least 44 people.
Not much is actually known about Timoshin. He studied at the Tambov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and took command of the regiment after the death of his predecessor, Colonel Vadim Beloslyudtsev, in 2019.
Timoshin’s immediate superior is Sergey Dronov, commander-in-chief of the Russian air force.
He served as a pilot during the Russo-Chechen war in 1994. A became famous two decades later, flying Russian aircraft during the intervention in Syria. Moscow paid great attention to air attacks and carried out constant air raids.
The Russian war in Syria is seen as a success that raised the status of the Russian Air Force to the level of “the strongest forces in the world.” This image was reinforced in 2021 when Dronov announced that Russian aviation would receive more than 60 new and 200 upgraded aircraft. It is believed that at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation there were more than 700 fighters, while Ukraine – approximately 64. However, Moscow’s inability to establish dominance in the sky raised doubts about Dronov’s abilities.
Dronov was very corrupt. No wonder Russian aviation failed,” comments Gleb Irisov, an ex-lieutenant in the Russian Air Force who left military service in 2020.
“Buchan massacre”
When the Russians withdrew from the Kiev region last April, they left the crime scene on a gigantic scale. In Bucha, about 458 bodies were found in dozens of mass graves. Under the rubble of buildings in Borodianka and Gostomel, hundreds more civilian corpses were found.
Azatbek Omurbekov, 40, was dubbed the “ripper of Bucha” – it was he who led the troops responsible for killing, raping and torturing civilians.
Omurbekov was born in Soviet times in Uzbekistan. Now he is the commander of the 64th separate motorized rifle brigade of the RF Armed Forces. In 2014, Dmitry Bulgakov, then Deputy Minister of Defense, awarded him “for excellent services”.
Where Omurbekov is now is unknown. A number of sources claim that after the retreat from the Kyiv region, Omurbekov overturned his soldiers in Belarus. According to other sources, he reached Belgorod, and there he joined other regiments in operations in the Kharkov region.
Omurbekov, like all senior officers deployed in Ukraine, obeyed the orders of Oleg Salyukov, the commander-in-chief of the Russian ground forces. Under the control of this general are almost all battalions that conduct artillery fire and make an invasion.
At 67, Salyukov is one of the oldest high-ranking officials in the Russian army. In Russia, he is known for leading the annual “victory parade” on Red Square. Salyukov is generally vague, but wields significant influence in the upper echelons of Russia’s armed forces.
If you want to make a career in the army, you must get Salyukov’s consent, says the former defense ministry spokesman.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.