A Russian soldier standing trial for committing war crimes by murdering a civilian in Ukraine has pleaded guilty.
A Kyiv district court met on May 18 to begin hearing its first war crimes trial against a Russian soldier who took part in Moscow's February 24 invasion, a case of huge symbolic value for Ukraine.
Russian tank commander Vadim Shishimarin, 21, is charged with murdering a civilian, aged 62, in the Ukrainian village of Chupakhivka on February 28.
He told the court that he pleaded guilty, The Mirror reports. If convicted, Shishimarin faces up to life imprisonment.
The Kyiv government has accused Russia of atrocities and brutality against civilians during the invasion and said it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes.
Russia has denied targeting civilians or involvement in war crimes and accused Kyiv of staging them to smear its forces.
Ukrainian state prosecutors have said the soldier and four other Russian servicemen fired at and stole a privately owned
car to escape after their column was targeted by Ukrainian forces.
The Russian soldiers drove into the village of Chupakhivka where they saw an unarmed resident riding a bicycle and talking on his phone, they said.
They said Shishimarin was ordered by another serviceman to kill the civilian to prevent him reporting on the Russians' presence and fired several shots through the open window of the car with an assault rifle at the civilian's head. The civilian died on the spot.
The SBU Security Service of Ukraine conducted the investigation into the case, it said.
State prosecutor Andriy Synyuk told reporters after his first hearing last week: "This is the first case today. But soon there will be a lot of these cases.
Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on May 12 there were many examples of possible war crimes since the Russian invasion and that 1,000 bodies had been recovered so far in the Kyiv region.
Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on April 25 that it would take part in a joint team with Ukrainian, Polish and Lithuanian prosecutors investigating war crimes allegations against Russian forces.
Meanwhile, the Russian soldier accused of gang-raping a little girl and threatening to kill her family has been named by the Ukrainian security services.
Fassakhov Bulat Lenarovych, a 21-year-old soldier from the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, stands accused of being part of a gang of invaders who committed war crimes in the region around Kyiv.
A press release published by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) yesterday detailed his alleged crimes, as well as featuring a series of photos of the accused rapist.
The release states that Lenarovych broke into the house of a Ukrainian family and locked them all in the basement - aside from one young girl. The occupier raped the girl after threatening to kill her family, then repeated the atrocity along with three accomplices.
“Under the supervision of Kyiv Region Prosecutor’s Office, the SSU has notified him, in absentia, of suspicion of violating laws and customs of war,” the release went on.
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