Three months after the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, judges in Kiev on Monday pronounced the first conviction for a Russian soldier tried for war crimes.
Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin, 21, was convicted of shooting a 62-year-old civilian, Oleksandr Shelipov, in the northern region of Sumy in the early days of the war. Sergeant Shishimarin, who pleaded guilty at the start of the trial last week, has been sentenced to life in prison.
Judge Serhiy Ahafonov found Sergeant Shishimarin guilty of violating the laws and customs of war and committing first degree murder. An appeal can be lodged against the judgment.
“The defendant partially pleaded guilty and argued that he had no intention of killing Mr. Shelipov,” Judge Ahafonov said. “The court cannot recognize the sincerity of repentance.”
The defendant was in a glass cage, wearing the same blue-grey hoodie he wore at every trial, his head bowed as an interpreter whispered to him in Russian through an opening in the glass. After the verdict, when the court cleared the hundreds of local and foreign journalists who had gathered to hear the sentencing, the sergeant paced back and forth in the cell.
Sergeant Shishimarin was part of a 40-mile convoy of armored vehicles that swung from the Russian border to Ukraine’s capital Kiev, which Moscow initially expected would take within days.
According to prosecutors, Sergeant Shishimarin commanded a tank division from the Moscow region. When his convoy was attacked by Ukrainian troops on February 28, the Russians dispersed. Sergeant Shishimarin encountered four other men, who stole a car and tried to drive away.
From the car, in the village of Chupahivka, they saw Mr. Shelipov, who was on the phone while riding his bicycle. Believing that Mr. Shelipov would report their location to nearby Ukrainian troops, another soldier — who was not Sergeant Shishimarin’s superior — told him to shoot, prosecutors said.
Sergeant Shishimarin fired three or four shots from his Kalashnikov.
When his trial began last week, Sergeant Shishimarin accepted his guilt. At a subsequent hearing, he apologized to Mr. Shelipov’s widow after she gave emotional testimony, asking him, “Have you come to defend us? Whose? Have you come to defend me against my husband whom you murdered?”
The verdict is a milestone in Ukraine’s efforts to hold Russia and its soldiers responsible for the atrocities committed in the war.
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“Investigation of all war crimes and accountability is now our main agenda,” Ukraine’s Attorney General Irina Venediktova wrote on Facebook last week. She announced that two more cases had been opened in the Poltava region against soldiers who had shelled the Ukrainian city of Kharkov.
Experts said the trial was one of the fastest in Ukraine’s recent history.
“Currently, the trial of Shishimarin looks like we have dreamed,” said Olha Reshetylova, coordinator of a media initiative for human rights groups.
It was carried out, she said, “without undue delay and artificial delay by the parties to the case and the court, with the possibility of access to the trial for all, with online broadcasting and media and public attention.”
Ms Reshetylova lamented that “a large-scale Russian invasion was needed for the Ukrainian judiciary to understand that transparency and accessibility in warfare is not only a matter of justice, but also an element of justice to satisfy the victims.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov acknowledged the trial in a conversation with journalists on Monday.
“Of course we are concerned about the fate of our citizen,” he said. “But we don’t have a lot of options to protect his interests on the ground.”
Maria Varenikova reporting contributed.