Ukraine: An appeal for punishment for Ukraine's first war crimes was postponed on Monday, as prosecutors continue to pressure Russia for legal accountability for atrocities in the country's south and east.
Vadim Shishmarin, a 21-year-old imprisoned Russian soldier who pleaded guilty to killing a civilian and was sentenced to life in prison by a Ukrainian court in May, in a glass box in the courtroom, facing news cameras was sitting. The hearing was adjourned till July 29 due to illness of his lawyer.

Much of the work documenting crime scenes and interviewing witnesses has been completed around Ukraine's capital region, where Russian forces withdrew four months ago. A new, more difficult phase has begun in the search for accountability: identifying those responsible.

“We regularly find lists with documents, passports and names of participants of the units, including their places of birth and dates of birth with all their data,” said Andrey Nebyatov, head of the Kyiv regional. Police said. "All of this information is being transferred to the appropriate law enforcement agencies." Investigators are cooperating with the victims to identify those responsible for the crimes committed."

Shishmarin's case is unusual in that Ukrainian authorities discovered evidence linking her to the shooting of a 62-year-old man in the northeastern Sumy region on February 28. This is not the case in most of the current war crimes investigations.
Prosecutors in Ukraine have registered more than 20,100 possible war crimes, and police in the Kyiv region have removed more than 1,300 bodies.
According to the Prosecutor General's Office, prosecutors in Ukraine had identified only 127 suspects as of July. Fifteen of them are currently being held as prisoners of war in Ukraine, while the rest are still at large. Among those accused are three counts of sexual violence and 64 of intentional murder or mistreatment of civilians.

Shishmarin is one of ten people so far charged with war crimes in Ukraine, which include indiscriminate shelling, intentional murder, sexual violence, robbery, abuse of civilians and attacks on civilian objects. According to the prosecutor general's office, six people have been convicted.

The pace of justice in Ukraine has been unusual. During the ongoing conflict, war crime prosecutions are uncommon.
Ukraine's top prosecutors have long advocated a speedy trial to satisfy a raging public thirst for justice, while also working to uphold judicial standards that allow domestic surveillance and oversight in the United States and Europe. Will satisfy colleagues.

Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova, in charge of the effort, was fired last week along with Ivan Bakanov, the former head of Ukraine's SBU security service, for allegedly not doing enough to deal with "colleagues and traitors" in their departments. His replacement will be announced shortly.
Even as the search for war criminals intensifies, the difficult task of documenting the atrocities continues.

Victims of chaos and genocide were randomly buried in the early weeks of Ukraine's war. All those bodies had to be excavated and examined forensically. According to Nebyotov, the Kyiv regional police have recovered 1,346 bodies, but more than 300 people are still missing.
"I'm sure we are far from completing the excavation," he said in an interview on Thursday. "We discovered a man who was executed this week with his hands tied behind his back and a cap on his head." According to experts, the person was sitting on his knees at the time of hanging.
More than half of the victims found so far have been shot, 38 of whom are children. Kyiv police have discovered 13 mass graves.

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