Russian propagandist and soldiers openly boast of looting homes in occupied Ukraine

Yulia Chicherina, Russian singer and pro-war propagandist, has posted a video on which, surrounded by Russian soldiers, she shows off the Chanel cosmetic bag that they have, purportedly, ‘given’ her. It was not, of course, theirs to give and the entire video is effective admission of the war crime of looting, although they all evidently feel certain of their impunity, and laugh about their ‘trophy’.

Chicherina (b. 1978) has actively supported Russia’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014, and this was not her first visit to territory seized since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  According to Dialog.ua, which reposted the video, in 2022, she also proposed that Russia invade Finland and Sweden, both of whose governments had responded to the full-scale invasion by deciding to join NATO.

On the video posted on 30 August, one of the Russians says that they have “taken a trophy and given it to Yulia”.  Looking at the pink bag, with the word Chanel on it, Chicherina says “I think you caught Frenchmen”, to which the man replies, “Yes, we seized a couple of Frenchmen” and they all laugh.  This is all very jovial, however the ‘joke’ about Frenchmen may, in fact, have been aimed at masking the real nature of this so-called ‘trophy’.   Pillage, or looting by an army, is prohibited in international law and is specifically classified as a war crime by the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute.  The latter prohibits as a war crime “pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault” (Article 8 xvi).  In other words, no so-called ‘trophies’ are permitted.  It is likely that pillage is prohibited even under Russian legislation, but so too is being a mercenary and a huge number of other crimes that Russia has been committing on a virtually daily basis in its war of aggression against Ukraine.  Chicherina and the Russian soldiers have no reason to fear any consequences for openly boasting of such pillage.

Although Russia’s plunder and appropriation of both Ukrainian state and private property began back in 2014, it was the widespread and brazen pillage by Russian soldiers after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that received international attention.  In essentially every part of Ukraine that the soldiers invaded, there were reports of homes, shops and other businesses being broken into and plundered.  Russia’s defence ministry had, in fact, almost made this inevitable given that it sent forces to “seize Kyiv within three days”, and provided no back up in terms of supplies.  There are no grounds, however, for pitying ‘poor hungry soldiers’, and not only because they were invading another country’s territory.  Those same ‘hungry soldiers’ plundered the homes of people forced to flee with almost nothing, stealing anything and everything, from money and valuables to washing machines and refrigerators.  The soldiers who invaded the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant not only stole all computer technology, etc., but also the vital radiation detectors.  They presumably had no idea what the latter were for since they also saw no problem in digging themselves trenches within the 30 kilometre Exclusion Zone, established after the worst nuclear disaster to date in 1986. 

The pillage was well documented by western media, Ukrainian and international human rights organizations and by international prosecutors, including from the International Criminal Court. 

At enormous risk to themselves, Belarusian activists posted information about a market in Belarus at which the Russians tried to sell items plundered in Kyiv oblast.  Other Russians had offered taxi drivers 200 USD or more to drive their ‘trophies’ to Russia. In some cases, the Ukrainian owners of plundered Apple devices, such as air pods, could track exactly where in Russia the stolen goods had been taken. Belarusians name Russian soldiers caught on camera sending goods plundered in Ukraine to Russia.

The Belarusian Hajun Project even posted a video and the names of the Russian soldiers who could be seen on it sending plundered goods from Ukraine to various parts of the Russian Federation.  Altogether they found that the Russians had sent two tons of goods, with each individual sending parcels of from 50 to 450 kilograms.

Even if the military command were not ‘taking their cut’ of the illegal bounty, their subordinates could hardly have stolen such a weight, let alone large appliances, without their knowledge. Pillage was only one of the war crimes committed by the Russians in Kyiv oblast (and other parts of Ukraine).  During the first weeks in April after the Russians were forced to retreat, bodies were found lying on the streets, or in cellars, many of them having been bound before being shot.  Several charred and naked bodies of women who had also been raped were found, as well as mass graves of the Russians’ victims.  On 18 April 2022, as more and more crimes committed in Bucha and other Kyiv oblast towns came to light, Russian leader Vladimir Putin issued a decree ‘honouring’ the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade, believed to be behind a huge number of crimes. Putin talked of “mass heroism and daring, tenacity and courage” in referring to men almost certainly responsible for rapes, torture, indiscriminate killings and looting.   Russia has since imprisoned a number of its own citizens for openly speaking or writing about the crimes committed in Bucha and other parts of Ukraine under occupation, none for the war crimes committed.