Russia kills more children, while passing mass sentences against Ukrainian POWs for its crimes in Mariupol
Olena Kulyk and her three children were killed on Monday when a Russian ballistic missile hit a 5-storey apartment block in Kryvy Rih. Ukrainian emergency workers spent the night searching for the children's bodies and for other victims of just one of many Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians on 11 November. On that same day, a Russian occupation ‘court’ passed massive ‘sentences’ against Ukrainian prisoners of war charging them with similar Russian crimes against civilians, committed in Mariupol.
Russia has used its occupation of Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities which it first relentlessly bombed to conceal the number of civilian victims, demolish the evidence of some of its most egregious war crimes and to try to ‘rewrite’ the facts. One of the methods used is the staging of fake ‘trials’ where it is Ukrainian prisoners of war who stand accused and, invariably, ‘convicted’ of Russia’s attacks on civilians. Virtually all such ‘trials’ are based solely on ‘confessions’ undoubtedly extracted through torture. There is nothing to suggest that the men had any access to independent lawyers, nor, in fact, that there was an actual ‘trial’, as opposed to a staged ‘sentencing’ before cameras for reporting by TASS or other Russian state-controlled propaganda media.
Russia’s Investigative Committee reported on 11 November that ‘sentences’ had been passed against eight Ukrainian marines from the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ 36th Marine Brigade for supposing “shelling inhabited areas.”. The alleged ‘trial’ was before the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic supreme court’.
The eight prisoners of war are: Pavlo Bei; Semen Beliak; Yaroslav Bozhkov; Leonid Bulava; Yury Halatsky; Vitaly Kyrylenko; Denys Syvets; and Ihor Zharenko; It was claimed that, “from March to April 2022” they had fulfilled “the criminal orders” of their military command and carried out mortar shelling of gas distribution and pumping stations with this causing damage to critical infrastructure and causing “their owners significant material loss”.
No specific dates, nor particular targets are mentioned, Nor, most importantly, is any mention made of the fact that the marines were defending Mariupol against an invader waging a war of aggression, with this involving the daily bombing and shelling of civilian targets.
Instead, charges that make no sense, but that Russia regularly uses against Ukrainian POWs, were laid. The men were accused of ‘cruel treatment of the civilian population, the use in an armed conflict of prohibited means and methods’ (Article 356 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code) and of ‘deliberate damage to others’ property, causing considerable damage and carried out in a publicly dangerous manner’ (Article 167 § 2).
The unrecognized ‘court’ sentenced Denys Sivets to 17 years; Yury Halatsky and Vitaly Kyrylenko to 18 years; Leonid Bulava; Semen Beliats; Yaroslov Bozhkov; and Ihor Zharenko – 15.6 years; and Pavlo Bei – 15 years and three months. All these sentences are, as always, in maximum-security prison colonies.