Russia wants to do like Ukraine, also accuse the adversary of war crimes and put his military on trial. The pro-Russian leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, assured on Monday that the Ukrainian prisoners of the Azovstal steel mill, considered heroes in Ukraine, will be tried in a special court in that territory.
The defenders of the steel plant, in the city of Mariupol, gave up their resistance last week and surrendered.
Pushilin told the Interfax agency that all "Azovstal prisoners are in DPR territory." He indicated that "an international court is planned to be installed on the territory" of Donetsk to try the Ukrainian military of Azovstal. And he added that the elaboration of its statutes is currently “in process”.
Shortly before, a Ukrainian court sentenced the first Russian soldier tried for war crimes to life imprisonment. Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin, 21, had pleaded guilty to killing a civilian, Oleksandr Shelipov, 62, on February 28 in the village of Chupajivka after being ordered to shoot him.
That trial has great symbolism in Ukraine, which accuses Russia of committing atrocities against the civilian population since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into the neighboring country on February 24 in what he called a "military operation". special". Kyiv claims to have identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes. Moscow denies this and maintains that it does not attack the civilian population.
Equally or more symbolic in this conflict is the Numantine defense of Mariúpol, especially that of the combatants entrenched in Azovstal. The Russian siege ended last Friday with the surrender of the last 531 Ukrainian soldiers. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, a total of 2,439 Ukrainian servicemen surrendered.
The fate of these Ukrainian soldiers is still not known with certainty. Many of them belong to the Azov regiment, with nationalist origins but integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces. In Russia they are considered Nazis and the Duma proposed last week to prohibit their inclusion in possible prisoner exchanges.
One possibility regularly proposed in Russia is to use these exchanges to free Ukrainian businessman and politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who has personal ties to Putin and is being held in Ukraine on charges of treason. Yesterday Leonid Slutski, one of the Russian negotiators, said that he could be exchanged for the defenders of Azovstal.
But Putin's spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, rejected it because Medvedchuk "is a Ukrainian citizen, he has nothing to do with Russia and he is not a military man." Slutski later withdrew his words and expressed his agreement with Pushilin that the fate of the Azovstal men be decided by a court.
