"There was no intention to kill. He did it in order not to have troubles. The unknown person told him not to worry and not to think about what he had done, the main thing was to save those who were retreating." "I received an order from the commander to turn the tank turret and fire an aimed shot at a residential high-rise building." These are quotes from verdicts delivered by Ukrainian courts in war crimes cases. This is how the Russian occupiers explained during trials why they had violated the international humanitarian law and committed crimes against Ukrainian civilians. They stated "sincere remorse" and assured that they did not want to cause harm. However, the statistics say the opposite.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, 150,447 war crimes were registered in Ukraine from the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion until the end of January 2025. During this time, 543 indictments under Article 438 of the Criminal Code — "war crimes" — were submitted to Ukrainian courts.
Sentences have already been delivered to 141 people, but only 19 Russians were convicted in person. The rest were sentenced in absentia, i.e. without the accused being present in the courtroom.
Does this mean that no one will be punished for thousands of war crimes? Is there a chance that the criminals will end up behind bars, and are those who have been convicted in person serving their sentences? The Suspilne investigative editorial office has figured out how justice works against the occupiers and what happens to sentences delivered in absentia.
One shot a security guard, and the other tortured civilians: cases of the Russians military who are being tried in person in Kyiv region
Currently, all occupiers who have committed war crimes in Ukraine are tried under Article 438 of the Criminal Code. According to this article, war crimes include: cruel treatment of prisoners of war or civilians, compulsion of the civilian population for forced labor, plunder of national values in the occupied territory, use of means of warfare prohibited by the international law, other violations of the laws and customs of war provided for by international treaties, as well as giving an order to commit such actions.
These acts are punished with imprisonment for a term of 8 to 12 years. If the crime resulted in death, the punishment is 10 to 15 years of imprisonment or life imprisonment.
Since September 30, 2023, the Irpin City Court has been considering under Article 438 the case of Nikolai Kartashev, the senior gunner of the "Nona-S" self-propelled mortar of the 1st self-propelled artillery battery of the 234th airborne assault regiment. He is accused of killing a civilian during the occupation of Kyiv region at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. This is one of the few cases when the court dock in a war crime case is not empty.
The paratrooper was born on May 13, 2002 in the town of Gukovo, Rostov region. According to the information from the Russian media, he graduated from school after the 9th grade and does not have higher education. In the spring of 2021, he was drafted to the Russian army. In August, he signed a contract, and a few months before his 20th birthday, his unit crossed the Ukrainian border from the territory of Belarus and ended up in Kyiv region.
After five months of war, as reported by the Russian media, citing Kartashev’s relatives and the occupier himself, he deserted and fled to his native Rostov region. However, in January 2023, he was in Ukraine again. He was sent to Kreminna in Luhansk region after being sentenced to a year of probation for desertion.
He was taken prisoner of war in February 2023. During interrogations, he told about the events in Kyiv region.
According to the prosecution, on February 27, 2022, Kartashev, along with other Russian servicemen (Dmitry Antonnikov, Ruslan Garshkov, Denis Monakhov, and Artyom Derkach), was moving in a column along Vokzalna Street in the town of Bucha. At the same time, his unit commander Vadim Tsvetkov ordered over the radio to consider all people in black to be enemies. At that moment, the occupiers noticed an unarmed security guard at the "Novus" supermarket, Valerii Koltunov. The man was dressed in dark clothing. The Russians opened fire. The bullet hit the man in the right lung, which later led to his death.
From the beginning of the investigation, Kartashev collaborated with the law enforcement officers and pleaded guilty.
During the court hearing on January 21, 2025, in a conversation with Judge Yana Shestopalova, he reaffirmed his guilt, but refused to testify.
Kartashev’s case has been under consideration for over a year. In November 2023, the Irpin court returned the indictment to the prosecutor’s office due to a violation of the presumption of innocence, the legal principle according to which a person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty in court.
The Irpin court explained this decision with the fact that the indictment contained information about other Russian military personnel, whose involvement in the crime had not been proven.
The prosecutor filed an appeal against this decision. In February 2024, the appeal was granted and the first instance decision was canceled. However, due to a change of lawyer and two replacements in the panel of judges, the case was reopened in January 2025.
The occupier is charged under Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which carries a penalty of 10 to 15 years in prison or life imprisonment. However, according to Mykhailo Nechytaliuk, the prosecutor in the case, it is too early to consider the length of the sentence:
"We have begun to examine written evidence and other documents obtained during the pre-trial investigation. Next is the interrogation of witnesses and Kartashev, if he wants to testify. I have not decided on the sanction yet, because there is still a long way to it. I have two volumes of investigation materials, six hours of video recordings, and six witnesses. In my opinion, with this speed of the trial, the verdict is still a long way off."
Judge-speaker Yana Shestopalova explains the slow processing of the case by the workload of the Irpin City Court and the insufficient number of judges.
The 22-year-old Russian is currently refusing to testify in court or speak to the media. According to the prosecutor, he is also not responding to his mother’s letters.
We called the occupier’s father, Yevgeny Kartashev. He said that his son last got in touch in May. He denies the murder charges against Nikolai, "He could not have killed a civilian".
The father refused to comment on his son’s participation in the war against Ukraine.
The case of Corporal Andrey Medvedev, the senior reconnaissance rifleman of the 1st battalion of the 104th airborne assault regiment, is also being considered in the Irpin City Court. He is suspected of physical violence against civilian residents of Irpin during the occupation in 2022.
The occupier was born on February 26, 1990 in the village of Matino, Tver region. According to the National Police of Ukraine, he spent the last 10 years of his life fighting in wars: Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kyiv, and Kherson regions. In the summer of 2022, the Russian propaganda media told about his services to the "homeland". Below is a quote from the "Military Reporter" newspaper:
"Advancing through a town in conditions of dense urban development under continuous enemy fire, Corporal Andrey Medvedev discovered and destroyed a pickup truck with a mortar mounted on it and two enemy observation posts with grenade launcher fire, thereby ensuring the prompt advance of the main forces. Corporal Medvedev’s courageous and professional actions allowed the Russian group to develop the offensive."
In September 2022, a few months after his "heroic deeds", the paratrooper was taken prisoner of war in Kherson area. Before that, he received a bullet wound in his left leg and lost part of the ring finger on his right hand.
The investigators found out that Medvedev was involved in several episodes of abuse of civilians during the occupation of Kyiv region in 2022.
On March 3, the occupier spotted two men in the territory of the Irpin military hospital. Without explanation, he pointed an assault rifle at their faces and ordered them to kneel, pressing their heads together. Then Medvedev fired at least twice into the air near the Ukrainians, simulating an execution.
On March 4, as the investigation established, Medvedev was in Bucha, where, together with other Russian soldiers, he detained six civilian men, two of whom were persons with disabilities. The civilians were beaten and threatened with execution, demanding that they reveal the whereabouts of the Ukrainian soldiers. Having realized that the men knew nothing, the occupiers locked them in a cold basement and threatened to throw a grenade there. According to one of the victims, Medvedev said that he would shoot him in the knees.
On March 18 or 19, 2022 (the investigation was unable to determine the exact date), Russian servicemen entered the territory of a private household in Irpin. At that time, a security guard and a gardener were there, looking after the household. During interrogations, Medvedev hit one of the men at least twice and simulated shooting him.
Since March 2023, Medvedev’s case has been considered by the Irpin City Court. However, according to the Media Initiative for Human Rights, the hearings were postponed more often than they were held. For example, in 2024, out of 21 scheduled hearings, only 11 were held, but the evidence was examined in only four of them, and during the rest of the hearings, the preventive measure was continued. The reasons for the postponement were various: the panel of judges did not gather, the interpreter did not arrive, the lawyer did not arrive, they could not turn on the video, which is the evidence in the case, etc.
On February 12, 2025, the court continued to examine the video evidence, including a recording of the interrogation of the victim, who was held in a cold basement and subjected to physical violence.
After viewing the video, the lawyer of the accused, Kyrylo Shurkhno, stated that the materials provided by the prosecutor did not confirm Medvedev’s guilt:
"Your Honor, we have been examining a large amount of evidence for several hearings. Both my client and I cannot understand what relation he has to the above-mentioned events. We have watched the video recordings from the scene, the recording of the victim’s interrogation and no hint of Medvedev’s name or description of his external features was recorded in these investigative actions. The victim notes that he did not even see the people with whom he was held captive. He does not remember people with whom he was kept, so how he can remember Medvedev is beyond me."
The hearing ended with the decision to extend the preventive measure of detention for 60 days.
In a conversation with us, case prosecutor Artem Yakovenko said that there is a request for Medvedev’s exchange.
According to Article 201-1 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, a preventive measure can be lifted if the authorized body has decided to transfer the suspect or accused for prisoner of war exchange. That is, Medvedev can return to Russia before he receives a sentence.
So far, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War has not confirmed to us information about his possible exchange.
In addition, Medvedev is a witness in another war crime case. On March 5, 2022, he saw soldiers from his 104th regiment shoot down two civilian cars on Lech Kaczynski Street in Bucha. Marharyta Chykmarova and her two sons, 4-year-old Klym and 9-year-old Matvii, were killed then. Andrey Medvedev named the five soldiers involved in the shooting.
In 2022, the Suspilne investigative editorial office was the first to establish in the documentary "Bucha 22" that Russian paratroopers from the 104th Regiment were involved in the killing of the Chykmarov family. In 2023, due to Medvedev’s testimony, the Suspilne investigative team named the alleged killers of the family in the documentary "Bucha: Crew 111".
In-person sentences for war criminals delivered since the beginning of the full-scale invasion
Using the register of court decisions, we identified 11 Russian occupiers out of 19 who were convicted in person under Article 438.
Among them, there is Vadim Shishimarin, the squad commander of the 4th guards tank Kantemirov division in Moscow region. He became the first Russian to be convicted in person by Ukraine for the murder of a civilian.
Shishimarin was born on October 17, 2000 in Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk region. He was the eldest brother in a large family without a father. After completing his military service in 2020, he signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense. As he himself said during the Security Service of Ukraine interrogation recorded on video, he did this to "materially support his mother".
According to the investigation, on February 27, 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed a column of Russian armored vehicles in Sumy region. At first, a group of occupiers, which consisted of Shishimarin and four other Russians, moved on foot. Later, they took a car from a civilian, and on the way to the village of Chupakhivka, they noticed 62-year-old Oleksandr Shelipov, who was talking on the phone.
According to Shishimarin, an unknown soldier, who was also in the car with him, allegedly ordered to kill the man because he allegedly could give their whereabouts to the Ukrainian military.
Shishimarin opened the rear window and fired 3-4 shots from an assault rifle. The Ukrainian died from the wounds.
During the court hearing, Shishimarin stated that he did not want to kill the civilian, but "did it in order not to have troubles".
The Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv sentenced him to life imprisonment. However, his lawyer appealed, and the Kyiv Court of Appeals changed the sentence to 15 years in prison.
In July 2024, in an interview to "Ukrinform", Yurii Belousov, the head of the Department for counteracting crimes committed in the armed conflict, reported that Shishimarin was serving his sentence in the territory of Ukraine.
Another in-person convicted occupier is Radik Gukasyan, the driver-mechanic of the 7th company of the 3rd battalion of the 331st paratrooper regiment. As he himself said in an interview to blogger Volodymyr Zolkin, he is of Armenian origin. In 2019, he participated in the war in Syria as part of the Russian army. Three years later, he came to fight in Ukraine.
It is known that between February 28 and March 5, 2022 (the investigators were unable to establish a more precise date) Gukasyan was on the road between the villages of Babyntsi and Zdvyzhivka in Bucha district of Kyiv region. At that time, following the order of the deputy company commander, he shot a car traveling that way. The bullet hit the driver in the head, which was the cause of death. The occupiers buried the man’s body near the road.
The investigators also established that Gukasyan stole a Sony PlayStation portable game console from one of the houses in Bucha district.
During the hearing of the case in the Borodianskyi District Court, the occupier stated "sincere remorse". In April 2024, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for two war crimes.
In the spring of 2024, in a conversation with the "Slidstvo.info" journalists, Gukasyan’s lawyer stated that his client had been submitted for prisoner of war exchange at least six times.
Mikhail Kulikov, the tank gunner of the 35th separate guards motorized rifle brigade, was tried in person for firing at civilian infrastructure.
On February 26, 2022, his tank was moving through the streets of Chernihiv. Then the tank commander ordered to fire in the direction of a high-rise building, because he allegedly noticed a reconnaissance group there. Kulikov fired a high-explosive shell in the direction of the building. There were no casualties. Thus, the Desnianskyi District Court of Chernihiv sentenced Kulikov to 10 years in prison.
The military personnel from the private military company "Redut", Ruslan Kolesnikov and Mikhail Ivanov, and two soldiers from the 16th separate brigade of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, Valentin Bych and Maxim Volvak, were also tried in person. In August 2022, during the occupation of Izium district in Kharkiv region, these four Russians, acting on the order of the unit commander, kidnapped three former Ukrainian military. The men were held in a three-meter pit, and were interrogated with the use of psychological and physical violence to force them to provide information about the residents of Borova, Izium district, who participated in the anti-terrorist operation in the east of Ukraine.
In January 2023, the Kotelevskyi District Court of Poltava region sentenced these Russians to 11 years in prison.
In March 2022, in Chernihiv region, the tank crew member of the 35th separate guards motorized rifle brigade, Nikolai Filatov, threatening with an assault rifle, took a gold chain with a Christian cross from a civilian.
During the court trial, Filatov repented and stated that he was ashamed of what he had done. He was sentenced to 8 years and 6 months in prison.
In February 2022, during the occupation of Kyiv region, Sergey Zakharov, the commander of the rifle squad of the 15th separate motorized rifle brigade, broke into a private house with other Russians and plundered it. He took rings, earrings, and chains worth over 13,000 hryvnias.
In August 2022, the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv sentenced him to 12 years in prison. However, in accordance with the court’s ruling, in November 2022, Zakharov was released from prison and transferred to the Coordination Headquarters for prisoner of war exchange. He served less than two months for his crime.
The driver-loader of the "Grad" combat vehicle, Alexander Bobykin, and the gunner of the same vehicle, Alexander Ivanov, were also convicted in person. On February 22 and 24, 2022, while in the territory of Belgorod region of the Russian Federation, they fired Grad missiles at Kharkiv region.
Later, both crossed the border with their unit and began attacking Kharkiv region from Ukrainian territory. The shells hit residential buildings in Kozacha Lopan and a veterinary school near Derhachi.
In May 2022, the Kotelevskyi District Court of Poltava region sentenced both of them to 11 years and 6 months in prison.
On November 11, 2022, the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv received a petition to release Ivanov from serving his sentence. The petition was sent by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The court released the Russian and transferred him to the Coordination Headquarters for prisoner of war exchange. He served six months for the shelling of Kharkiv region.
So far, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War has not responded to the Suspilne request regarding who of the Russians convicted of war crimes have been exchanged and who are still serving their sentences in Ukraine.
There are nine times more sentences in absentia
The cases we described above are exceptions when the occupiers were present during the trial. Having analyzed 80 verdicts of Ukrainian courts of first instance available in the register of court decisions and issued since the beginning of the full-scale invasion regarding Russian war crimes, we found out that only eight of them were in person. 72 cases were considered without the presence of the accused Russians.
The largest number of in absentia trials were conducted against the occupiers, who, as the investigation established, shot at civilian cars, tortured and morally abused civilians, and used people as human shield. There were 58 such cases.
One of them is the case of Daniil Martynov, the deputy head of the Federal Service of the National Guard of the Russian Federation in Chechnya. On his orders, the occupiers turned patients and employees of a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv region into a human shield.
Between March 5 and 15, 2022, Martynov and his subordinates set up combat positions in the territory of the Borodianskyi psycho-neurological hospital. 500 people in the facility, including 14 children, were held without sufficient food, water, and medicines.
According to the verdict, the director of the hospital stated during the court hearing that at least nine people had died in the institution from the beginning of the hostilities in Kyiv region until March 13, 2022, when the evacuation took place.
The director also said that armed Martynov forced her to thank the Russian military and filmed that. When the woman asked what exactly she should be grateful for, Martynov exclaimed, "For being alive".
According to the Russian media, Martynov is a close associate of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Moreover, Kadyrov allegedly considers him a "real find" for the Chechen security forces, as Martynov has been training local security forces for a long time and founded a special forces university.
In September 2024, the Borodianskyi District Court sentenced Martynov in absentia to 11 years in prison. As of March 7, 2025, this sentence did not enter into force, as the occupier’s lawyer filed an appeal at the end of last year. According to the video from Kadyrov’s official Telegram channel, Martynov was in Chechnya in early October 2024.
Another case in absentia involves Vladik Nebiev, the junior sergeant of the 94th operational regiment of the Russian Guard. The Ukrainian law enforcement found out that in July-August 2022, Nebiev systematically raped a woman in the occupied part of Kherson region, threatening to call his colleagues for a group rape if she resisted.
The occupier did not stop sexual abuse even when the woman complained of feeling unwell and asked to stop. He also forced her to take medication of unknown origin, which only worsened her condition.
On the eve of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the autumn of 2022, Nebiev fled from the right bank of Kherson region. As "Slidstvo.info" reported, in 2023 he returned to Russia where he was awarded for his "heroic deeds". In the Telegram channel of the Suleiman-Stalsky district administration in Dagestan, which is the homeland of the criminal, we found a post dedicated to this event. Below is a quote from the post:
"He is the pride of all residents of our district! I express my sincere gratitude to his parents, who raised a true defender of the fatherland, as well as to everyone who instilled in him the best human, spiritual and moral qualities, formed in him a sense of true patriotism and love for the homeland."
In April 2024, the Velykooleksandrivskyi District Court of Kherson region found Nebiev guilty and sentenced him in absentia to 12 years in prison. Currently, there is no information in open sources about the whereabouts of the rapist.
Challenges of court trials in absentia
The Ukrainian legislation provides for the investigation and prosecution of war crimes in the absence of the suspect or accused, i.e. in absentia. This procedure is implemented as a special pre-trial investigation.
Lawyer, managing partner of the "Umbrella" lawyer association and expert of the NGO "Media Initiative for Human Rights" Andrii Yakovliev explains that pre-trial investigation and judicial proceedings in absentia are carried out on the basis of a ruling by an investigating judge regarding a suspect who is hiding in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, in the territory of an aggressor country, or is on the international wanted list.
"Summons to a suspect are sent to their last known place of residence and are published in national media and on the official website of the Prosecutor General’s Office. From the moment of publication, the suspect is considered to be duly acquainted with its contents. The court may consider the case in the absence of the accused if he/she received a notification of suspicion and had the opportunity to get acquainted with the materials, or his/her whereabouts are unknown or he/she ignores the summons," the expert adds.
For informing, Ukraine also uses publications in the "Government Courier" newspaper, which, according to Yakovliev, is a formal notification and creates a risk that other countries may not recognize the Ukrainian verdict in absentia and refuse to execute it:
"In Ukraine, there is Part 7 of Article 602 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It says that when a foreign country applies to our court and requests to execute a decision made in absentia, we do not accept this decision for execution if the accused was not notified and did not receive a verdict for appeal. That is, we have high requirements for accepting such documents from other countries. However, do we stick to these requirements ourselves? We have the "Government Courier" newspaper, which no one probably reads."
In the expert’s opinion, Ukraine should learn from the experience of, for example, the Netherlands when they informed the defendants in the case of the downed Boeing MH17. The country not only sent messages via courier mail, social networks, emails, and phone calls, but also launched a special website where it was possible to follow the trial.
The next aspect, which is also currently imperfect, according to Yakovlev, is the right of the accused to review the sentence after detention. In international practice, sentences in absentia are recognized if a person, who is not aware of the court decision against them, can defend himself or herself in court again when detained. In Ukraine, the mechanism for reviewing the sentence remains weak: a convicted person can file an appeal after detention, but a complete review of the case is not provided.
In addition, in the case of a conviction in absentia, the procedure for executing the sentence is complicated, since the convicted person is outside Ukraine. In such situations, the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor’s Office are responsible for translating the sentence and sending it to the relevant bodies of another country for recognition and execution of the decision of the Ukrainian court. As Yakovliev notes, there is no unified government body that would deal with this.
"The country spends huge resources on investigations, trials, and the involvement of prosecutors and defense attorneys, but in the end cannot implement the verdict. The question arises: is this a process for the sake of the process or to get a result?" the expert concluded.
The prosecutor of the Department for combating crimes committed in the armed conflict of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Mykhailo Nechytaliuk, admits that in absentia sentences in Ukraine are not effective enough. The trial procedure in absentia, according to him, was introduced in 2014 to bring to justice accomplices of Yanukovych’s criminal regime. However, according to the expert, even then it was criticized:
"The very essence of the institution of proceedings in the absence of a suspect or accused contradicts the fundamental principles of criminal justice. First of all, these are the principles of adversarial parties and ensuring the right of an individual to defense. It has not yet been possible to watch a football or boxing match in the absence of one of the teams. However, the legislator decided that it is possible to conduct an adversarial process in the absence of one of the key participants in criminal proceedings – the suspect/accused. With all the desire, the defense attorney cannot conduct proper defense without the opportunity to coordinate his/her position with the client who is in the occupied territory or in Russia."
The prosecutor also agrees that Ukraine is currently not sufficiently informing Russians about the suspicions of war crimes against them and the trials being conducted against them. In particular, this is due to the fact that there is no international legal cooperation between Ukraine and the Russian Federation after 2022. In addition, Russians do not respond to messages on social networks or messengers through which the Ukrainian law enforcement tries to inform them.
Mykhailo Nechytaliuk adds that the in absentia procedure does not guarantee the actual serving of the sentence. According to the prosecutor, the priority now should be to carefully document Russian war crimes and collect evidence, which in the future will allow for fair in-person trials of war criminals.
