Russian sentenced to life in Ukraine’s first war crimes trial

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian soldier who pleaded guilty to killing a Ukrainian civilian was sentenced to life in prison on Monday in the first war crimes trial since Moscow invaded three months ago, unleashing a brutal conflict that has led to accusations of atrocities, left thousands dead, driven millions from their homes and flattened whole swaths of cities.

In a rare public expression of opposition to the war from the ranks of the Russian elite, a veteran diplomat resigned and sent a letter to foreign colleagues in which he said he had never been so ashamed as on the day Moscow invaded.

Since then, a stiff Ukrainian resistance has bogged Russian troops down, thwarting their attempt to take the capital, and the two sides are now fighting village by village in the eastern Donbas region.

As the war rages on, judicial authorities worked to hold one low-level soldier to account in a speedy trial.

An outside expert said the unusual wartime trial appeared to be fair, but a Ukrainian civil liberties advocate said Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin's life sentence was harsh.

Shishimarin, 21, pleaded guilty last week to shooting a 62-year-old man in the head in a village in the northeastern Sumy region in the early days of the war.

He apologised to the man's widow in court.

Shishimarin's defence attorney, Victor Ovsyanikov, argued that his client had been unprepared for the “violent military confrontation” and mass casualties that Russian troops encountered when they invaded Ukraine. He said he would appeal.

Volodymyr Yavorskyy of the Center for Civil Liberties said that the public was interested in “a crystal clear process in compliance with all legal norms.”

“The trial left many questions,” he said. “This is an extremely harsh sentence for one murder during the war, and the very qualification of the crime was wrong.”

But Aarif Abraham, a UK-based human rights lawyer, said the trial was conducted “with what appears to be full and fair due process,” including access to a court-appointed attorney.

This is only the first charge to come to trial. Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating thousands of potential war crimes, as the world has pushed for Russia to be held accountable for its invasion. Russian forces bombed a theatre where civilians were sheltering and struck a maternity hospital.

In the wake of Moscow's withdrawal from towns around Kyiv weeks ago, mass graves were discovered and streets were strewn with bodies in towns such as Bucha.

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