A song in Ukrainian can be heard from the playground as the minibus turns into the yard of a former barracks building outside Warsaw, the capital of Poland.
The children sing the Ukrainian song that won the Eurovision Song Contest. The building is old, but brand new swings have been erected in the yard. The old barracks are now housing Ukrainian refugees.
Volunteers climb out of the minibus, who have come to record the refugees’ experiences of the Russian war of aggression.
The purpose is to find refugees from Ukraine to give statements about possible Russian war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Researchers start going around the buildings in the yard and knocking on doors room by room.
A person who escaped from Kiev at the very beginning of the war comes out of one of the rooms Olena Bražnyk.
He wants to tell his story. Chunja dog stays in the room. A war refugee too.
Bražnyk witnessed the first attacks on Kiev.
He receives a 46-item form in front of him, which asks what the witness was able to see about the destruction or attacks caused by Russia.
The fugitives are asked about encounters with Russian soldiers: what did they do to civilians and their property? How did they speak to the local population? Was there a robbery?
Bražnyk starts filling out the form.
– Perhaps the guilty cannot be tried in international courts, but I believe that the information helps to judge them, at least in people’s minds, Bražnyk says after submitting his statement.
Ukrainian authorities are so far opened more than 16,000 investigations into possible war crimes by Russian forces. That is more than the authorities of one country can investigate alone.
Many European countries and the International Criminal Court ICC have come to the rescue. France has sent crime scene investigators to Ukraine.
It is historical that the evidence is being collected at the same time as the Russian war of aggression is still going on. Research is carried out in different countries in collaboration, in parallel and partly overlapping.
The Pilecki Institute, which conducts interviews at the refugee center, operates under the Polish government, but does not conduct actual criminal investigations.
The institute records the experiences of civilians primarily for researchers and history books, but works closely with the Polish Prosecutor’s Office. The most significant statements will be forwarded to the Polish authorities for official investigation.
Bražnyk is also a possible witness, now that his contact information and experience have been recorded.
Gathering refugee experiences is slow and haphazard. At the refugee center in the old barracks, only a few want to come and make a statement. Many feel that they have nothing to say.
Then, in the second building of the refugee center, you find two people who have seen the war so close that they have pictures of corpses from the battles on their cell phones.
I know how the Russians think. They don’t care about the fate of civilians, they shoot where it hurts. Mahammad Jahangorinov
Mustafa Kahraman and Mahammad Jahangorinov are the few male residents of the center. Due to the general movement, Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country, which is why the refugees are mostly women and children.
Kahraman and Jahangorinov were foreign civilians living in Ukraine before the war.
The war turned them into foreign fighters. Both men were sent at the beginning of the war to defend the suburbs of Kiev, Butcha and Irpin. Civilians also died in both towns near Kyiv.
Hailing from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, Jahangorinov speaks excellent Russian and good English. He studied at the university in Kiev when the war broke out, but has also lived in Russia. He wanted to stay and defend Ukraine.
– I know the Russians’ thinking. They were not interested in the fate of civilians, they shot where it hurt, Jahangorinov tells about his experiences against the Russian troops.
Turkish Kahraman was visiting Turkey after the war started, but returned to fight. The family’s home in Sumy, near the Russian border, was no longer accessible when Russia was attacked from the north.
His Ukrainian wife and the couple’s two children were caught in the middle of the attack. According to Kahramin, they were hiding in a bomb shelter for more than a month.
At that time, Kahraman was defending the vicinity of Kyiv. He says that he saw numerous civilian victims killed by Russia in Butša and Irpini. Helping the victims was difficult.
– We couldn’t check if they were alive. Mines were hidden in the victims, says Kahraman.
Russian troops mined the vicinity of Kiev before withdrawing at the beginning of April. International organizations evaluated clearing will take years.
There were many young Russians who were told by the commanders that it was a military exercise. Mustafa Kahraman
According to a Turkish foreign fighter, one of the combat advantages of the Russian forces in the vicinity of Kiev was that they did not try to avoid bombing civilian targets like in Ukraine. Schools and residential buildings with civilians in bomb shelters in their basements were also targeted.
He takes out his cell phone and starts showing pictures of Butša’s fights. One picture shows the mutilated bodies of four very young Russian soldiers. One is missing the entire lower body.
Kahraman said that they killed the Russians in the tank because they refused to come out despite the order to surrender. According to him, many Russians did not know how to act at the front.
– There were a lot of young Russians there, to whom the commanders told that it was a military exercise.
According to Kahraman, they found several Russian deserters hiding in forests and elsewhere.
For Poles, men’s testimony is interesting, even though the men serve as soldiers.
The voluntary interviewees of the Pilecki Institute give the number and ask to send pictures and videos taken of Irpin and Butša to the researchers.
Evidence of potential Russia’s crimes are being collected all over Europe. In Finland, the Police Board has already started interviewing Ukrainian refugees who fled to Finland in connection with possible war crimes.
Police Inspector of the Police Board Måns Enqvist tells by phone that two interviews were recorded during Midsummer week. More than 25,000 refugees from Ukraine have been registered in Finland.
In Finland too, it is partly random who is asked about the events of the war. Refugees have been directed to speak to the police, for example, if something significant has been heard in connection with registration.
In Poland, the proportions are completely different. 3.5 million Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Poland since February 24. Some of them have continued to other parts of Europe and some have returned to Ukraine.
Polish researchers have so far collected hundreds of eyewitness accounts from those who fled Ukraine. They are archived so that possible Russian hackers cannot access the information, says the director of the institute Magdalena Gawin in his office in Warsaw.
According to Gawin, proving war crimes until the verdict will be very difficult. War is chaos, and gathering evidence against individuals is slow. It is even more difficult to bring those who decide on military actions to justice.
According to Gawin, it is particularly difficult to investigate possible rapes and sexual violence committed by Russian forces. Not all victims want to talk.
War is chaos. Many find it difficult to say anything other than that a family member has disappeared. Magdalena Gawin
So far, interviews with the institute he leads have revealed three cases in which rapes have been reported.
– These crimes are very difficult to prove. Russia, of course, denies everything, says Gawin.
The institute also conducts some interviews in Ukraine. According to Gawin, people talk about their own personal experience and what happened to those close to them.
People have disappeared and Ukrainians have been transferred to Russia during the war. According to Gawin, the entire family of some of the interviewees has died.
– War is chaos. Many find it difficult to say anything other than that a family member has disappeared.
Volunteers the interviewers are in the refugee center for hours, but in the end only five wanted to talk about their experiences.
Gathering eyewitness accounts is slow. It is difficult to find volunteers who know Ukraine. Individual reports still need to be archived and translated into different languages.
According to Gawin, what legal terms the war will be used in the courts is a very important question.
– I believe that it is about war crimes and crimes against humanity. But the war also has features of genocide, says Gawin.
Court proceedings are long. That is why the Polish Institute collects eyewitness accounts alongside the criminal investigation and is planning a public archive of the accounts of those who experienced the war.
According to historian Gawin, knowledge itself is an effective tool against war. Not forgetting what war means to civilians.
Read more:
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