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full screen Yurii Bilous on a visit to Stockholm during the organization Civil rights defenders’ human rights conference at the end of October. Photo: Claudio Bresciani/TT
International courts work to hold leaders accountable for war crimes.
But for former business lawyer Yurii Bilous, that’s not enough.
– Many soldiers must be punished in Ukraine as well, he says.
Yurii Bilous fumbles for the right words in English to explain the suffering he saw in the man in Mariupol who lost his mother, wife and two children in a Russian attack.
– His face crumpled up, he tells TT during a break from the human rights organization Civil rights defenders conference in Stockholm at the end of October.
Ukrainian Yurii Bilous had managed to be a business lawyer for four years when Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February 2022. As a resident of the Butya region just outside Kiev, the violence quickly came close and on March 1 he decided to start documenting the war crimes taking place around him.
The case in Mariupol stands out for Yurii Bilous precisely because the man’s pain was so visible – but the story of his loss is one of several hundreds that Bilous has collected by seeking out and interviewing those who were hardest hit by the war and finding photographic material to corroborate the testimonies.
Seeking other justice
Bilous sends all documentation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Chief Prosecutor of Ukraine.
But he also hopes to achieve something beyond what the ICC deals with in The Hague, where mainly leaders and people high up in the decision-making chain are brought to justice.
Certainly Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu should be punished, but there is another aspect of justice – where Ukrainian bodies must bring individual perpetrators to justice, he says.
– It is our job, which must be done within our systems.
For the former business lawyer, there is also a strong focus on seeking compensation for the material damages that the large-scale invasion entailed.
– Russia is destroying our cities. We have to find a way to demand payment for it, he says.
Empty benches in the court
Historically, Russian aggression against Ukraine has not been as well documented as during today’s war. Much of what Yurii Bilous is doing now is about doing just that.
Therefore, it does not matter much that the Ukrainian trials in which he is involved take place with an empty bench where the defendant is supposed to sit.
– We have to carry out the legal processes anyway, to answer Russian propaganda and future legal attacks from Russia. The war is not only going on in the military.