KHARKIV On the edge of the industrial area, a dramatic sight surprises you: the bodies of Russian missiles and rockets are arranged according to size in huge rows. Another thousand used missiles and rockets have been collected on a plot of a few thousand square meters.
The rusted, warped and shattered weapons look like scrap metal, but Ukraine carefully examines the remains of each rocket.
According to Ukraine, the rockets and missiles testify to Russia’s war crimes, because the vast majority of them have been fired in the middle of residential areas.
Spokesperson of the Prosecutor’s Office in Kharkiv Dmytro Chubenko walks among the torn pipes and displays the most diabolical of weapons.
– The parts of a cluster bomb are placed inside like this, Chubenko says and illustrates with his hands.
The rocket body is like a rack with compartments for small bombs.
– At the specified moment, the daughter bombs are released in the air and fall. They explode when they hit the ground, Chubenko says.
Cluster munitions especially kill civilians who are not protected from shrapnel.
More than half of the world’s countries would like to ban cluster weapons completely with an international agreement (you switch to another service)but for example Russia, Ukraine, Finland and the United States oppose the ban on cluster munitions.
In its attack on Ukraine, Russia has used cluster munitions extensively, for example in the Kharkiv region.
According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians in the Kharkiv region are war crimes.
The Human Rights Watch organization, on the other hand, has accused Ukraine of having probably used cluster munitions when the war started in Donbas in 2014. The Ukrainian armed forces have denied the accusation.
According to Ukraine, Russia has committed more than 14,000 war crimes in Kharkiv
Investigating war crimes requires a lot of work. Ukraine is investigating a total of more than 14,000 suspects of Russian war crimes in the Kharkiv region. Most of them are related to the bombing of residential areas.
According to Chubenko, Russia has made a total of more than 10,000 separate rocket and missile attacks on the Kharkiv area. More than 1,500 civilians have been killed and more than 1,700 wounded in these attacks.
In the spring of last year, Russian troops advanced to the very edge of the city of Kharkiv, when Russia fired its artillery especially fiercely at the huge Saltivka apartment block.
A large part of the remains collected in the missile storage comes from Saltivka.
The Russian troops pushed back behind the border last year no longer attack Kharkov with their artillery, but Russia still bombards Kharkov from time to time with missiles. Their flight distance from the Russian side is so short that the air warning of a missile attack usually comes only after the fact.
In addition, Russia terrorizes the inhabitants of villages and towns located on the surface of the border with grenade attacks. A grenade also hit ‘s film crew in mid-April.
After the crime scene investigation and eyewitness interviews, Ukraine is trying to find out where the rockets and missiles were made, who maintained them and which military unit launched them.
– There are some abbreviations and markings here, Chubenko says and shows a series of numbers on the inside of the missile.
Surprisingly, Russia is also useful in the investigation. According to Chubenko, Russia strives to document the missiles accurately so that the culprits are held accountable in those cases when the missiles and rockets do not work as planned.
Now, the same precision is helping Ukraine document war crimes. Although the missiles disintegrate into fragments, serial numbers and, for example, markings from the missiles’ maintenance history can still be found on the remains.
According to Chubenko, in some cases the names of the persons who maintained them are even marked on the missiles.
The prosecutor’s office also blames the technology used by the missiles, the sophistication of which, according to Chubenko, came as a surprise.
– The Kalibr and Iskander missiles hit quite accurately. They fly hundreds or thousands of kilometers, but hit the target with a maximum throw of 20 meters, Chubenko says.
Kalibr is a cruise missile with a range of about a couple of thousand kilometers, which is fired from the sea. Iskander, on the other hand, is a ground-launched ballistic missile with a range of about 500 kilometers.
Ukraine was surprised by Russia’s waste
In addition to rocket and missile technology, Ukrainian researchers have been surprised by how much Russia has been willing to spend on missile strikes.
– I was amazed by their monetary value, says Chubenko.
He estimates that the thousand or so missiles and rockets visible in the yard have cost Russia more than one hundred million euros.
In Chubenko’s opinion, blaming the missiles on mostly civilian targets has been an endless waste.
– An unimaginable and disproportionate amount of money has been spent on the war against Ukraine, but still it has not been enough, says Chubenko.
Russia has not succeeded in its goals in the direction of Kharkiv: last year it was not able to blockade, let alone conquer, the city of Kharkov.
Harkova has also quickly recovered from the attacks on electricity production and other infrastructure. When ‘s film crew visited the city in April, there were no longer any power outages.
In addition to senseless destruction, however, Russian missile and rocket attacks have caused great and irreversible human suffering.
Chubenko cannot understand why Russia has ended up terrorizing the civilian population of the region.
– These rockets have derailed people’s lives. Murders have been committed with them. This is our terrible reality, says Chubenko, sitting on top of a wrecked Russian rocket.
The rockets will be kept as a memory of Russian cruelty. Then, when they are no longer needed in the war crimes investigation, they can end up in a museum, for example, according to Chubenko.
What thoughts do Russia’s missile and rocket attacks evoke? You can discuss the topic on Fri 5.5. until 11 p.m.