The Russian lieutenant-colonel Azatbek Omurbekov already has a nickname: the “butcher of Boutcha”. The broadcast of images of the massacre of civilians in this Ukrainian city located near kyiv, following the withdrawal of Russian troops on April 1, shocked the whole world. And the time has come to find the culprits.
In Europe, several countries, such as France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Sweden and Spain have opened investigations and hope to be able to convict those responsible for the killing, qualified of “genocide” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The International Criminal Court (ICC), whose job it is to go up the chain of command, is also on the case. And the Ukrainians are carrying out their investigations on the spot in parallel.
- A Russian lieutenant-colonel in his forties
Azatbek Omurbekov could be the subject of an arrest warrant, in order to be tried by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. This is the commander of the 64th motorized rifle brigade of the Russian ground forces. The lieutenant-colonel, aged about forty, occupied Boutcha with his battalion of around 1,600 men, before retreating to Russia.
It is an organization of volunteer Ukrainian civilians monitoring the activities of the army and special services of Vladimir Putin, InformNapalm, who revealed his identity on Twitter and Telegram, believing “according to preliminary data” that the Russian soldier “committed war crimes in Boutcha, in the kyiv region”. The activists say they worked on the basis of open access intelligence documents, Open Source Intelligence, and a leak from a hacker group, Anonymous.
These volunteers published his telephone number, email address and postal address to enable the competent authorities to locate him.
- Blessed by the Orthodox Church
Ukrainian volunteers also report that this commander was blessed by the Orthodox Church in November 2021. A ceremony during which the person concerned would have declared : “History shows that we fight most of our battles with our souls. Weapons are not the most important thing in a war.” Which obviously wouldn’t have stopped him from using it against civilians in Boutcha.
Azatbek Omurbekov, head of Unit 51,460, based in a city in Russia’s Far East, was also decorated by Russian Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov for outstanding service in 2014, according to the Timeswhen Russia succeeded in annexing Crimea.
ICC investigators will now have to find evidence of atrocities committed by Azatbek Omurbekov’s men. For him to be brought to justice, however, he will have to be extradited. However, in 2016, Russia withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute, the founding international treaty of the ICC. Consequently, the arrest of a Russian personality found guilty by the Court is only possible on the territory of one of the 123 member states of the ICC.
- Terrifying testimonies
The testimonies of Boutcha survivors leave little room for doubt as to the massacre, despite the denials of the Kremlin denouncing tricks by the Ukrainian army. “Right before my eyes, they shot a man who was going to get food from the supermarket,” Olena told Agence France-Presse (AFP). According to her, Russian forces different from regular soldiers have spread terror in the city. “At the beginning, there were mostly young soldiers [russes]. Then, two weeks later, there were others. Older. They were over 40 years old. They were brutal. They mistreated everyone. And that’s where the killings started.”
On entering Boutcha on Saturday April 2, AFP saw the bodies of at least 22 people wearing civilian clothes in the streets of this town. One of them was lying near a bicycle and another had shopping bags next to her. A corpse had its hands tied behind its back. On Monday, the bodies of five men, also with their hands tied, were also found in the basement of a children’s sanatorium, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said. According to the mayor of Boutcha, Anatoly Fedorouk, 280 people had to be buried in recent days in “mass graves” in this city, the number of corpses accumulating.
In a solemn speech by video broadcast live in the chamber of the UN Council, Volodymyr Zelensky called on the institution to hold Russia “accountable” for its “war crimes” perpetrated in Ukraine since its invasion on 24 February. For this, he added, Moscow must be excluded from the Security Council, of which it is one of the five permanent members with the right of veto, or the UN system must be reformed so that “the right of veto does not mean the right to kill”.