After Russian troops pulled out of Yahidne at the end of March, Ukrainian investigators of suspected war crimes found a golden clue: a logbook with photos and personal details of members of one of the Russian military units that had occupied the town.
During their occupation of Yahidne throughout March, the Russians held more than 300 people in the school’s basement, where 10 died. Six other bodies were also found strewn around town after the Russians retreated and a seventh person is missing, presumed dead.
“They all looked the same,” said Olha Meniailo, who kept a diary in captivity that helped investigators build a timeline of what happened, but couldn’t identify anyone with certainty
During their occupation of Yahidne throughout March, the Russians held more than 300 people in the school’s basement, where 10 died. Six other bodies were also found strewn around town after the Russians retreated and a seventh person is missing, presumed dead.
“They all looked the same,” said Olha Meniailo, who kept a diary in captivity that helped investigators build a timeline of what happened, but couldn’t identify anyone with certainty
“They all looked the same,” said Olha Meniailo, who kept a diary in captivity that helped investigators build a timeline of what happened, but couldn’t identify anyone with certainty.
Two months after Russia pulled out of central Ukraine—leaving behind bodies in the streets, mass graves and evidence of torture—prosecutors are entering a second phase of investigating alleged war crimes. They have mostly finished collecting evidence at crime scenes and establishing what took place during the occupation. Now, the foremost challenge is identifying suspects and linking them to specific crimes. The sheer scale of the task is daunting: Ukraine has opened more than 16,000 investigations into suspected war crimes.
The investigation in Yahidne, near Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, shows the difficulties prosecutors face in pinning blame on individual suspects. Some victims, still reeling from their ordeal, are reluctant to point the finger at Russian soldiers, fearing they could return to the area.
The war isn’t over yet,” said Alina Sorokopud, a 24-year-old resident who was held in the basement with her son. Others simply can’t recognize the men who marched them to the school at gunpoint in early March.
Alina Sorokopud, another of the former captives, at home in Yahidne.
Of the roughly 100 Russian soldiers that Mr. Krupko said were involved in holding people in Yahidne, just nine have been indicted so far—none of whom are in custody.
Authorities are using a panoply of methods to identify suspects in those cases. Any Russian phone numbers that pinged Ukrainian cell towers can be traced back to the soldiers who own them. Video of military vehicles can be traced back to individual units. Photos and videos are checked for social-media accounts using an American facial-recognition program, Clearview AI.
So far, more than 7,500 suspects have been identified, according to the national police. Charges have been filed against 127 members of the Russian military. Only 15 of those suspects are in custody.
The rest will be tried in absentia, the former prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said in an interview before she was removed. Those convicted in absentia will be added to the Interpol wanted lists and subject to arrest if they leave Russia. Ms. Venediktova said she hoped those convictions would also send a message to Russian soldiers still fighting in Ukraine.
“We can find them,” she said. “And we will prosecute them.”
Photos taken during the monthlong occupation of Yahidne show the basement where residents were held. When investigators measured the space, they found there was less than half a square meter for each of the 341 people, including 73 children. With no ventilation in the basement, residents said it was hard to breathe. As the frailest began to die a few days into the occupation, residents wrote their names on the wall, alongside a calendar counting the days they spent in captivity.
Makeshift beds in the basement of the school, where 341 civilians had been forced to stay by Russian soldiers.
Russians allowed them out each day in small groups to collect water and food; if they returned late, no one was let out the next day. At night, they were locked in and, with no running water in the basement, used buckets for toilets.
Chickenpox ripped through the group. Dead bodies festered for days in a boiler room before they were buried.
But the residents knew little about the identities of the troops who were holding them captive. Most of the rank-and-file soldiers in the village looked like they were from East Asia, residents said, but the commanders who installed themselves on the upper floors of the school appeared to be ethnic Russians. The officer in charge was known by the call sign “Spider” and was rarely seen. Another officer, who villagers recalled as particularly cruel, went by the call sign “Maple.” Neither bore an insignia on his uniform. Some soldiers concealed their faces.
Finding the logbook, which was left in the vicinity of the school, was a game changer, Mr. Krupko said. Titled “The Journal of Psychological and Pedagogical Observation,” copies of the logbook are now stacked on Mr. Krupko’s desk in the prosecutor’s office in the Chernihiv region. They identify the unit—the Russian army’s 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade—and include names and photos of the troops, plus the commander’s observations about them.
The 55th Motorized Brigade came from Tuva, a predominantly Buddhist area in central Russia, according to an analysis by Janes, the military intelligence company, which uses public sources and tradecraft to track global movements of military units.
Serhiy Krupko shows the logbooks found in Yahidne, filled by a Russian commander with details of Russian soldiers deployed in the area.
The brigade was part of the Military District’s 41st Combined Arms Army, which occupied Yahidne, according to Janes; the 90th Tank Division also arrived late in the occupation of the town. In all, about 1,000 soldiers were present in Yahidne during the occupation, Mr. Krupko said.
Equipment from the 55th Motorized was transferred to Belarus in late December, according to Janes. From Belarus, the units moved into Yahidne, where soldiers made the school their headquarters. The civilians in the basement served as a human shield, designed to deter any artillery attacks by Ukrainian forces, according to prosecutors and the residents.
The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“The biggest challenge is the large number of victims,” said Mr. Krupko. Many of the villagers held in the basement in Yahidne have since left and are now scattered across Europe, he said.
In the Kyiv region, where many of the worst abuses of the Russian occupation occurred, video footage is plentiful, according to Leonid Tymchenko, head of the information and analytical support department for the Ukrainian national police.
“In Irpin, in Bucha, a lot of data has come from private cameras…using that information, we’ve been able to identify a lot of Russian soldiers,” he said.
In small towns around the country, however, the lack of security footage poses challenges.
In the town of Trostyanets, in the Sumy region, Anatoly Savchenko, a 48-year-old local resident, told investigators he was held for five days in March in the train station basement, along with other men. They were repeatedly beaten, he said, and his wrists still bear scars—his hands were bound the entire time. Blood smears the walls of the room where he was held.
But because the men were blindfolded the entire time, they can’t identify the captors. Prosecutors know the First Tank Regiment was at the station, but they don’t know what division it was.
A car destroyed by Russian forces in Yahidne.
In Yahidne, there were no security cameras. In addition to the logbook, investigators also found the packaging of a SIM card, which they traced back to the soldier who owned it.
But proving a soldier was present at a crime scene, or even in a town, isn’t necessarily enough to indict them.
“Criminal law deals with individual responsibility, not state responsibility,” said Howard Morrison, a British former International Criminal Court judge who is now working as an adviser to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. “You have to get over that hurdle.”
Of the 1,000 Russian soldiers who passed through Yahidne, about 100 were involved in holding villagers at the school, Mr. Krupko said. Some 60 of them are in the logbook, which doesn’t contain the identity of the commanders.
The first of nine Russian soldiers indicted so far was Suvan Syn-ool. When Ms. Sorokopud saw his picture the first time, she wasn’t sure he was one of the soldiers who kept residents hostage, but on the second occasion, her doubts dissipated. She recalled seeing Mr. Syn-ool in the schoolyard, though she didn’t witness him doing anything for which he might be indicted. Mr. Syn-ool couldn’t be reached for comment.
Establishing responsibility for the deaths outside the school is even harder as there are no witnesses.
Even when soldiers are identified, prospects of accountability appear faint. After leaving Yahidne, the 55th Motorized Brigade headed east to Izyum, in the Kharkiv region, and from there may have returned to Russia, according to Janes. Mr. Krupko recently googled the name of one of the soldiers identified by residents of the village and found an article about the return of his body to Tuva.
Many of the residents consider this a cleaner end than indictments and trials in absentia would be.
Village council member Yuriy, who identified one of the soldiers and didn’t want to give his full name, said he would rather Russian soldiers were killed and their bodies remained on Ukraine’s soil “to fertilize our land.”
