“The Security Service of Ukraine has launched an investigation into almost 92,000 criminal proceedings regarding the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation.” The following statement has been made by the SBU Head Vasyl Malyuk during the recently held interdepartmental working group meetiong.
In the interview, SBU Head Malyuk mentioned that, “Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the Security Service has started pretrial investigations into almost 92,000 criminal proceedings related to the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Of these, investigations are ongoing in about 43,000 cases related to Russia’s violations of the laws and customs of war.”
This was announced by the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasyl Malyuk, during the meeting of the interdepartmental working group on the interaction of law enforcement and state bodies, held in the Office of the Prosecutor General.
He noted that the investigation of the crimes of the Russian Federation is extremely important both for Ukrainians and for the whole world.
“To date, the SBU is investigating almost 43,000 proceedings under Art. 438 – violation of the laws and customs of war. And we don’t just record these crimes. And we perform all the necessary procedural actions within the framework of Ukrainian legislation. So that sooner or later all Russian criminals will be brought to justice,” said the Head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk.
First of all, this concerns the highest military and political leadership of the Russian Federation and the command of the army.
According to Vasyl Malyuk, 448 war criminals from this category of Russian officials, including more than 25 commanders of separate branches of troops and armies, have been notified of suspicion.
Specific perpetrators of crimes are also established. For example, it was announced that the commander of the heavy bomber regiment, Colonel Tymoshyn, was suspected. SBU investigators established that he was responsible for the rocket attacks on a residential building in Dnipro in January this year and on the Amstor shopping center in Kremenchuk in June 2022.
In total, 95 criminal proceedings against 142 people from the military and political leadership of the Russian Federation have been brought to court, of which 22 have already been convicted.
“The decision of the International Criminal Court to arrest Putin and Lviva-Belova is only the beginning. We have to provide a strong evidence base in order to complete this path,” emphasized Vasyl Malyuk.
He added that international structures are involved in this work, which investigate both individual cases and the “main” proceedings about Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The special service itself uses modern approaches to record war crimes of the Russian Federation. These are not only inspections of crime scenes, but also analysis of open data, use of various software products, systematic interaction with the military and the Prosecutor General’s Office.
“The SBU maximally unifies the search and data analysis work – so as not to lose any evidence of a crime. Debris of missiles, intercepted conversations, satellite images and “trophy documentation” – everything goes into our treasury of evidence,” Vasyl Malyuk emphasized.