Ukraine sentences first Russian soldier tried for war crimes to life in prison

Undeterred and still wearing the boots of the Russian army, the soldier Vadim Shishimarin heard on Monday the sentence of the Ukrainian justice that sentenced him to life in prison for killing a civilian who simply spoke on the phone in the street leaning on his bicycle.

This has been decided by a court that has found Shishimarin guilty of murder in what means the first trial of a Russian soldier for war crimes in Ukraine.

More information

The war in Ukraine, live

The court has detailed that the 21-year-old soldier shot a civilian who was not armed and that he did so intentionally, although the victim, a 62-year-old man, had not shown any aggression.

The trial, held over three days, is the first of several to be held in the coming weeks and will be a test for the Ukrainian judicial system, at a time when international institutions are launching their own investigations into abuses committed by Russian troops. since the beginning of the invasion at the end of February.

According to the court, on February 28, Shishimarin and four other Russian soldiers were driving a stolen civilian car through the village of Chupakhivka in Sumi province near Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia.

The soldiers came across a local peasant, Shelipov, who was on the street talking on the phone.

Shishimarin then took his kalashnikov and shot him in the head from the car window.

Shortly after they tried to flee, but were ambushed by Ukrainian militiamen until Shishimarin surrendered.

Almost three months after that, the express trial against Shishimarin has been held, who has followed the sessions inside an armored glass compartment dressed in a sweatshirt.

Shishimarin listened without moving and in silence to the court sentence that condemns him to spend the rest of his life in a Ukrainian prison.

Before learning of the verdict, the peasant's widow addressed the soldier, looking him in the eye: “Tell me, please, why did you come here?

To protect us?” she asked, citing Russian President Vladimir Putin's argument to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

“What did my husband do to you?” she asked him again.

The soldier's lawyer asked for his acquittal.

“He does not deny that he fired a shot.

However, he did not know if he had killed this person, ”Viktor Ovsiannikov said during the trial.

“If he had realized that, why would he give himself up?” he added.

According to Ovsiannikov, superiors ordered Shishimarin to shoot and he had to obey.

"He was pressured by two people whom he perceived as his commanders in that circumstance," he insisted.

“He did not intend to kill him.

His shots were not directed.

He complied with the order, but not with the intention of killing a person, ”the lawyer continued.

“I sincerely regret what I did.

At that time he was nervous, there were hostilities.

I didn't want to kill.

But it happened…” said Shishimarin, who apologized to the victim's wife on several occasions.

The soldier's argument is that the man with the phone in his hand was trying to rat them out and they forced him to shoot, he said during the trial.

Prosecutors, however, argued that Shishimarin did not have to obey the orders of his fellow soldiers, as they were from another unit and he was not his subordinate.

"There is no clause in Russia's military regulations that says a soldier can kill a civilian," prosecutor Yaroslav Ushiapivskii said.

"Shishimarin realized that the order was to kill that man and he carried it out, firing his machine gun three or four times," the prosecutor added.

"He deliberately killed a civilian," he continued.

According to his lawyer, the soldier fired after twice refusing to comply with the order and only one of the four shots he had hit.

During the trial, Katerina, Shelipov's widow, agreed with prosecutors in asking for life in prison for the Russian soldier, but admitted one exception: "If they change him for the defenders of Mariupol," she said, referring to the soldiers evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant days before, "I will not oppose".

The convicted Russian soldier had been in the army for three years.

As he explained, he was the eldest of five children and had signed a contract with the Russian armed forces to earn some money and help support a family that his mother raises alone.

Originally from Irkutsk Oblast, near Mongolia, he aspired to soon leave the army and its headquarters in Moscow.

“I feel sorry both for our people and for the Ukrainians”

The mother of the first Russian soldier sentenced in Ukraine “had no idea there was a war” until a video of her son in captivity came into her hands a week after the offensive began.

Unlike the Russian authorities, who have kept a conspicuous silence about the trial, Liubov - she did not want to say the surname of her husband, Shishimarin's stepfather - has given an exclusive interview to the independent newspaper

, declared a foreign agent by the Kremlin.

“I feel sorry both for our people and for the Ukrainians.

Their children are dying in the same way as ours.

Someone's husband, someone's child... I know what it's like to lose a husband, I know what it's like to have children left without a father, especially if he was a loving father.

I do not understand why someone has wanted so many people to die, ”laments Shishimarin's mother in her interview.

The mother of the soldier, who defends that her son "would not be capable" of committing the crime for which he has been convicted, regrets that the Russian armed forces have not helped at all to know his whereabouts and is grateful that the Ukrainians record the prisoners.

"He is good, otherwise I would have no idea where my son is and if he is still alive," she stresses.

The Russian Defense Ministry has declined to comment on the conviction on Monday.

Yes, Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, has done it, although he has measured his words to the millimeter.

"Of course we are concerned about the fate of our citizen, but I repeat, we have not been able to protect their interests in person," said the Kremlin representative, criticizing that in that country

"their institutions do not operate

"Although this does not mean that we give up considering options through other channels," added Peskov.

Ukraine accuses Russia of atrocities and brutality against civilians during the invasion, saying it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes.

Last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it had dispatched a team of 42 experts to investigate allegations of war crimes allegedly committed during the Russian invasion, the largest mission ever deployed by the ICC on the ground. .

Russia left the European Court of Human Rights in March and its 2020 constitutional reform makes compliance with international laws subject to national ones, while the separatist areas of Donbas introduced the death penalty after starting the war in 2014.

Follow all the international information on