War crimes investigations: 5 russian officers indicted for ecocide in Ukraine

February 14, 2024

Congratulations to our intrepid Ukrainian partner Maidan Monitoring for their work on bringing indictments of 5 russian military officers for the crime of ecocide committed under their command while bombing and shelling of the scientific nuclear reactor located at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology in Ukraine, between March and September 2022.

Full text of article translated below (Google translate) from the Maidan Monitoring website: www.maidan.org.ua.

5 Russian officers were indicted for shelling a nuclear installation in Kharkiv

The team of war crimes documenters of the "Maidan Monitoring" Information Center continues to help investigators of the SBU Office in the Kharkiv region in recording Russian war crimes.

In another criminal proceeding, in the framework of which we helped document Russian war crimes, indictments were announced against 5 officers of the Russian army - the commander of a military district, commanders of two armies and commanders of artillery and rocket artillery brigades of the distric

This is the first criminal proceeding on the fact of ecocide in Ukraine or the possibility of its occurrence, which reached the stage of announcing indictments to Russian officers for shelling the nuclear subcritical installation "Neutron Source", located on the territory of the National Scientific Center "Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology" of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which is located in the Pyatikhatka district in the north of Kharkiv. From here to the state border with Russia - 22 km.

Yesterday, February 13, 2024, 5 officers of the Russian Army, who commanded military units and units of the Russian Armed Forces between February 24 and the beginning of September 2022, were indicted for shelling the territory of the Kharkiv Physical and Technical Institute The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which was systematically attacked by Russian troops from March 6 to the beginning of September 2022.

Indictments brought against the following officers:

Colonel-General Oleksandr Zhuravlev, Commander of the Western Military District of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation;

Lieutenant General Vladyslav Yershov, Commander of the 6th Combined Arms Army of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation;

Lieutenant General (as of 2022 – Major General) Oleh Makovetsky, Commander of the 6th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces;

Colonel Yevhen Gerashchenko, Commander of the 79th Reactive Artillery Brigade of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation;

to Colonel Pavel Pilyukov, commander of the 45th heavy artillery brigade of the Russian Armed Forces.

The 6th Combined Arms Army, the 6th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense Forces are part of the Western Military District of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The 45th High Power Artillery Brigade and the 79th Reactive Artillery Brigade are separate brigades under the district command of the Western Military District of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. These units and formations of Russian troops, as well as units subordinate to them, conducted combat operations on the territory of the Kharkiv district of the Kharkiv region with the aim of occupying the Kharkiv region and carried out shelling of the territory of the city of Kharkiv and the Kharkiv district of the Kharkiv region, in particular, protected objects on territory of the Kharkiv Physical and Technical Institute (KhPTI).

The investigation established that the 79th rocket artillery brigade was shelling the territory of the Khfti with 9K58 "Smerch" anti-aircraft missiles at the beginning of March 2022 from positions located in the Belgorod district of the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation near the state border of Ukraine, and from 2S7 "Pion" self-propelled artillery installations from on the territory of the Kharkiv district of the Kharkiv region, 203-mm projectiles were struck at the construction of the nuclear subcritical installation "Neutron Source" of the KhPTI.

Su-30SM, Su-34 combat aircraft of the 14th Fighter Aviation Regiment (Khalino airfield, Kursk city) and Su-35 of the 47th Bombardment Aviation Regiment (Baltimore airfield, Voronezh city) were used for airstrikes on the territory of Khfti. 105th Mixed Aviation Division of the 6th Air Force and Air Defense Forces of the Western Military District of the Russian Federation. The pilots of these units carried out airstrikes on Kharkiv and the Kharkiv district in March-April 2022.

It is important for history that these are the first suspicions of Russian military commanders and commanders for war crimes in Ukraine under Article 441 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine ("ecocide") - "committing actions that can cause an ecological catastrophe, according to a prior conspiracy by a group of persons.”

SBU investigators in the Kharkiv region, with the participation and procedural guidance of the Office of the General Prosecutor and prosecutors of the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office, initiated and implemented legal standards for documenting the results and impact of war on the environment.

KhFTI is a research center of civil nuclear industry and nuclear energy of Ukraine. Civil nuclear facilities, including the Neutron Source nuclear subcritical facility and a nuclear material storage facility, are located on the territory of Khfti on a total area of more than 50 hectares.

The "neutron source" is a research nuclear facility, an accelerator-driven subcritical reactor. It is a civil, scientific and research facility. It produces medical radionuclides, trains specialists in the nuclear field, researches materials and conducts scientific experiments. The nuclear installation was built in accordance with the agreements of the Presidents of Ukraine and the United States during the Washington summit on nuclear security in April 2010, financed by the United States as compensation for the export of 234 kg of highly enriched uranium from the territory of Ukraine to Russia.

Behind the announcement of suspicions against 5 Russian senior and senior officers is a huge amount of work and titanic work of investigators, prosecutors, experts and involved specialists, which lasted for almost 2 years, in which members of the Kharkiv team of the "Maidan Monitoring" Information Center were involved. For us, this is a great honor, a great challenge and a civic duty.

Our team members Nataliya Zubar, Serhii Petrov and other colleagues participated in the analytical work of collecting, recording and monitoring in March - April 2022 the damage to the buildings of the Kharkiv Physical and Technical Institute along its outer perimeter in the conditions of constant artillery shelling of Kharkiv by Russian troops. We monitored open sources of information and coverage of the specified facts of shelling in the so-called "mass media" of the Russian Federation. In fact, the analysis of just such a context became one of the elements that was later used to prove the presence of criminal intent.

Later, Nataliya Zubar helped draw attention to the shelling of the nuclear subcritical installation "Neutron Source" at the international level in the media of the EU countries. Serhiy Petrov was mainly engaged in searching, collecting, processing and analyzing information that is placed in open sources on the Internet in accordance with international standards, so that it becomes an evidence base for criminal proceedings.

Photos and videos of the consequences of the Russian shelling of the Kharkiv Physical and Technical Institute are presented in our exhibition "Disruption. Kharkiv", which was presented to the European Parliament in Brussels (Belgium) in September 2023.

During the shelling of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, the mentioned Russian generals and colonels violated a number of international documents, in particular:

norms 7 and 45 of the Customary International Humanitarian Law on the Protection of the Environment during Armed Conflict, according to which during a military conflict, the parties to it must not attack civilian objects, and it is also prohibited to use any means that can cause large-scale, long-term and serious damage to the natural environment, and the destruction of the natural environment cannot be used as a weapon.

Part 1 of Art. 1 of the 1977 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Means of Influence on the Natural Environment, according to which the parties to a military conflict are obliged not to resort to means of influence on the natural environment that have widespread, long-term or serious consequences.  Clause 3 of Art. 35, item 1 of Art. 55, Art. 48, Part 1 of Art. 51, Part 1, Article 52 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, Concerning the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts of June 8, 1977, according to which it is prohibited to use methods or means of conducting military operations aimed at inflicting or are expected to cause widespread, long-term and serious damage to the natural environment, health or survival of the population, and also define civilian objects as all non-military objects that should not be the object of an attack.

According to the text of the suspicions published on the website of the Prosecutor General's Office, Colonel-General Oleksandr Zhuravlev, Lieutenant-General Vladyslav Yershov and Lieutenant-General (as of 2022 – Major-General) Oleg Makovetsky have been charged with deliberate actions with the aim of changing the borders of the territory and the state border of Ukraine, by prior conspiracy by a group of persons, which led to grave consequences (Part 3 of Article 110 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), waging an aggressive war, committed by a prior conspiracy by a group of persons (Part 2 of Article 28, Part 1 of Article 437 of the Criminal Code), violation of the laws and customs of war, committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy (Part 2 of Article 28, Part 1 of Article 438), as well as the commission of actions that may cause an ecological disaster by a group of persons by prior conspiracy (Part 2, Article 28, Article 441 of the Criminal Code). Thus, these three generals of the Russian army are suspected of committing several serious crimes.

Colonels Yevhen Gerashchenko and Pavlo Pilyukov, who commanded the artillery brigades of the district subordination, are suspected of violating the laws and customs of war committed by a group of persons based on a prior conspiracy (Part 2 of Article 28, Part 1 of Article 438), as well as committing actions that can cause an ecological catastrophe, based on a prior conspiracy by a group of persons (Part 2 of Article 28, Article 441 of the Criminal Code).

The full text of the charges can be found on the website of the Prosecutor General's Office at the following links: regarding Colonel-General Oleksandr Zhuravlev, Lieutenant-General Vladyslav Yershov, Lieutenant-General Oleg Makovetskyi, Colonels Yevhen Gerashchenko and Pavel Pilyukov.

We constantly emphasize that the investigation of criminal proceedings takes a very long time. The work of collecting and processing the evidence base in order to make it possible to announce suspicions to 5 senior and senior officers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation lasted almost 2 years. This is a very complex and scrupulous work of prosecutors, investigators, experts, specialists, and independent public associations, which requires proper documentation of evidence, its processing, conducting examinations and many other investigative and procedural actions, as well as analytical work. The investigation of this criminal proceeding will continue in the future with the aim of finding additional evidence regarding the actions of Generals Zhuravlev, Yershov, Makovetskyi and Colonels Herashchenko and Pilyukov and further forwarding the materials to the court.

One of the goals of our team is not only to document war crimes in a proper way, but also to use these materials in criminal proceedings, in which suspicions will be announced first, and sentences will be passed by the courts later.

Author of the text: Serhii Petrov