During a Wednesday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, survivors of Russian war crimes and the Ukrainian prosecutor general catalogued the atrocities that Russians are perpetrating in occupied Ukraine.
“In January of this year, they came for me,” explained a 57-year-old woman named Lyubov, who dreamed to live in her parents’ home by the sea in Kherson oblast, Ukraine. An accountant, Lyubov had many plans and many dreams, but the Russian invasion destroyed them all, she said. The Russian military walked into her home uninvited, saying they were looking for weapons. They found none, but confiscated a map of Ukraine and a flag of Ukraine to use as evidence against her.
“They took me to their torture chamber and kept me there for five days. This was terrible. I was beaten. They forced me to undress, cutting my body with a knife and threatening to rape and kill me,” Lyubov said through tears. “I also was taken out into the field and they beat me again. They put a handgun next to my head and shot as if executing me. They also forced me to dig my own grave.”
The Russians who held her captive let her go and she was miraculously able to flee by traveling through Crimea, Russia, and through to Poland and Latvia. Now, owing to a program implemented by Congress, she is reunited with her daughter, who’s a U.S. citizen.
However, others have not managed to escape. Ukrainian prosecutor general Andriy Kostin, who also gave testimony during the hearing, has registered close to 80,000 cases of war crimes and said Wednesday that evidence for these crimes is growing exponentially now that parts of Ukraine have been deoccupied.
“Such behavior is a feature of Russian military and political doctrine and modus operandi,” said Kostin. “Russian forces have regularly been shelling evacuation routes and convoys marked as civilian. [They have] systematically practiced torture and rape and engaged in summary executions after which mass graves are being discovered throughout the country. . . .Their objective is to sow fear and terror.”
Kostin explained that in Kherson oblast, 908 civilians have been registered dead and approximately 20 torture chambers have been discovered. Over 1,000 survivors have submitted harrowing evidence, Kostin said.
“Survivors report that Russian forces subjected them to different forms of abuse, including beating with sticks and rubber batons, use of electric shock, waterboarding, stripping them naked, threats of death and mutilation,” Kostin explained, adding that Ukraine has discovered financial records linking the torture chambers to Russian security agencies.
Kostin added that there have been 60 instances of rape registered in Kherson oblast, including the rape of children in front of their families. “Sexual violence has also been used as a political and military tactic by Russian forces,” Kostin said.
The prosecutor general added that throughout occupied Ukraine “public officials and politically active citizens who dissented from denouncing Ukraine disappeared or were executed.”
In his opening statement, House Foreign Affairs chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) listed other atrocities, including the bombing of countless apartment complexes and a maternity hospital, Russia’s mobile crematoriums, and torture chambers not always being reserved for adults, with a special cell for torturing children recently discovered. McCaul also pointed to the sheer disregard for human life, pointing to reports of the beheading of a POW and the recent confession of former commanders of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group that they executed 20 children and blew up a pit of more than 50 wounded captives.
McCaul explained that he has learned Russian soldiers carry Viagra to facilitate sexual violence and that he heard from a mother that her five-year-old was gang-raped to death by ten Wagner mercenaries who then threw her body to the side of the road.
“These were not the actions of some rogue soldiers, but rather a planned and financed operation of terror sanctioned at the highest level at the Kremlin,” explained McCaul. “This is happening right now. They’re monsters and they need to be brought to justice. . . .What we’re witnessing in Ukraine is genocide.”
“It is beyond time that this administration along with our allies provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to win. We need to do more than just give Ukraine enough for survival,” McCaul said.
Ranking member Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) agreed with McCaul that urgent action is needed. “You can’t be human and not feel the evil that has been done to our witnesses and to the Ukrainian people,” said Meeks. “It is in our national interest to provide the support to Ukraine so it wins this war . . . and after Ukraine wins, post-conflict justice and accountability must be central in any post-war reconstruction effort.”
Both McCaul and Meeks mentioned the Nuremberg trials as a model for war-crime accountability.
“You’re absolutely right, both of you, that the Nuremberg trials ensured long-lasting peace in Europe for decades,” explained Kostin. “Now we have a gap in the international system of law and order. We need to fill in this gap and to ensure long-lasting peace for Europe and [globally.]”
“The establishment of a special tribunal for the crime of aggression is an extremely important element of our web of accountability because the crime of aggression, which is a leadership crime and which led to all other war crimes committed, should be prosecuted and punished on an international level,” said Kostin. “A proper international tribunal for the crime of aggression will also play a deterrent factor for any future aggressor.”
The Foreign Affairs Committee also heard from a representative of a child victim who was in an adjacent room. The Ukrainian attorney representing 16-year-old Roman explained that he was an orphan attending a technical school in Donetsk oblast on February 24, 2022 when the Russians occupied that area.
“There was an instance when the Russian armored vehicle directed its gun right at the children standing right near the entrance [of the school],” the attorney explained, and under increased pressure, it became clear to Roman that he could not live in those conditions.
The minor walked 60 kilometers on foot in the winter, sleeping outdoors and begging for food. He and others with him were stopped by the Russian military many times. The soldiers interrogated them and even aimed guns above their heads, shooting. When Roman reached his home, the Russian military moved into that community as well. Occupation authorities ordered Roman to go to a hospital and notified him that he would be issued a different family, ignoring his protests that his brother and sister who were there act as his legal representatives. Roman was taken to a different hospital and then in May abducted to Russia along with other children.
“They found a new family for Roman. They tried to reshape his mind. They made him watch propaganda programs on TV. They discussed news about Ukraine in a negative way. They were restricting his communications with peers. And they tracked his movements through a special app on his phone. They also featured him on propaganda programs on TV and forced him to say he liked his new family and his new life,” the attorney said during the hearing.
Roman’s representative explained he was miraculously able to return to Ukraine through help by Ukrainian volunteers, but was unable to give further details so as to protect the child’s safety.
“Such crimes are systemic and widely spread . . . these facts tell us that this was a detailed, premeditated operation aimed to deport Ukrainian children to Russia,” the attorney explained. “Those measures are aimed at depriving the children of a Ukrainian identity.”
The attorney detailed another story she had been told by a Ukrainian child, who is now in the Russian Federation.
“It is hard to sleep at night. I saw so many deaths and there are two deaths which keep torturing my conscience. One was the death of my best friend and the other was a little girl, who I was not able to rescue,” the attorney quoted the child as saying. The child had seen his close friend blown apart and he had also witnessed the death of a 10-year-old girl shot in the chest. He had sought to comfort her as she lay dying. “I took her in my arms, was trying to calm her down, because there was nothing we could do for her . . . I was telling her, ‘Everything will be all right,’ but my soul was being torn apart,” the child said.
“Over 20,000 children have been abducted, taken into Russia for indoctrination,” McCaul explained.
The attorney said that Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, had visited children in captivity like Roman. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for both Lvova-Belova and Russian president Vladimir Putin for bearing personal responsibility for the unlawful abduction of Ukrainian children. Just one day after the charges were announced, Putin visited an art school and a children’s center in occupied Crimea.
“No country can remain neutral in the face of such evil,” McCaul explained, adding that Putin, Russia, and every individual who committed war crimes must be held accountable.
“I remember visiting with a Ukrainian soldier the last time I was in Ukraine. He said ‘We’re fighting for you. We’re fighting for the free world,'” McCaul said. “And they are.”
Kostin urged the U.S. to continue leading on this issue. Earlier this week, the Department of Justice explained that it is taking additional legal measures in its attempt to hold Russians accountable for their war crimes. An experienced prosecutor is being sent to The Hague and the DOJ will also send a resident legal adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to work on a variety of complex justice-sector issues. Both the U.S. and Ukraine are taking additional steps to prosecute war-crimes suspects in their jurisdictions and they are putting additional pressure on Russian oligarchs through financial levers like asset seizure. Congress has granted the DOJ the authority to transfer certain assets seized from Russian oligarchs for use in rebuilding Ukraine.
The prosecutor general called for the U.S. to designate Wagner Group as a foreign terrorist organization, which the Biden administration has been reluctant to do. He also supported further amendments to the U.S. penal code to criminalize crimes against humanity so as to prevent impunity for perpetrators who appear on U.S. soil.
“When the U.S. takes the lead on these issues, the world watches. It emboldens our own efforts in obtaining international justice,” Kostin said during the hearing.
The 57-year-old accountant who had been tortured explained that she has a new dream to go back to her occupied village one day and rebuild.
“Every Ukrainian person has a dream to live freely on their land. The only way to make this possible is to drive away the occupiers and for that we need your military help,” Lyubov explained.
“We, the survivors of those crimes . . . want justice to be brought. Just and fair payback,” she added.