YAHIDNE, Ukraine—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.
Serhiy Krupko, the Ukrainian prosecutor in charge of the investigation, wanted the locals to identify the soldiers who had detained them. One-by-one, investigators showed residents images from the logbook. Did they recognize anyone?
Few of the faces were familiar to the victims.
“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.
People were forced by Russian soldiers to live in the basement of this school in Yahidne, Ukraine.
Photo:
Adrienne Surprenant/MYOP for The Wall Street Journal
Olha Meniailo, who was held captive at the school, sits in her house in Yahidne.
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.
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