A historic moment that also has test value.

Ukraine opens its first war crime trial since the Russian invasion on February 24, which should soon be followed by others.

This is enough to assess the independence and reliability of the Ukrainian judicial system, at a time when international institutions are also conducting their own investigations into the abuses committed by Russian troops in this country.

Vadim Chichimarine, 21, has been appearing since the beginning of the afternoon before the Solomiansky district court in kyiv, where he will have to explain himself on the death of a 62-year-old unarmed man on February 28 in the north- east of Ukraine.

Charged with war crimes and premeditated murder, the soldier, originally from Irkutsk in Siberia, faces life imprisonment.

The story of the facts

“He understands the charges against him,” says his lawyer, Viktor Ovsiannikov, without wanting to reveal his defense strategy.

According to the Ukrainian authorities, he is cooperating with the investigators and admits the facts, which took place only four days after the start of the Russian invasion.

According to the prosecution, Sergeant Vadim Chichimarine was commanding a small unit within a tank division when his convoy was attacked.

With four other soldiers, he then stole a car.

While driving near the village of Choupakhivka, in the Sumy region in the northeast, they had come across a 62-year-old man, who was pushing his bicycle while on the phone.

"One of the soldiers ordered the accused to kill the civilian so that he would not denounce them", according to the services of the general prosecutor.

Vadim Chichimarine then fired a Kalashnikov from the window of the vehicle and "the man died instantly, a few dozen meters from his home," they added in a statement.

A very first high-stakes trial

In early May, the Ukrainian authorities announced his arrest without giving details, while publishing a video in which Vadim Chichimarine said he had come to fight in Ukraine to "financially support his mother".

Regarding the charges against him, he explained: “I received the order to shoot, I shot him once.

He fell and we continued on our way.

The case is difficult, according to his lawyer.

“We have never had such a charge in Ukraine, we have no precedents, no verdict”, he underlined.

The Attorney General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova, in a series of messages on Twitter, underlined the stakes of the file for her country.

“We opened more than 11,000 war crimes investigations and arrested 40 suspects,” she recalled.

While waiting for them to arrive in court, “with this first trial, we are sending a clear signal: no executioner, no person who ordered or helped to commit crimes in Ukraine will escape justice.

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Legal trial or political trial?

Proof of Ukrainian determination not to waste time: two Russian soldiers should be tried from Thursday for having fired rockets at civilian infrastructure in the Kharkiv region.

"These procedures are much faster than usual", when it sometimes takes five years between a crime and a verdict, underlines Oleksandr Pavlichenko, director of the Ukrainian branch of the association for the defense of human rights, Helsinki Group.

"It's probably because the motivations are both legal and political," he says.

For him, the question is therefore whether “we will have a real judicial process or just a theatrical performance for the public.

And the answer will depend, according to him, on the fate reserved for Sergeant Chichimarine after the verdict: will he serve his sentence in Ukraine or will he benefit from an exchange of prisoners?

Without waiting for the sentence, his relatives, interviewed by the Russian press, began to plead in this direction.

"We are in an information war," lamented his father Evgueni quoted in the newspaper Nastoïachtchee Vremia asking for his return.

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