The 21-year-old was charged with shooting dead Oleksandr Shelipov, a 62-year-old civilian man in the Sumy region of Ukraine on the fourth day of the war.

He asked last week during the trial for forgiveness for the victim's widow. 

- I understand that you can not forgive me, but I ask you for forgiveness, he said then. 

He has confessed to the crime, but also says he obeyed orders from officers.  

The officer insisted that the unarmed man, who was talking on the phone, could point out their positions for the Ukrainian army, which would have justified the shooting.

According to Vadim's Sjismarin's testimony, he did not want to shoot, but did not consider himself to have a choice since another officer repeated the order.

"High bar"

Mark Klamberg is a professor of international law at Stockholm University and believes that it was a relatively uncomplicated goal.

- It was a fair and correct trial, he says to SVT.

However, according to Mark Klamberg, it was not obvious that the punishment would be life imprisonment.

- We will see more trials of this type, they set a high bar for how they judge the deeds, he says.

Two more accused

Last week, two more Russian soldiers pleaded guilty to war crimes, the two toes now charged with missile attacks on civilians.

The war crime verdict against the 21-year-old is the first of its kind since the start of the war.

Javascript is disabled

Javascript must be turned on to play video

Read more about browser support

The browser is not supported

SVT does not support playback in your browser.

We therefore recommend that you switch to a different browser.

Read more about browser support

The suspected war criminal addressed the widow during the trial: "I understand if you can not forgive me" Photo: Reuters