Zaporizhzhia (Ukraine)- As Kyiv prepared for its first war crimes prosecution of a captured Russian soldier, Ukraine offered to free Russian prisoners of war in exchange for the safe evacuation of the seriously injured combatants held within a steel plant in the devastated city of Mariupol.
While the battle continued in Ukraine’s east and south, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that talks were underway to rescue injured fighters holed up in Mariupol, the country’s final stronghold of resistance. “None of them is great,” she remarked of the many possibilities.
A pipeline carrying Russian gas to Western Europe has shut down. A Kremlin-installed politician in the southern Kherson region said local officials want Russian President Vladimir Putin to conquer.
That was something at least one resident contested: “All people in Kherson are waiting for our troops to come as soon as possible,” said a teacher who gave only her first name, Olga, out of fear of retaliation. “Nobody wants to live in Russia or join Russia.”
Ukraine’s top prosecutor said her office charged Russian Sgt. Vadin Shyshimarin, 21, killed an unarmed 62-year-old civilian who was gunned down while riding a bicycle in February, four days into the war. Shyshimarin, who served with a tank unit, was accused of firing through a car window on the man in the northeastern village of Chupakhivka.
General Prosecutor Iryna Venediktova said the soldier might face up to 15 years in jail. She did not indicate when his trial would begin. Venediktova’s office claims to have investigated over 10,700 complaints of the Russian military committing war crimes and identified over 600 individuals.
Many of the atrocities were exposed last month as Moscow’s soldiers abandoned their attempt to take Kyiv and withdrew from the capital’s area, telling mass graves and remains scattered across streets and yards in villages like Bucha. Residents reported murders, burnings, rape, torture, and dismemberment.
Volodymyr Yavorskyy of the Center for Civil Liberties said the Ukrainian human rights group would closely follow Shyshimarin’s trial to see if it is fair. “It’s tough to observe all the rules, norms and neutrality of the court proceedings in wartime,” he said.
On the economic front, Ukraine shut down a pipeline that carries Russian gas across Ukraine to homes and industries in Western Europe, marking the first time since the war that Kyiv disrupted the westward flow of one of Moscow’s most lucrative exports.
Ukraine’s natural gas pipeline operator said the move was made to stop Russian gas flowing through a station in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists because enemy forces were interfering with the station’s operation and siphoning gas.
The immediate effect is likely to be limited because Russia can divert the gas to another pipeline and because Europe relies on a variety of suppliers. Still, the cutoff underscored the war’s broader risk to gas supplies.
In the southern Kherson region, the first major Ukrainian city to fall in the war, a Moscow-appointed leader said officials there want Russian President Vladimir Putin to annex the area. Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration appointed by Moscow, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency: “The city of Kherson is Russia.”
That raised the possibility that the Kremlin would seek to break off another piece of Ukraine as it tries to salvage an invasion. Russia annexed Ukraine’s the Crimean Peninsula, which borders the Kherson region, after a disputed referendum in 2014, a move denounced as illegal and rejected by most of the international community.
Inside Kherson, people have taken to the streets to decry the Russian occupation. Olga, the teacher, said such protests are impossible now because Moscow’s troops “kidnapped activists and citizens simply for wearing Ukrainian colours or ribbons.” She said, “people are scared of talking openly outside their homes”, and “everyone walks on the street quickly.”
A Black Sea port of roughly 300,000, Kherson provides Crimea access to fresh water and is a gateway to broader Russian control over southern Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would be up to residents to decide whether an appeal to annexe should be made. He said any move to annex territory would have to be closely evaluated by legal experts to ensure it is “absolutely legitimate, as it was with Crimea.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted: “The invaders may ask to join Mars or Jupiter. The Ukrainian army will liberate Kherson, no matter what games they play.”
Ukrainian officials said a Russian rocket attack targeted an area around Zaporizhzhia on the battlefield, destroying unspecified infrastructure. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The southeastern city has been a refuge for civilians fleeing the devastated port city of Mariupol.
Russian forces continued to pound the steel plant in Mariupol, its defenders said. The Azov Regiment told on social media that the Russian troops carried out 38 airstrikes in the previous 24 hours on the grounds of the Azovstal steelworks.
During a months-long siege, the plant has sheltered hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians.
An adviser to the Mariupol mayor said Russian forces had blocked all evacuation routes out of the city. Petro Andriushchenko noted few apartment buildings fit to live in and little food or drinking water. He said some remaining residents cooperate with occupying Russian forces in exchange for food.
Meanwhile, Ukraine was targeting Russian air defences and resupply vessels on Snake Island in the Black Sea to disrupt Moscow’s efforts to expand its control over the coastline, according to the British Ministry of Defense.
Ukraine said it also shot down a cruise missile targeting the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
Elsewhere, the governor of a Russian region near Ukraine said at least one civilian had been killed and six wounded by Ukrainian shelling in the village of Solokhi, near the border. Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov’s account couldn’t be independently verified, but he said they would evacuate the town.