Two Russian prisoners of war pleaded guilty Thursday to bombing a civilian target in a city in eastern Ukrainein the second trial for war crimes since the beginning of the invasion.
Alexander Bobikin and Alexander Ivanov admitted being part of the artillery unit that attacked the eastern Ukrainian province of Kharkov from the Russian border region of Belgorod.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said the shelling destroyed an educational establishment in the city of Derhachi.
Bobikin and Ivanov, presented respectively as the driver and gunner of a motorized artillery unit, were captured after crossing the border into Ukraine and continuing shelling, the Prosecutor’s Office said.
“I am absolutely guilty of the crimes with which I am accused. We fired on Ukraine from Russia,” Bobikin said. at the hearing of the trial, held in the Kotelevska district of central Ukraine, the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform reported.
Ivanov said he was sorry and asked that he not be sentenced to life imprisonment. Prosecutors asked for 12 years in prison for each for violating the rules of war.
The lawyer for the defendants asked for leniency with them and said that they had followed orders and that they repented. The verdict will be known on May 31.
This week, a kyiv court sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier convicted of war crimes to life in prison, in the first such verdict in Ukraine since the start of the invasion launched by Moscow on February 24.
The soldier, Vadim Shishimarin, had pleaded guilty to killing a 62-year-old civilian in Ukraine’s eastern Sumy region in the early days of the invasion and had apologized to his widow during a court hearing. His attorney said he will appeal the sentence.
