12 2GM Tuesday May 24 2022 | the times
News
Britain is in discussion with allies about
sending warships to the Black Sea to
protect freighters carrying Ukrainian
grain. A “coalition of the willing” would
aim to break Russia’s blockade in weeks
by providing a “protective corridor”
from Odesa through the Bosphorus.
There are fears that time is running
out to avert a world food crisis and the
US also said that it was sending long-
range missiles to take out Russian ships.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Lithua-
nian foreign minister, who discussed
the corridor with Liz Truss, the foreign
secretary, said the coalition could in-
clude some Nato countries and other
countries reliant on the grain.
It is thought that Egypt, which has
been hit hard by the wheat shortage,
might be willing to take part.
The operation would require clear-
ing mines from the harbour and provid-
ing Ukraine with longer-range weap-
ons to defend it from Russian attack.
Yesterday Lloyd Austin, the US de-
fence secretary, said that Denmark
would send Ukraine a harpoon launch-
er and missiles to defend its coast as
part of a security package agreed by 20
countries.
The anti-ship missiles, which have a
range of nearly 200 miles, would enable
Ukraine to target Russian ships block-
ading its ports and the northwestern
part of the Black Sea. There are six
Black Sea Fleet ships and two subma-
The first Russian soldier to be tried for
war crimes in Ukraine has been sen-
tenced to life in prison.
Vadim Shishimarin, 21, commanded
a Russian tank in the Kantemirovskaya
armoured division. He was fleeing from
Ukrainian artillery fire in a stolen civil-
ian car with four other soldiers when
they passed Oleksandr Shelypov, 62,
riding his bicycle.
The shaven-headed Siberian ser-
geant had pleaded guilty at a court in
Kyiv to killing Shelypov on February
28, saying he had been using his tele-
phone and the group believed he would
give away their position in the Sumy re-
gion, in northeast Ukraine.
Viktor Ovsyannikov, for the defence,
said Shishimarin fired three or four
rounds at Shelypov, who was unarmed,
after being ordered to shoot him. He
was captured by Ukrainian soldiers
soon afterwards.
Ovsyannikov said his client had been
unprepared for the “violent military
confrontation” and the heavy casual-
ties his unit encountered when they in-
vaded. He said he would appeal.
Volodymyr Yavorsky, an activist at
the Centre for Civil Liberties, a Ukraini-
an human rights group, said that the
public had been interested in “a crystal
clear process” that followed legal
norms, but it “left many
questions”. He added: “This is
an extremely harsh sentence
for one murder during the
war and the very qualifica-
tion of the crime was
wrong.”
Aarif Abraham, a human
rights lawyer in Manchester,
said that the trial was conduct-
ed “with what appears to be
full and fair due process”.
Shishimarin, of Ust Illy-
insk, in the Irkutsk region
Analysis
F
ew outside Russia will
bemoan the fate of
Vadim Shishimarin
(Jonathan Ames writes).
However, international
law experts will scrutinise the
case of the 21-year-old tank
commander. A key question is
how much room for manoeuvre
the Kyiv court has left itself for
sentencing Russians for more
heinous or numerous offences.
Shishimarin is a small cog in
the Russian military operation.
Even though President Putin or
any of his circle are unlikely to
face a court, members of the
officer class who have fought on
the battlefield could be tried.
If Shishimarin’s crime merited
a life sentence, what punishment
would a Ukrainian court — or
the International Criminal Court
in the Hague — hand to Colonel
Azatbek Omurbekov, the alleged
“Butcher of Bucha”?
The hard fact is that there has
been a glut of alleged war crimes
in Ukraine. And unlike almost
any conflict before, conventional
media have reported it in minute
detail, their accounts topped up
with social media from
witnesses.
Shishimarin is young and
pleaded guilty. Britain has
asked Iryna Venediktova,
Ukraine’s prosecutor-
general, what help
she will need to
bring complex
cases against
senior Russians
who may well
deny all
charges. The
answer was
a l o t.Russian soldier gets life for war crime
of southeastern Russia, apologised to
Shelypov’s widow last week.
Kateryna Shelypova referred to the
official Kremlin rationale for the inva-
sion when she asked him: “Tell me
please, why did you [Russians] come
here? To protect us? Protect us from
whom? Did you protect me from my
husband, whom you killed?”
After apologising, the sergeant ac-
knowledged: “I understand you won’t
be able to forgive me.”
Shelypova, sitting a few feet from
him, wiped away tears as he confessed
to the killing. She said before the trial
that her husband had worked for the
KGB as a young man and had been a
guard to Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet
leader, when he visited Crimea. He had
been proud to serve the Russian elite,
she said, only to be shot decades later by
Russian soldiers.
The trial was being watched closely
because investigators have been col-
lecting evidence of possible war crimes
to bring before the International Crimi-
nal Court in the Hague. It is sending a
team of 42 to the country.
Iryna Venediktova, 43, Ukraine’s
prosecutor-general, said that her office
was pursuing 48 more suspects and had
documented 13,000 possible war
crimes. “All evidence indicates that the
Russian military and political elite has
unconditionally reverted to the brutal
war tactics of violence,” she told the
World Economic Forum in Davos.
“Civilian populations and civilian
objects — including hospitals, educa-
tional facilities and residential build-
ings — are intentionally targeted in a
widespread and systematic manner.”
She said Russian forces had used “un-
speakable, deliberate cruelty and vio-
lence against civilians”, adding: “This is
particularly apparent in territories that
were on the front lines of war, which
practically became a slaughterhouse.”
Hundreds of bodies have been recov-
ered for examination across areas liber-
ated from Russian occupation. Many
show signs of torture and rape.Maxim Tucker
Vadim Shishimarin, 21,
said that he was sorry
A
father who
lost his son
aboard the
Moskva has
accused the
Russian navy of
abandoning the
wounded and scuttling
the warship to cover
up evidence of the
Ukrainian missile
strike that sank it
(Maxim Tucker
writes).
Dmitri Shkrebets
also said President
Putin had “betrayed”
young conscripts like
his son, telling him to
“be a man” and stoplying to his country.
“Vladimir, I won’t
forgive you the death
of my son and many
other guys,” he wrote
on the Russian social
media site Vkontakte.
“The loss of Moskva
cruiser is your
personal defeat!”
Shkrebets has been
searching for his son
Yegor, a 20-year-old
conscripted crewman,
since the ship sank
after being struck by
two Ukrainian
Neptune anti-ship
missiles on April 13.
He has acknowledgedthat his son is probably
dead but continues to
investigate what
happened.
The Kremlin has
insisted its Black Sea
flagship was not sunk
by the Ukrainians,
claiming it went down
in stormy seas after an
accidental fire caused
ammunition to
explode.
Shkrebets said crew
members told him the
ship had been a
“sitting duck”,
remaining in the same
position for two days
without escort. After it
was hit, the officers
were afraid to tell their
superiors until it was
clear the ship was
sinking. “I know that
before 1pm on April 14
the cruiser did notMoskva sailors
‘left to drown’
News War in Ukraine
Royal Navy could escort grain
Larisa Brown Defence Editor rines in the sea, according to the Centre
for Defence Strategies, a Ukrainian
think tank.
Landsbergis accused the Russians of
“holding hostage the vulnerable coun-
tries of the world” by not allowing
Ukraine to feed them, adding that alter-
natives such as bringing grain out by
train and lorry would not be enough.
He said countries “could provide
ships or planes that would be stationed
in the Black Sea and provide maritime
passage for the grain ships to leave
Odesa’s port and reach the Bosphorus
in Turkey”.
He said that although the ships could
be warships, such a move would not
“signify an escalation because it is not
taking part in the war”.
Truss said: “What we need to do is
deal with this global food security issue
and the UK is working on an urgent so-
lution to get the grain out of Ukraine”.
A diplomatic source said she sup-
ported sending warships to escort ves-
sels from Odesa. Such a move, which
could also include escorting ships leav-
ing Mykolaiv, would probably need US
agreement to be activated.
President Zelensky said that he was
in talks with allies including the US, EU
and Britain. “We need to agree on a safe
corridor. Russia will not be able to stand
against the leading countries of the
world. We are talking to the Baltics
about using their seaports,” he said.
However, one western official said
that Russia would have to agree to such
an operation. “To try and do it without
Russia’s consent would raise the risk
there could be an incident,” the official
said. Moscow has so far ruled out a re-
quest to allow ships to leave Odesa. The
official said that if the Russians were to
accept an operation to allow ships to
leave it would “clearly expect some sort
of return on that arrangement”, such as
re-negotiating sanctions.
The official said that the operation
would be risky because of mines and
the blockade. He said that although the
Russian maritime forces were far from
the coast they were controlling the area
with precision missiles.
Turkey would have to provide a guar-
antee that the ships could pass through
safely. After the invasion of Ukraine
Ankara invoked international law and
closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles
to all warships.
Ukraine has millions of tons of grain
in its silos and in five to six weeks, new
grain will be harvested but there will be
no storage space. Its inability to export
its stocks has pushed up world food
prices and led to warnings of famine.
Yulia Svyrydenko, one of Ukraine’s
deputy prime ministers, told the BBC
that the world should help to lift the
blockade of sea ports, hinting that mili-
tary means might be necessary. “We
need a guarantee from partners — of
course it’s a defence guarantee, a secur-
ity guarantee — to be able to export
[using] these vessels. And to make it,
not once but on a regular basis.”