Finland is hosting a trial for Russian war crimes suspects in Ukraine

On Thursday, a Russian man who led a far-right paramilitary group in eastern Ukraine ten years ago was put on trial in Finland for alleged war crimes.

Prosecutors from outside Ukraine are making a rare attempt to bring victims of alleged war crimes in a struggle that started long before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 to justice with Yan Petrovsky’s trial.

The Finnish prosecutor urged that Petrovsky, also known as Voislav Torden, be imprisoned for life on the first day of hearings at the Helsinki district court.

According to court documents seen by Reuters, Petrovsky, who was born in 1987, is charged with five war crimes in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015.

Heikki Lampela, Petrovsky’s attorney, told the court that the man, who has been under U.S. and European Union sanctions since 2022, denies all of the accusations.

In 2023, Petrovsky attempted to enter France using a false identity and was arrested in Finland at Ukraine’s request. Later, his extradition to Ukraine was blocked by the Supreme Court of Finland.

According to a statement from the prosecutor’s office, Petrovsky’s actions in Rusich, opens new tab, a paramilitary subunit connected to the Wagner mercenary group, which fought against Ukraine in 2014 alongside separatists supported by Russia in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, are the subject of the charges against him.

Petrovsky is accused by Deputy Prosecutor General Jukka Rappe of co-leading a group of Rusich rebels who, on September 5, 2014, ambushed a group of Ukrainian soldiers after tricking them by flying a Ukrainian flag at a roadblock, killing 22 and gravely wounded four.

According to Rappe, the ambush’s deceit and claims that injured soldiers were killed, disfigured, and that the deterioration of a body was captured on camera and in photos amount to war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute.

A complainant, the father of the soldier Petrovsky’s unit is accused of mutilating, demanded justice for his son in an interview with the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat prior to the trial.

The charges include that the plaintiff’s son was sliced on the cheek with Rusich’s emblem while he was still alive.

“Evil needs to be dealt with. “I want to stop this evil from spreading,” the deceased man’s father, Vasil Isyk, told the daily.

According to court documents, the case’s hearings are scheduled to go on until the end of January, with witnesses and plaintiffs in Ukraine being heard virtually.