When I first heard in regards to the useless man on the street, I did not know his identify.

It was only a story, a couple of potential warfare crime, dedicated within the first days of the Russian invasion into Ukraine. The sufferer was a Ukrainian man, allegedly murdered by Russian troopers and left useless on the street subsequent to his blown-up automotive, close to a spot known as Nova Basan.

At first the story about this man stood out as a result of it was completely different. He’d apparently been a member of the French Foreign Legion sooner or later. And maybe, I’d thought, that might imply clues and investigations — perhaps even penalties — far past the tiny village the place he died, 50 miles northeast of Kyiv.

But as I spoke with investigators and human rights advocates about this case and lots of others, I got here to see, as they’ve, simply how elusive justice may very well be for any of the 50,000 alleged warfare crimes in Ukraine.

Giorgi Gogia, a Human Rights Watch investigator who first advised me in regards to the case, mentioned he’d been documenting so many crimes he did not have time to analyze this case any extra.

And Oleksandra Matviichuk, who heads the Center for Civil Liberties, one of many recipients of this 12 months’s Nobel Peace Prize, mentioned she had began considering of warfare crimes as mere statistics.

“I started to use numbers instead of names,” she mentioned.

I wished to give attention to a reputation as a substitute of a quantity, to place a face to all of the obvious crimes but in addition to gauge whether or not justice is feasible. If I might resolve even one homicide — be taught in regards to the sufferer, what occurred, who was accountable — perhaps it will reveal how possible accountability is for all of them.

To perceive that story, I made a decision once more to give attention to only one — the story of the useless man on the street, close to Nova Basan.

The villages of Nova Basan and Bobrovytsia

I first visited Nova Basan in May, a couple of month after Ukrainian forces liberated the village from Russian management. It was a small neighborhood, surrounded by farmland, with a inhabitants of fewer than 3,000.

Before the warfare, households would go away their houses in Kyiv to spend their summers there.

Now, the burned-out hulls of Russian tanks lined the highway.

It wasn’t laborious to search out the scene of the killing: Everyone within the village knew the place it was. Two males standing close to an deserted tank gestured down the highway to the place the person’s automotive nonetheless sat alongside the freeway, like a memorial to the violence inflicted by the Russian invasion in late February.

The automotive, a French-made Citroen, was a sickly white coloration, badly burned, with incinerated elements mendacity haphazardly round. Much of the entrance of the automotive was gone, torn away by an obvious explosion. Rust had begun to set in.

And the person’s physique was not there.

We headed into the middle of the village, previous the destroyed native café and a looted grocery store, to the city corridor to see native administrator Mykola Dyachenko. In his workplace, the place the window nonetheless had a bullet gap from the combating, he advised me what he knew.

It wasn’t a lot. The man was killed as Russian forces entered the village on Feb. 28, Dyachenko mentioned. He had, certainly, been a French legionnaire at one level, however he’d served his contract and returned residence to Ukraine earlier than the warfare started.

Dyachenko did not know the useless man’s identify, however he knew his mom, Oksana Breus. She lived in one other village, Bobrovytsia, a couple of 30-minute drive away. She invited us over to debate her son.

When we arrived, she welcomed us into her residence and put {a photograph} of her son on the desk between us as we sat within the kitchen.

Her son’s identify was Oleksandr, she mentioned. Oleksandr Breus. He had been killed within the first week of the warfare on the age of 28.

“He was going to Kyiv to pick up his sister and his fiancé. He wanted to take them to France,” Oksana advised us. She did not know the main points about how he died, and mentioned she did not wish to know. But she had a video of the scene, taken the day of Oleksandr’s demise, which had circulated on social media.

She performed it for us, then began to cry.

The video confirmed the identical burned-out automotive we might seen earlier, with a big gap within the again door on the motive force’s facet. The digital camera pans proper to point out a person’s physique on the bottom by the automotive, his proper arm curled throughout what stays of his head. It appears to be like like an execution.

“The Russians drove through, damn it,” mentioned the person recording the video. “Poor thing.”

Oksana was too distraught to proceed speaking and recommended that we discuss to Oleksandr’s sister for extra particulars. As she confirmed us out, strolling into the yard, she stopped to point out us yet one more factor.

It’s a German shepherd with unhappy eyes, sitting inside an enclosure — Oleksandr’s canine, Clifford.

“Such a handsome dog,” she mentioned. “Do you see how much he misses him?”

Investigating a warfare crime

As we watched the video Oksana confirmed us — the obvious explosion, the violence inflicted on Oleksandr — it appeared clear he was killed by army weaponry. Given what else we knew, that will make Oleksandr’s killing virtually definitely a warfare crime dedicated by Russian forces.

In the video, Oleksandr is wearing civilian clothes: a brown jacket. There is not any proof that he was armed, and his household mentioned he had no weapons.

His automotive was dealing with west, towards Kyiv. That means that when it was destroyed, it was dealing with away from the path Russian forces had been advancing.

And if he had died Feb. 28, as his mom, the city administrator and others had all advised us, there was little probability that his killing had been the results of actions by Ukrainian forces. Every individual we talked to in Nova Basan advised us that the Ukrainian army, caught off guard by the preliminary invasion, was not current in or round Nova Basan when Oleksandr was killed.

War crimes are ruled by numerous worldwide legal guidelines and treaties. But there are native legal guidelines as properly. In Ukraine’s felony code, there’s a particular statute that addresses warfare crimes, one thing that falls to folks like Vadym Prymachok to analyze.

“We’re looking at murder. We’re looking at torture. We’re looking at looting. We’re looking at harm to civilians,” mentioned Prymachok, a senior official in Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation.

We confirmed Prymachok the video of Oleksandr and the automotive.

“To give you my opinion, this is a very clear case of a war crime … in the sense that they saw who he was. They had a chance to not fire,” Prymachok advised us. “There was no threat that he was posing against any of the Russians that were in his vicinity.”

Prymachok advised us that he was not answerable for investigating the Oleksandr Breus case. So we traveled to the town of Chernihiv, the capital of the area the place Oleksandr was killed. Serhiy Vasylyna is the top of the regional prosecutor’s workplace there.

When we visited him, not removed from the Belarusian border, he listed the challenges he confronted as an investigator and prosecutor in a time of warfare.

He did not have sufficient investigators or medical consultants. The ones he had could not entry the websites of alleged crimes due to continued combating. And most individuals in his workplace had spent their careers as civilians, with little expertise with the intricacies of investigating and prosecuting warfare crimes.

And then there was the problem of the sheer measurement of the caseload.

“My prosecutors, we are spending 24/7 on these 1,300 cases,” Vasylyna advised us in July.

Oleksandr’s case was only one that overwhelmed investigators had been juggling. Vasylyna mentioned they had been doing their finest to be taught extra and could be in contact if that they had extra info.

Who was Oleksandr Breus?

I first met Oleksandr’s sister, Anya Breus, within the convention room of a resort in downtown Kyiv. She was keen to inform us of her heat recollections, basic tales of mischievous siblings.

Like the time she broke the ceiling lamp of their residence.

“I told him, do not [tell] mom. … He said, ‘I will not tell her if you will wash dishes for two weeks,'” Anya recalled, laughing. “Yes, it’s a funny story.”

Oleksandr Breus was additionally a fierce Ukrainian patriot, others mentioned. Though he might communicate Russian, he typically refused to with the intention to show a degree.

“For him, it was important to separate us from them,” mentioned shut pal Sasha Hrushko.

Oleksandr would go surfing to the web site Chatroulette to debate Russians about historical past and to level out what he noticed because the variations between Ukrainians and Russians.

“He always watched videos about Ukrainian history. He told us all the time that Russians are awful people,” Anya recalled.

Those who knew him finest say Oleksandr was additionally considerably stressed. His hobbies had been various: He was the captain of his faculty basketball group; he cherished pictures and the artwork of capturing recollections; and he spent lengthy days out on the highway using his bicycle.

He even had a quick stint as an novice rapper.

He had an agriculture diploma, however no clear path for the long run. There had been lots of grand concepts — with one pal, he mentioned establishing a thrift retailer; with one other, the prospect of opening up a bar.

In 2018, he joined the French Foreign Legion to search out self-discipline and a secure job.

“He was looking for himself,” Hrushko mentioned. “He was looking for some realization. That’s why he just found … himself in the French Legion.”

A profession within the army suited Oleksandr properly — he thrived in hectic conditions.

Borys, a French Foreign Legion colleague who requested that his final identify be withheld since he’s nonetheless within the legion, known as him calm and picked up. “He was able to deal very easily with tough situations,” he mentioned. “He was very levelheaded, coolheaded.”

Oleksandr was within the legion for 4 years. But Borys mentioned that after Oleksandr aggravated an outdated harm throughout an impediment course, he was pressured to work an administrative job.

Ultimately, Oleksandr left the French army in late 2021 after getting everlasting residency standing in France.

Borys additionally advised us about Oleksandr’s girlfriend, Yulia Pohyba.

Oleksandr and Yulia had tried to have a long-distance relationship whereas he was in France, however it wasn’t simple. Living in Ukraine, she interpreted his utility for French everlasting residency as an indication he wasn’t severe about her.

Oleksandr determined to return to Ukraine, a couple of month earlier than the Russian invasion started, in an try to restore the connection. They started to reconcile, and Oleksandr started critically speaking to his buddies about marriage.

“I am sure that he wanted to propose,” Borys mentioned.

Trapped in Bobrovytsia

On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine.

With his girlfriend secure within the suburbs of Kyiv, Oleksandr left for his childhood residence in Bobrovytsia, alongside along with his canine, Clifford. The canine did not get together with Yulia’s canine, so his plan was to drop him off and head again to the capital metropolis — a two-hour drive — to evacuate his girlfriend and sister to western Ukraine and, ultimately, overseas.

But the Ukrainian authorities abruptly instituted a multiday curfew in Kyiv, primarily trapping him in place and stopping him from driving again. The unsure, anxious scenario introduced him to tears.

“He was disappointed because he wanted to [get] to Yulia as soon as possible. And he stayed at Bobrovytsia for two days,” his sister Anya mentioned. “That was the first time I heard him cry on the phone.”

All the whereas, an extended line of Russian armored autos and troops rolled down the identical freeway that Oleksandr would ultimately must take to Kyiv.

Ukrainian forces, outnumbered and caught off guard, tried no matter they may to gradual Russian progress. One native Ukrainian official mentioned that in a neighboring city to Nova Basan, the Ukrainian army blew up a bridge to halt the Russian advance. He additionally mentioned Russian troopers killed six civilians as they handed by way of the city.

Other civilians advised us the identical factor, describing senseless executions of unarmed locals who simply occurred to be strolling by.

Then, on the morning of Feb. 28, 4 days into the invasion, Ukrainian officers lifted the curfew in Kyiv.

Oleksandr started his journey to the capital.

And so did the Russian forces.

Russian troops enter Nova Basan

Yulia Gozhak, a resident of Nova Basan, advised us she went out that morning to get some groceries along with her grownup son. She had heard that the bakery had recent bread that morning.

But as she shopped, her son burst into the shop.

“Mom, forget about the bread!” he mentioned. “Let’s go! I can hear tanks shooting near the brick plant!”

The two jumped into her automotive, along with her son on the wheel. As they raced out of the village, they arrived at an intersection: the highway to Bobrovytsia, the path Oleksandr was touring from.

Chaos erupted as she drove by way of the intersection. Russian armored autos had been stationed on the far facet, and once they noticed the automotive, they opened hearth.

“I didn’t see any tanks. I just heard shots and saw the smoke,” she mentioned.

The entrance window shattered as bullets penetrated the within of her automotive. Gozhak lined her face along with her palms, and a bullet struck the telephone she was carrying and ricocheted into her hand.

Gozhak managed to make it up the highway to her residence.

Traveling the opposite approach, Oleksandr was about to drive by way of the identical intersection.

The killing of Oleksandr Breus

Oleksandr had left his childhood residence round 8 a.m., shortly after the curfew in Kyiv was lifted. His mom mentioned she noticed him off — he was carrying a pair of white Nikes and loose-fitting inexperienced pants. While he was driving, his father, Mykola, known as to verify on him.

“I asked, ‘Where are you?’ [Oleksandr] said, ‘I am at a checkpoint and see a [Russian armored] column,'” Mykola later recalled.

He urged Oleksandr to show round.

“That’s the only thing we talked about and that’s the last time we spoke,” Oleksandr’s father mentioned.

Somewhere between 9 and 10 that morning, numerous folks within the village say they heard an explosion.

Tetiana Baryshovets works at an area grocery store that closed early as Russian forces pressed deeper into the village. Locals hid of their houses, typically their basements, as troops entered Nova Basan, however Baryshovets says she determined to make a splash residence on her bicycle.

Pedaling residence she noticed a automotive on hearth, with a physique mendacity subsequent to it, in the midst of the highway.

“I stopped. I wanted to check if he was alive,” she mentioned. “But it was obvious that he wasn’t. I didn’t see the head, but the hand and legs were twisted unnaturally.”

Pictures would later affirm that Oleksandr’s inexperienced pants had been partially burned off, exposing blackened flesh beneath the knee. His white Nike sneakers had been gone — the hearth had apparently burned them off.

“I started trembling, thinking, ‘Why would they kill a person like that?'” Baryshovets recalled. “I started crying.”

She additionally got here to the stark realization that she might have shared Oleksandr’s destiny. It was all timing: Had Oleksandr arrived a short time earlier he might need been capable of cross by way of earlier than Russian troops arrived. Had he come later, he might need been prevented from passing by way of in any respect.

That night, Anya Breus launched a seek for her brother. No one had heard from him all day. She started posting on social media.

When Hrushko noticed the submit, he anticipated the worst.

“At that moment, I really understand for myself that he’s probably dead,” mentioned Hrushko, “because [it only takes] 2 hours [to get] from Nova Basan to Kyiv.”

A stranger handed Anya Breus the video of the crime scene, which had been circulating on social media. She forwarded it to Hrushko, who had little question that it was Oleksandr within the video.

“Just seeing his body, it’s enough,” Hrushko mentioned. “I mean, there is nothing to be discussed. You just — just feel it.”

It took us months to piece collectively what had occurred to Oleksandr, and we knew way more than once we began. We knew who he was, why he was on the highway, and roughly when he died. We discovered his residence, his household — and had even heard recordings of his voice.

But nonetheless, we knew virtually nothing in regards to the important query for warfare crimes prosecutors: How, exactly, was he killed?

For that, we would have liked an eyewitness.

A single eyewitness emerges

Nova Basan native administrator Mykola Dyachenko doubted that anybody had seen the killing.

“I don’t know about eyewitnesses. Probably there weren’t any,” he mentioned. “When the Russians entered our village, people were not coming outside.”

Many locals mentioned they deleted messages, pictures and social media posts because the Russians rumbled into the village, anxious their telephones could be confiscated by the occupying drive.

The proprietor of the fuel station throughout the road from the place Oleksandr died turned off his surveillance cameras earlier than Russian troops invaded the city, city officers advised us. The cameras on the close by grocery store had been no assist both, as a result of Russian forces took the laborious drives once they occupied the city.

In many circumstances, we realized, Russian troops allegedly destroyed proof that will present who was there. We canvassed homes in Nova Basan for potential eyewitnesses, however many houses weren’t occupied.

It felt like a useless finish — till, sooner or later, a person approached us to say: “I hear you’ve been looking for me?”

The man’s identify was Oleksandr Holod. We’d knocked on his door earlier than, however he hadn’t been residence.

This time, he invited us in. His place, which stood throughout the road from the wreckage of Oleksandr’s automobile, was dusty and darkish inside. No electronics, no carpeting. After the warfare started, Holod had moved out.

Holod mentioned he was an eyewitness to the killing and began describing what he noticed on the morning of Feb. 28, the column of Russian armored autos descending on his village.

“I simply heard the noise, the increasing noise, they’re coming …” he started.

But earlier than he might end the story, the door flew open and a lady burst into the house. Laryssa Anatolievna, a shopkeeper we might interviewed the day prior to this, was incensed that we had been speaking to Holod.

“I came here to tell the truth to the people, to tell the truth that you collaborated with the [Russians],” she mentioned. “You drank with them; you were freely moving around on your bicycle. Tell me! Didn’t it happen?” she shouted.

Holod defended himself, saying he was one of many few from the realm who truly stayed in the course of the occupation. Anatolievna did not keep, he mentioned.

“I saw everything with my own eyes here,” Holod mentioned, including that he solely cooked for Russian troopers in the course of the occupation, and solely as a result of they pressured him to.

I requested Holod to proceed. Dashing from window to window, he described what he noticed on the day Oleksandr was killed.

Soldiers left their armored autos, referred to as BTRs, and unfold out by way of the neighborhood as Russian forces moved in, he mentioned.

“The first column that I saw [had] five BTRs,” he mentioned.

He noticed a automotive coming from the path of Bobrovytsia. Oleksandr’s automotive. The similar burned-out Citroen that remained outdoors his residence.

Three BTRs had been forward of the automotive on the highway, and Oleksandr pulled alongside the fourth.

Holod mentioned he noticed Oleksandr cease and get out of the automotive.

“He started to quarrel with them about something,” Holod mentioned. “He started to say to them something like ‘What are you doing here?’ and ‘Why are you doing this?'”

As Oleksandr talked, two troopers positioned themselves behind him down the highway. One had a machine gun, Holod mentioned. The different one — the tall one — had an assault rifle.

Without warning, the tall one opened hearth from about 50 meters away.

Holod mentioned he noticed a flash of blood from Oleksandr’s head as he fell to the highway. Then the closest BTR turned its turret towards Oleksandr’s automotive and fired a spherical from its major gun.

Holod’s description of what occurred on the morning of Feb. 28 matches different proof we gathered. The gap within the facet of Oleksandr’s automotive might have been the place the Russian armored automobile fired into it. The path of blood splatter indicated the taking pictures began from the approximate path Holod described.

And Holod’s model of occasions matched the main points proven in movies of the scene taken on the day of the killing — movies Holod says he’d by no means seen. This final declare additionally appeared believable. Holod did not have a smartphone.

Holod’s testimony turned the centerpiece of our understanding of Oleksandr’s demise, as a result of it match with all the different particulars we realized.

Details like what occurred to Oleksandr’s physique.

Oleksandr’s physique lies on the street

Two days after Oleksandr was killed, Tetiana Baryshovets, the lady on the bicycle, returned to the scene. She could not bear the considered Oleksandr’s physique mendacity within the highway.

But somebody — she did not know who — had gotten there first. There was a lightweight fabric over Oleksandr’s physique, she mentioned, and a few bricks to carry it in place. She’s haunted by the reminiscence.

“I can’t get it out of my mind because … I see it every time I go to and from work,” she mentioned.

Russian forces totally occupied the village of Nova Basan throughout this time. Residents say there have been no Ukrainian forces close by. And they describe Russian troopers committing atrocities with out resistance.

Nina Nahorna, a instructor in Nova Basan, mentioned that shortly after they entered the village, dozens of Russian troopers had been in her yard, appearing like they owned the place.

“One of them … told us that he had already killed six civilians,” she mentioned. “And then we realized that they didn’t care if we were civilians or not. We realized that these people have lost touch with reality.”

Villagers report numerous civilians killed in Nova Basan in addition to Oleksandr.

Mykola Dyachenko, the native administrator, was detained and topic to a mock execution.

It was a grinding and brutal interval for the villagers.

“They are not humans, do you understand? They are monsters,” mentioned 86-year-old Oleksandra Lyska, whose chickens had been killed, provisions had been taken away and residential was destroyed. “They are terrible people. Terrible.”

Oleksandr’s physique remained on the road for a month in the course of the interval of Russian occupation. Family members say it was simply too harmful to retrieve him.

“We were told that Russian soldiers did not allow anyone to be buried,” mentioned Anya, Oleksandr’s sister. “My mother told me that there was also one 14-year-old boy who was killed. His mother went to them, kneeling, and was asking them for permission. But they were shooting over her head and sending her back.”

Still, Oleksandr’s mom contacted the Nova Basan city council every single day to see in the event that they had been allowed to retrieve the physique. But the Russians imposed strict restrictions on motion and had been susceptible to opening hearth to clear autos and civilians off the highway.

Then, in early April, Ukrainian forces made their approach again into Nova Basan after a ferocious battle. It was lastly potential to retrieve Oleksandr’s physique.

Serhii Tsyba mentioned that recovering our bodies was the way in which he contributed to the warfare effort.

“I have no fear,” Tsyba mentioned. “My father always taught me that you don’t need to be afraid of the dead. Be afraid of the living … I cannot help the soldiers. I will be helping people so that … they have everything to go on their last trip.”

On the 4th of April, Tsyba’s project was to go to the not too long ago liberated village of Nova Basan.

His palms started shaking as he replayed the reminiscence. This time, he knew who he and his colleague had been selecting up. It was his pal Oleksandr, whom he known as by his nickname, Sasha. They had grown up collectively in close by Bobrovytsia.

“[My colleague] told me who we were picking up when we were driving down. I told him that I really knew Sasha, and that’s why I took it so hard,” he recalled.

Tsyba was accountable for taking pictures of the scene. Wild animals had torn at Oleksandr’s physique. Tsyba then helped carry the physique right into a coffin.

There’s a photograph of Oleksandr’s mom, Oksana, arriving on the scene, wracked with grief.

Oleksandr Breus was delivered to a small cemetery, down the highway from his childhood residence, and was buried on April 6, 2022. The sight of his useless pal’s physique, mendacity out within the chilly for a month, triggered one thing in Tsyba that will final for much longer.

“Anger,” mentioned Tsyba. “I’ve never felt anything like it. Fear turned into anger, and hate. Because we never attacked anyone; we just lived our lives.”

The perpetrators

While looking for extra witnesses to the occasions in Nova Basan, we discovered yet one more video that confirmed Russian forces shifting by way of the village on the day Oleksandr was killed. We reached out to the one who posted it on Facebook, who advised us her mom took the video.

And that is how we discovered ourselves strolling right into a furnishings retailer in Kyiv, the place Olena Bondarenko works as a supervisor.

After the warfare began, Bondarenko fled the capital metropolis for the house her household owned in Nova Basan, hoping there could be much less combating within the small village. On the morning of Oleksandr’s demise, she stood outdoors in a state of shock as armored autos rolled by.

She confirmed us one other video that she took of passing Russian troops. An armed soldier seems within the body and goals a rifle at her — inflicting her to gasp — earlier than firing off pictures in her path. Bondarenko drops to the ground and her father pulls her away.

But later, she seen one thing uncommon in regards to the autos on the video.

“They were new tanks with the letter ‘O,'” she defined. “On TV, they were only talking about ‘Z’ and ‘V.’ I told the Ukrainian military about these vehicles with the letter ‘O.’ They were totally different. It was a different type of armored vehicle and they wore a different colored uniform.”

We did not understand it then, however Olena Bondarenko’s movies had been essential to understanding which Russian items had been on the bottom.

The first clue was these “O” markings.

We developed sources in Ukrainian intelligence companies, police, and their prosecutorial workplaces — and confirmed them what we might discovered.

They could not inform us conclusively which items had been in Nova Basan that day. But they advised us the letter “O” meant the autos had been items from Russia’s Central Military District.

They additionally supplied us with a listing of Russian items which may have been in Nova Basan when Oleksandr was killed.

We turned to individuals who observe army gear by scouring all the data that is publicly out there: Tom Bullock, a now-former analyst at Janes, an organization that displays militaries all all over the world; and George Barros, an analyst on the Institute for the Study of War.

Witnesses mentioned the Russian troops in Nova Basan weren’t carrying insignia or patches that will establish who they had been or the place they got here from.

But each Bullock and Barros mentioned Bondarenko’s video confirmed a selected form of armored automobile known as a BTR-82A.

This mannequin of armored automobile was an important clue. Among the record of items our sources had supplied, solely a small quantity had this gear.

“The fact that we can identify that that’s a BTR-82 Type A is significant because there’s only two brigades [in Russia’s Central Military District] that actually field that equipment,” Barros mentioned. “And those are the 15th Brigade and the 30th Brigade.”

Russian army doctrine means that these BTRs, and these brigades — the fifteenth and thirtieth — would have been used for clearing operations.

Clearing is a process that militaries do once they’re going right into a contested space to make sure that it is secure,” Barros explained. And he sees evidence of that mission in Bondarenko’s videos.

“They’re strolling down the principle stretch of the village, what it appears to be like like, and so they’re checking, you understand, home to deal with. They’re peeking over fences. And what they’re in all probability doing is a clearing operation,” he said.

By identifying the two units that were most likely in Nova Basan, we dramatically narrowed down the number of suspects. The Russian military deployed a ground force of about 120,000 people to Ukraine during its initial invasion.

The two units we had identified, the 15th and 30th brigades, had far fewer soldiers: about 4,000, Barros said.

Our eyewitness Holod said he saw five BTRs in the immediate vicinity when Oleksandr was killed. Each vehicle has a capacity of 10 soldiers.

So if our reporting bears out, the killer was among a group of about 50 people, from the 15th or 30th brigade, who passed through the intersection in Nova Basan between 9 and 10 a.m. on Feb. 28. He was tall and carried an assault rifle.

But we’d reached our limit. We couldn’t get the actual names of those 50 men, much less the tall one with the rifle.

We could name one potential defendant in a war crimes case, though: the Russian military officer responsible for the units that were there.

“It’s very clear that at that point in time in Nova Basan we saw significant elements in that area likely commanded by Russian Colonel General Alexander Lapin,” Barros mentioned, counting on open-source info.

Alexander Lapin was accountable for the boys who appear to have killed Oleksandr and blown up his automotive.

Knowing his identify may very well be important: If all the killings and shootings round Nova Basan are compiled, and if investigators might argue that the atrocities had been systematic and widespread, they may pin duty for these crimes on the commander. They might prosecute him for warfare crimes.

There are different items of proof nonetheless to be uncovered. For occasion: A number of months in the past, we met with the investigators answerable for Oleksandr’s case, who mentioned they had been cellphone data for each his telephones and the telephones of Russian troopers who had been within the space.

And there may very well be different data of who was on the intersection. Roman Avramenko heads the Ukrainian nongovernmental group Truth Hounds, which paperwork and investigates warfare crimes.

“Maybe in a year or in 10 years, Russia will break down and the Ukraine investigators would be obtaining a full list of soldiers being deployed to different areas,” Avramenko mentioned.

As for Oleksandr’s standing as a French everlasting resident, we requested a high human rights lawyer if the French authorities would examine the case. She advised us Oleksandr would not qualify for a warfare crimes investigation in France as a result of he was not a citizen. The French Foreign Legion ignored my request to fulfill and talk about the case, besides to say that he left the legion in 2021.

We regarded into the potential for the International Criminal Court taking up the case. International legislation clearly outlaws killing unarmed civilians. But we rapidly discovered that the ICC would not often pursue circumstances like Oleksandr’s.

“Normally they focus on the high-level commanders and functioneers who issue orders, and they focus on the cases with [prominent or large numbers of] victims … or with mass destruction. So most probably the ICC would not take this case,” Avramenko defined.

It falls to Ukrainian investigators to point out that particular person warfare crimes are half of a bigger sample.

That’s the aim of Ukrainians like Vadym Prymachok, the senior official on the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigations, who named the Russian minister of protection, president and generals as officers he’d wish to ultimately carry to justice by displaying “systemic war crimes,” he mentioned.

But the Ukrainian system is swamped.

We’d spent months conducting near 100 interviews and creating sources all through Nova Basan and the Ukrainian authorities. And, no less than for now, we could not slim it down any additional.

Oleksandr’s demise was simply one alleged warfare crime. There are some 50,000 beneath investigation throughout Ukraine.

Even those that have been engaged on investigating warfare crimes for years are pessimistic about discovering any full measure of justice.

“Frankly speaking, I think it’s not possible to establish justice for all the cases of war crimes committed in the course of full-scale invasion,” Avramenko mentioned.

Four months after Oleksandr was killed, we went along with his sister and mom to go to his grave. There had been violets across the filth mound the place his physique lay at relaxation.

That day, Oleksandr’s mom advised us yet one more factor about her son: that final 12 months, whereas flying residence to Ukraine, he had a layover within the Netherlands.

“He knows that I love flowers. He had some spare time and bought me tulip seeds,” she defined. “I planted them last autumn, and this year 10 out of 10 — all of them bloomed.”

They bloomed exactly on Mother’s Day, she mentioned, about two months after Oleksandr’s demise.

The audio for this story was produced by Monika Evstatieva; edited by Barrie Hardymon and Robert Little; digital manufacturing by Meg Anderson; analysis by Barbara Van Woerkom; photograph modifying by Emily Bogle; visuals and graphic modifying by Nick McMillan and Nick Underwood.