Corpses sprawled on the streets of Bucha. Prisoners of war reportedly executed, bodies sent back to Ukrainian authorities. A blood bath of civilian train passengers, killed by a ballistic missile. Ukrainian children adopted by Russian families without the knowledge of their parents.
Three-plus years into Russia's onslaught on Ukraine, the catalog of alleged atrocities, war crimes, and crimes against humanity continues to climb.
There's no guarantee the record of alleged crimes will ever see the inside of a courtroom in Kyiv, in The Hague, or anywhere. Russian commanders show no inclination to investigate allegations; the Kremlin has in fact honored military units accused of some of the worst crimes. And the International Criminal Court -- ignored by Russia and under withering criticism from Washington -- is increasingly hamstrung.
Still, Ukrainian investigators and Western supporters labor to gather evidence and compile credible criminal cases: more than 153,000 cases have been opened in some form.
"For us, it's only a matter of time before they face justice," Yuriy Byelousov, a war crimes investigator in the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. "Historical examples show that it may take years, but these cases will not be forgotten."
Here are five of the most egregious cases.
Where Have All The Children Gone?
The first of two cases initiated by the International Criminal Court targeted what officials have called a systematic, top-level campaign to remove Ukrainian children from occupied territories and bring them to Russia.
In its March 17, 2023, announcement, the court said it had ordered the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin's lead official for children's affairs, Maria Lvova-Belova, for "the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and the unlawful transfer of (children)."
Nearly 20,000 children have gone missing or are believed to be in custody in Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Rights activists, journalists, and Ukrainian investigators have documented a widespread campaign that saw Ukrainian children taken from occupied Ukrainian territories.
Russian officials have frequently portrayed their efforts as a humanitarian gesture, sheltering, feeding, or protecting children from war or the breakdown of services in occupied regions. However, in many cases, Russian authorities did little to identify parents, other relatives, or legal guardians of the Ukrainian children.
Moreover, according to investigators, Russian authorities engaged in a "systematic program of coerced adoption and fostering." In some cases, Ukrainian children were sent to summer holiday camps in Belarus, where they were exposed to pro-Russian education and propaganda.
Bodies In The Street
In the initial weeks following the invasion, Russian forces ran into dogged resistance from Ukrainian forces, particularly north of the capital, Kyiv. By late March, commanders ordered units to withdraw and regroup.
In the wake of their withdrawal, Ukrainian officials and journalists found hundreds of dead civilians in the town of Bucha, killed by gunshot, some with bound hands, bodies dumped into alleyways or basements. In nearby Irpin, authorities found scores of newly dug graves, where bodies of local residents, many bearing gunshot wounds, had been buried.
The scenes in Bucha and Irpin shocked the world, torpedoed cease-fire talks between Kyiv and Moscow, fueled searing criticism of Moscow, and galvanized support for Ukraine.
Among outside experts, the evidence strongly pointed to war crimes. The United States later imposed a visa ban on the commander of an airborne assault regiment who had deployed to Bucha, citing "extrajudicial killings."
Ukrainian officials said they've issued criminal charges against 21 Russian soldiers on war crimes allegedly committed in Bucha.
Weeks after the images emerged publicly, Putin signed a decree honoring a unit from the 64th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, which had occupied Bucha and the surrounding region.
Power Overload
Russia recalibrated its invasion plans after initial setbacks. The man who took over command -- General Sergei Surovikin -- ordered a large-scale campaign of missile and air strikes, targeting not Ukrainian military targets, but also civilian infrastructure.
Surovikin was removed from command in the wake of the aborted mutiny by mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. But the strategy persisted.
Using air- and sea-launched cruise missiles, kamikaze drones, and other weapons, Russia has pummeled Ukrainian infrastructure in what officials say is a deliberate effort to demoralize and exhaust the population. The electricity grid -- power stations, transformers, transmission lines -- has been hit repeatedly to try to freeze Ukrainians during winter months.
Last March, the Hague court issued the second set of arrest warrants against Russian officials -- Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash and Admiral Viktor Sokolov – accusing them of war crimes for overseeing the air campaign targeting power plants and substations.
Generally speaking, international humanitarian law -- the body of law governing war crimes and similar offenses -- prohibits a military from hitting civilian targets unless there's a legitimate military reason. For example, if a military unit is hiding in a power plant, the plant can be targeted.
Battlefield Executions
In late December 2022, Oleksandr Matsiyevskiy, a soldier with Ukraine's 119th Independent Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces, went missing while fighting to defend the city of Bakhmut from Russian advances.
Three months later, a 12-second video appeared on Russian Telegram channels showing a haggard Matsiyevskiy smoking a cigarette as he is confronted by Russian soldiers. As the Russian soldiers record and mock the man, Matsiyevskiy declares "Glory To Ukraine" -- a patriotic mantra embraced by Ukrainians after Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. The Russian soldier then curses him, and Matsiyevskiy is gunned down.
Matsiyevskiy was hailed as a national hero. In all likelihood, experts said, he was also a victim of a war crime.
International law prohibits summary executions of prisoners of war, who are protected by the Geneva Conventions, the decades-old international treaty that Russia and Ukraine are both signatories to.
At least 71 Ukrainian POWs have been executed by Russian or Russian-linked forces since February 2022, according to the United Nations, and at least 21 POWs have died in Russian custody. Hundreds have also reported torture and sexual violence.
Ukraine is not blameless either, according to the UN, whose monitoring mission reported the execution of 26 Russian POWs in 2022 and 2023. Hundreds of Russian POWs have also reported torture and ill-treatment at the hands of Ukrainian captors.
Train Station Bloodbath
On the morning of April 8, 2022, hundreds of people were waiting at the railway station in the Donbas city of Kramatorsk when the station was hit by a missile, later identified as a ballistic Tochka-U missile armed with cluster munitions.
At least 58 were killed in the blast, and more than 100 wounded. It was one of the single deadliest attacks on Ukrainian civilians since the start of the all-out invasion.
Though both Ukrainian and Russian forces had Tochka-U systems in their arsenals, the preponderance of evidence pointed to Russian troops as the origin of the missile. Russian authorities denied responsibility and claimed their forces did not use the system.
As with power plants, international humanitarian law prohibits deliberately targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure. It also requires military commanders to take deliberate effort to avoid targeting such locations.
The incident was far from the only one in which civilian facilities were damaged or destroyed with casualties. In July 2024, a Kyiv children's hospital, Ohmatdyt, was badly damaged in a Russian missile strike, though it was unclear if the hospital was deliberately targeted.
Human rights activists have alleged the Russia siege of Mariupol -- the Sea of Azov port city -- between February and May 2022 also constitutes a war crime, with thousands of civilians killed or injured, and hundreds of thousands trapped for weeks without water, plumbing, or electricity.
The United Nations said more than 12,600 civilians have been killed since February 2022, with civilian casualties rising sharply last year compared to 2023.
Byelousov, the Ukrainian war crimes official, said investigators frequently faced another threat, which might be categorized as a war crime itself:
"Russian forces frequently use 'double-tap' strikes; they attack a location, wait 30–40 minutes for rescuers, police, and prosecutors to arrive, then strike again," he told RFE/RL. "We have already lost investigators in these secondary strikes, and others have been injured while documenting war crimes."
