Ukraine’s prosecutor general says office investigating thousands of Russian war crime cases

Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said on Monday that her office is investigating 5,800 war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia during Moscow’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

“We are not proud, but we have 5,800 such cases,” she told CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” in an interview Monday, adding that “more and more” proceedings were happening every day.

The prosecutor general specified that her office had more than 500 suspects including Russian politicians, military leaders and propaganda agents who are suspected of starting and continuing the war. 

Venediktova’s office released a statement on Monday saying 183 children have been killed in the attack, but she estimated that the actual figure was likely to be much higher, she told CNN.

“For example, we don’t understand what’s happened in Mariupol just now and how many kids are dead inside Mariupol,” she also told Tapper, referring to the Ukrainian city that has endured some of the most brutal attacks in the war.  

Well over one month into the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations (U.N.) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement on Sunday that at least 4,335 civilians suffered casualties in the war, including 1,842 who have been killed. 

Similarly to Venediktova’s statement, the U.N. agency, however, said it “believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration.”