Massacre in Ukraine: Expert suggests Russia may be brought to justice one day
It is now two years since Russian paratroopers committed one of the worst atrocities of the war in Ukraine.
In the town of Bucha, just outside Kyiv, hundreds of civilians were systematically massacred.
Forces News visited Bucha and spoke to a war crimes expert about the chances of those responsible ever being brought to justice.
A UN report found Russian troops had committed a litany of war crimes in Ukraine - murder, torture, rape and the forced deportation of children to the Russian Federation.
But one town in particular has become synonymous with the brutality of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war, Bucha.
Thirty kilometres northwest of Kyiv, Bucha's roads have now been repaved and many homes have been rebuilt.
Two years ago, a completely different landscape was seen in Bucha.
As shown in the image below, the remnants of Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers were destroyed in the bitter fighting with the Ukrainian army.
What Vladimir Putin's troops left behind shocked the world.
In the streets of Bucha lay dozens of bodies - just some of the estimated 400 civilians killed here by Russian paratroopers.
Now, two years on, the question remains, how likely is it that the victims of this atrocity and others across Ukraine will ever see justice?
"Ukraine has identified so far well over 100,000 cases of war crimes," Professor James Gow, the co-director of the War Crimes Research Group at King's College, told Forces News.
"What they have in mind and what they mean by a case is hard to know for sure.
"What we can be certain about is that they are not going to be able to investigate that number of incidents in a full and proper way that could bring it to court and bring it to justice."
Prof Gow made the comparison to the war crimes tribunals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reported around 10,000 incidents, and highlighted that they had only managed to look into a small number of those cases, "perhaps into the hundreds".
Russia's campaign
On Yablunska Street the walls and fences still bear witness to what happened.
Just off the street behind an office block is a makeshift memorial where eight Ukrainian men were frog-marched by Russian soldiers and executed.
"Bucha is a particular example, and Russian forces have behaved in that same kind of way in other places", said Prof Gow.
"From September, Russia will no longer be part of the Council of Europe and subject to the European Court of Human Rights.
"Which is a bit of a shame, because previously Russian conduct inside of Russia, in Chechnya, Russian conduct in other places such as Georgia has been subject to proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights, which has found each time that Russia's way of war is simply inhumane and unacceptable.
"And Russia accepted the judgment and paid the fines and the compensation that went with it. In a sense, the Russian military sees this as a byproduct of their way of conducting armed hostilities.
"But I think we are fairly clear that the conduct of the Russian campaign has involved extensive use of very direct criminal violence and more indirect indiscriminate criminal action."
On the outskirts of Bucha are the burnt-out remains of Russian armour.
In the town's cemetery, where many of the dead lay, there are so many of them that a special section was created.
Row upon row of murdered civilians.
Putin to The Hague?
Ukraine's prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, says Vladimir Putin himself will one day be prosecuted for atrocities committed in Ukraine.
Currently, that looks unlikely, but Prof Gow believes it is not impossible.
"What we need to think about is the point at which politics in Russia changes. And it will change at some point," he said.
Prof Gow added: "At that point, there will be a need to rehabilitate Russia within some sense, those who take over, even if they still remain in that same mindset and strategic culture.
"Because let's face it, Putin is a mafioso leader on his own, but he's part of a strategic culture which has a certain perspective and certain mentality.
"But I think we can anticipate that those who take over will see a need for change, and in that context I would not exclude at all any possibility that we could see people being transferred to The Hague."
The Kremlin denies its forces killed civilians in Bucha, claiming these images were faked for the consumption of gullible Western media.
Few believe that, with a UN report calling what happened in Bucha a war crime.
Summary executions committed by Russian troops, atrocities for which they and those who sent them here must one day face justice.
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