The horrors revealed lately in Bucha, according to a French priest who is interviewing individuals who observed or were victims of suspected war crimes in Ukraine. Are simply the tip of the iceberg, and the impact from the siege of Mariupol, he warns, will be far worse.
Patrick Desbois is a Catholic priest who formed the NGO Yahad — In Unum in 2004 to investigate and record Nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe. Hopes to utilise the knowledge to help people accused of war crimes in Ukraine face charges in the future.
Desbois has also worked in Iraq to gather evidence of genocide against the Yazidi minority by Islamic State fighters. He predicts Mariupol “will be worse than Bucha,” where Russian forces declared victory despite the fact that some Ukrainian combatants and civilians remain holed up in an industrial complex. The world was outraged by the atrocities chronicled in that Kyiv neighbourhood, prompting calls for an impartial war crimes probe.
Desbois said he spoke to a mother who was holding her 3-year-old child in her lap while attempting to evacuate the city when they came under fire from Russian soldiers in interviews done remotely through Zoom with mediators in Ukraine. The child passed away. Desbois was informed by a guy that he used his Kazakh passport to sneak past Russian checkpoints and carry rape victims into Ukrainian-controlled area. After a missile struck their flat, a lady witnessed her kid die. She died later of a stroke brought on by shrapnel stuck in her skull.
Desbois finds witnesses or victims on social media or through the networks of his on-the-ground colleagues, and he backs up their claims using geolocation data and other ways. In the coming weeks, he intends to visit Kyiv.
“There is no question that Russian forces are committing crimes against humanity every day, and with full awareness,” Desbois added. But, unlike President Biden and several other international leaders, he does not feel there is enough proof to call what is happening in Ukraine “genocide.” “Unfortunately, it will be determined by what occurs next,” he told The Washington Post.
