Russia builds cages inside an auditorium

kyiv, Ukraine – During their last performance at the Mariupol Chamber Philharmonic on February 20, days before the Russian invasion and the start of the destruction of their city, children filled the majestic stained-glass hall for a classical music concert.

This week, the sound of iron rang out in the chamber as the Russian occupation forces erected cages for use in the chamber. trials of captured Ukrainian soldiers.

The construction of the cages, documented by the Russian media, offers perhaps the clearest indication to date that Moscow is preparing to celebrate fake trials of Ukrainian and other soldiers on newly occupied soil, procedures for which some Ukrainian officials and independent observers fear are planned divert responsibility for atrocities committed by Russia when its forces besieged the city.

Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian representative forces in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, in eastern Ukraine, he said Ukrainian soldiers would soon be taken to court, telling a local Russian media on Wednesday:

“The first court must be held by the end of the summer”.

The prospect of such processes provoked indignation throughout Ukraine and calls on Ukrainian officials at the United Nations and the Red Cross to intervene with greater force to protect prisoners.

The Kremlin has a long and brutal history of using the details of legal proceedings to lend a veneer of credibility to its efforts to silence critics, impose its own narrative on events and intimidate the public.

Similar trials have been taking place for years in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists, with the United Nations and others denouncing them as deeply flawed.

In an interview Thursday in Kiev, Ukraine, Vadym Boichenko, the exiled mayor of Mariupol, said Moscow desperately wants to show its people a “victory”.

As he fails to advance on the battlefield, he said: they will explode Ukrainian POWs to intimidate Ukraine and emphasize Russian control over Mariupol.

It was unclear who could be prosecuted, but in June, Russian investigators said they had opened more than 1,100 cases against Ukrainians for “crimes against peace”.

Among the suspects are members of the Azov regiment, considered heroes in Ukraine for having resisted for weeks under a steel mill in Mariupol while Russian forces bombed the city at the end of one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Although now part of the National Guard of Ukraine, the regiment started out as a far-right militia and Russian propagandists have consistently pointed to it as evidence to back up their unsubstantiated claims about influence of Nazism in the country and painted their members. as war criminals.

Boichenko said the Russians could use the occasion of Ukraine’s Independence Day, which falls on August 24 and marks the nation’s breakup from the Soviet Union in 1991, to create their own rehearsal show.

“They accuse the heroic men and women who defended our city of destroying our city,” he said.

Concerns for the prisoners’ safety have only increased since last month, when Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of orchestrate an explosion in a field of Russian prisoners in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 50 Ukrainian POWs.

Boichenko said the trials could include people who weren’t in uniform.

He said there were about 10,000 Ukrainians held in four Russian penal colonies around Mariupol, a number that includes both civilians and soldiers.

“If you are helping the Ukrainian armed forces, in their eyes, it is a crime,” he said.

“If you are protecting your land, you are a traitor in their eyes. If you decide not to cooperate, you could be taken to court. “

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