Materials about Russia's wedging a war with Ukraine over the past two and a half years have been collected in the course of a pretrial inquiry, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said, promising to reveal the information at the September 7 meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Security and Defense Committee.
“Since September 2014, the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office has been conducting a pretrial inquiry into the aggressive war against Ukraine conducted by Russian authorities and Russian Armed Forces’ officers in a conspiracy with terrorist groups. The inquiry covers the entire period of aggression since February 2014 (occupation of the Crimean peninsula and the anti-terrorism operation in eastern Ukraine),” the prosecutor general said on Facebook on August 30.
Materials in the criminal proceeding comprise more than 800 volumes, including 350 classified as ‘secret’ or ‘top secret’. More than 1,400 victims and over 2,000 witnesses have been interviewed, more than 1,800 forensic tests have been performed, and approximately 100,000 pieces of material evidence have been obtained.
Lutsenko also said that the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensic Examination under the Justice Ministry of Ukraine held a unique judicial examination, which lasted for almost a year and involved at least 31 leading experts and specialists, including those from the Defense Ministry, the Antiterrorist Center at the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Guard, and the State Border Service.
The experts studied 3,600 combat and other documents, which made it possible to analyze the reasons for the big losses of the Ukrainian army.
“I will provide information about the progress of the inquiry and the possibility of holding the culprits criminally liable at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Security and Defense Committee on September 7,” the prosecutor general said.
