Janine di Giovanni: It's important to get Putin, but it's really important to get the people that did the torturing, the killing, the murdering

Yahoo

3 days ago

Janine di Giovanni has spent over three decades chronicling wars. One of the world's most renowned war correspondents, she has reported from nearly every major conflict of our time: Bosnia, Syria, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine.
Her reporting has appeared in The Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and The Guardian, and she has received numerous awards for her courageous journalism, including the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation.
But Janine's work goes far beyond journalism. As the founder of The Reckoning Project, she now works to transform stories of war into legal evidence – building cases for international justice.
In Ukraine, her focus has shifted to crimes that don't always leave craters: forced russification of children, indoctrination in occupied territories, and the quieter violence of memory erasure.
In this interview, Janine speaks candidly about justice, trauma, Putin's impunity, and what it means to resist – not just with weapons, but with testimony.
We recorded this conversation in Lviv during the Lviv Media Forum 2025.
Your work is about documenting war crimes. When did you understand that it's more than just documenting?
I felt like it wasn't enough that we were just documenting Bucha or child deportation. It's one thing to use it as journalism, but it's another thing to use those stories to try to put the people that do those crimes in jail where they belong. So how do you do that?
You documented the testimonies, and then you work directly with the prosecutors so that you can help build cases against Putin. And not just Putin.
It's important to get him, but it's really important to get the people that did the torturing, the killing, the murdering, who operate the drones, who are driving the buses taking the children away, who bomb the hospitals in Mariupol, who torture Ukrainian soldiers that are prisoners of war. All these people are breaking international law.
There is something called the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions, which should be maintained and followed. If you don't follow them, you are breaking the law, and you deserve to be punished. So this is how accountability works, and what worries me now is that we live in a world where there is so much impunity. People get away with it. Putin gets away with it.
Netanyahu gets away with it. Netanyahu is starving two million people to death. He's not let food aid go into Gaza for 10 weeks [as of 16 May – ed.]. He's not punishing Hamas – he's punishing babies who are dying. He should be punished for this. You cannot operate as a leader committing war crimes and, in his case, genocide.
Putin cannot continue to wage a war and commit hideous crimes against civilians, bombing Ukrainian hospitals, schools, train stations where civilians are gathering, trying to evacuate.
So, it's really important to me that these crimes are investigated, documented, and then given to prosecutors so they could be tried in courts of law.
You mentioned cases when Russians bombed the Mariupol drama theatre and Kramatorsk railway station. However, how do you document the crimes that don't leave behind explosions and bodies; in terms of informational warfare, how do you document, for example, forced russification of Ukrainians?
It's interesting you ask that because we are working now on indoctrination. Indoctrination is not a crime. It's not codified, it falls between international criminal law and international humanitarian law, but indoctrinating kids – not just kids, adults as well – in the occupied territories, taking away their concept of being Ukrainian. The first thing they do when they take the Ukrainian kids and deport them is they take away their names and they give them Russian names.
They take away their language. They can't speak Ukrainian, they have to speak Russian. They take away their identity. They're no longer Ukrainian, they are Russian.
And then indoctrinating them into the Soviet, not Soviet but Russian mindset, whether it's by patriotic music or songs or poems or Russian authors rather than Ukrainian authors, all this is indoctrinating people, and it's what Pol Pot did in Cambodia. It is a crime.
Right now, we're working on trying to investigate where does it fall in the law. Deportation is a crime, but indoctrination is kind of a gray area. So it's really interesting you ask about that because to me that is something really disturbing and really worrying.
So what should we do as Ukrainians and organisations like The Reconing Project, to hold these people accountable?
We're working on it. It's really important for us. We've just published a report.
Because it is interesting that no one is looking into this. Okay, you can drop bombs and you can go to Bucha and assassinate people point-blank. We know these are war crimes. But to take a population in Ukraine's east and basically begin to work on their minds... Because children before the age of 9-10 are incredibly vulnerable.
I worked a lot on child soldiers in Africa. I spent years working and studying child soldiers. You know what I was told that they make the best killers because before the age of I think eight, you don't determine a sense of right and wrong.
So you could pick up a gun and you could kill an entire village, and an adult would say, "I have committed a terrible crime." A child wouldn't. So this is what the Russians do, in a sense. They're counting on the fact that we could take small children and we could begin to russify them. And if you start with children, what is that? That's the future of Ukraine. Because I'm going to get old, you're going to get old, but those kids are growing up now. So, in 20 years' time, they will be the next leaders.
It's a very chilling strategic plan – indoctrination and russification. The Russians are really skilled at it. They've spent decades to perfect it. They know how to do it. So, we have to get it codified within the law, and we have to have it recognised. We have to keep writing about it. We have to keep going, we have to keep working with lawyers to use these as cases. We have many of these cases in our archives of children who have been indoctrinated. Not just children, by the way, but adults as well.
How do you choose the priority of what to document?
Well, right now, for us, it's indoctrination in children.
How do we choose it? I try to work with my team on things that others don't – there's a lot of civil society in Ukraine that is really good at gathering evidence. So, we try not to overlap with them. You know, we try to find an area where we could really work and focus with our team and do good work.
Because I just don't want to work. I want to have an impact. You know, I want to go to the Hague. I want to see the crimes against Putin laid out methodically so that we can help the ICC, so that we can help the prosecutor general in Kyiv.
We're really lucky because the Ukrainian government is the first government I've ever worked with that we work with. We work with the Office of the Prosecutor General. In other countries where I worked, the government is always your enemy.
You don't work with governments. Journalists, our job is to kind of criticise government. But, we work with the prosecutor general and he has been so helpful to us. The former one, now there's an interim. But the Office of the Prosecutor General has asked us to do certain things, asked us to look into things, and they've been incredibly supportive.
Justice isn't quick. It's slow. As long as you know that there is something happening, that we are documenting cases, then, it is there. It's a record. No one can say this didn't happen. Well, yeah, it did.
Because we have this testimony, we verified it, and this is happening right now. It's really important that we get that down on paper, on tape, on video so that no one can ever say in 10 years, 20 years that it didn't happen. Because you know what?
That's how Russia works.
It's how Russia works. I was in a genocide in Bosnia, Srebrenica. The Putin machine is now working in Bosnia as well. There are people who just say it didn't happen. There was no genocide. There were no people killed. It's like, what are you saying? It did happen. Srebrenica did happen. There were 8,000 men and boys who were killed, who were taken to a forest. People tend to rewrite history.
At The Reckoning Project, if we can have solid evidence, evidence does not lie. Evidence is not fake news. Evidence is not disinformation or propaganda. It is just evidence.
Read also: "I'm talking to you from your future": a conversation with Aida Čerkez, 30 years on from the siege of Sarajevo
You mentioned other civil organisations. As far as I see, with cutting the help of USAID, there are less organisations who document war crimes in Ukraine. Did you feel this impact on your organisation or your work?
Look, when Trump got elected, all of us knew the world is going to change because he's not a friend of human rights.
He hates the press, he hates journalists. That's why he creates his own TruthSocial and Fox News – these aren't journalists, they're propagandists. He hates real journalists.
He hates the rule of law because he breaks the law. He is above the law. He even controls the Supreme Court.
The third thing, human rights, he's tried to destroy it by closing down civil society. Personally, at The Reckoning Project, we decided that we were going to just put our heads down and keep working, no matter what.
So, we're just putting our heads down. I always say it's one step, one foot in front of the other. You just keep going.
That's what we're trying to do.
How Trump's politics influence your work right now, and how can it influence the Ukrainian case in the Hague in the future?
In the long run, I don't think he will. I mean, I think he tries to scare people, and that's why USAID was pulled. He's mainly focused right now on America, on deporting millions of people. People, many of whom have the right to be there. You know, they were born there but if they don't have the right papers… I think he's operating with fear.
I went to America a month ago and before I got on the plane people called me and said, "Leave your computer at home, don't take your phone, erase your phone." I have nothing to hide. The only thing that I worry about is our archive of testimonies and that he can't access on my phone.
I think they want us to be afraid, and they want us to be disheartened. But look, after that White House terrible incident with President Zelenskyy [the meeting in the Oval Office – ed.], what did it do? It made Ukrainians stronger, right?
More united.
More united because his [Zelenskyy's – ed.] popularity before was not good, and now he's more popular than he was before.
People saw it. Even people who looked at that and thought, "How can you humiliate an exhausted wartime president because he's not wearing a suit?" It was a terrible thing to watch, but it actually brought Ukraine back to the center of news. Also, it made people who might not have been supportive of Zelenskyy before supportive of him.
How do you envision transforming collected testimonies into real justice?
The way that our researchers work is different from being a journalist asking questions. So, there are very specific questions that a prosecutor will look for.
If we're working on the case of the deported children, where we want to talk to people around the children – their parents, their caretakers, the people in the orphanage, wherever they were last seen. When we get them, the testimonies are, you know, like a questionnaire. Very specific, very detailed. We then verify it.
It's verified using open-source intelligence, but also satellite imagery, different things, like the Kramatorsk train station, right? To make sure that everything is solid.
Then, either the ICC or the Office of the Prosecutor General will want very specific things, like, "I want you to look if the name of this person, a Russian officer, comes up in any of your testimonies in Kherson region or in Sumy or in Donbas."
Then, we give those specific files to the prosecutors to help them build their case. Now, the case against Putin at the ICC is specifically about the children.
So, when will that happen, and will Putin actually go to jail?
When people say to me, "Putin will never go to jail," I say, "Look at what happened to two dictators, Duterte of the Philippines and Slobodan Milošević of the former Yugoslavia." Both of them killed many, many, many, many people. Both of them exercised tyranny over a civilian population. Both of them never thought they would get anywhere near the Hague.
Where did Slobodan Milošević die? In a jail cell at the Hague because his government fell, and the new government handed him over to the Hague. Duterte – same thing. He's now in prison in the Hague. So people say Putin will never go, but we don't know that. We don't know when a new government may come in.
There may be a coup d'etat, there may be a junta, there could be anything. He could be handed over as political leverage. So, that's one scenario.
The other is that sometimes it's not as important to get the big leaders on the chain of command as it is to get the people that committed the crimes.
If you go to Bucha and you talk to the witnesses who saw their husbands or their sons being killed. The people that did it – it wasn't Putin, it was a low-level soldier from Chechnya or Buryatia or wherever they were from. Those are the people that pulled the trigger or tortured or raped or killed. They deserve to be in prison because there is justice.
Sometimes getting those people is to me more important. Because, going back to Bosnia, there are so many people walking around Bosnia today that committed horrible crimes. They murdered, they raped, they burnt houses, they did terrible things, and they are still walking around. And the people they raped or survivors of families that they killed see them in the villages.
That's when justice is so important. Really, really important. I've interviewed so many Bosnian women who were raped. There was a horrific systematic rape campaign to rape Bosnian women and make them pregnant with Serb babies. When the war ended, those men that raped them didn't go to the Hague. They're still there.
Those women have to see them every day. So for me, getting those men is important. It's important for the society to heal. Sometimes it's not Putin that's essential. It's the people that entered the villages. It's the people that are doing the indoctrination. The teachers that are teaching children and forcing them to learn Russian language, Russian history, their version of a Russian world.
Do you believe that justice can be fully served in Ukraine, and the international tribunals are ready to do this?
I think the international tribunals are ready to do this, absolutely.
The biggest office of the ICC in the world is in Ukraine, in Kyiv. So, I think that's already a sign. I think the willingness of the prosecutor general in Ukraine to work directly with the ICC and ICJ, with other mechanisms like universal jurisdiction shows that there's a real pathway.
Does justice work? I have to believe that. Otherwise, I couldn't do the work I do. And I do think that the arm of justice eventually reaches. We have to believe that the work we're doing is going to have an impact. Otherwise, we couldn't wake up in the morning and do it.
How do you envision justice for Ukraine?
I'm hopeful. I really am. First of all, there are a lot of people focused on it.
Second is that the Ukrainian people themselves are going to demand it. Knowing the character of the Ukrainian people, which is very strong. You know, you're not victims. You're not people that sit back and say, "Look at what happened to us." You are like, "We're going to fight back." I don't think the Ukrainian people would allow justice not to be delivered.
Also, remember that the domestic courts are working right now. So, there will be international justice. The crime of aggression – whether that tribunal happens, I believe it will, is really important.
The ICC, whether that's set up as a tribunal, a hybrid court, maybe something that happens here, that's really important and that's already going on. Every conference I go to, whether it's Davos or Munich, the priority is Ukraine. And the Europeans are backing Ukraine because they're afraid.
They're afraid that if Ukraine goes, what's next? Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania? And what comes after that?
If Putin wasn't stopped in Ukraine, would he be in Warsaw tomorrow? Would he get to Paris? I don't think he'd get to Paris, but he might get to Latvia. He might take Estonia.
It is a matter of security as well as solidarity with Ukraine.
You worked on many wars and you have seen a lot. What is the story that impressed you the most in Ukraine, maybe which person whom you talk to?
I think Bucha. Talking to some of the mothers who had lost their… There was one mother, her son had been taken from the street and then tortured and killed, and her pain at a child of her suffering that much.
But also equally some of the Ukrainian soldiers I spoke to who were just like had lost their arms or their legs and they still believe so much in what they're fighting for. They also know, "I'm not just fighting for Ukraine, I'm fighting for something bigger." It's about democracy. It's about fighting for what you believe is right.
Overall, the entire country impresses me because I've never seen people who operate without a sense of victim. Instead, it's a real sense of "we are driven, you're not going to break us, we are Ukrainian."
It's emotional, and it's very powerful to see that. It's an amazing country.
What is the most important when you talk to those people who lost the loved ones or maybe were tortured themselves?
It's really hard. If you're taking testimony, it's very different from being a journalist. The testimonies have to stand up in court.
One time I remember being in Kharkiv and I was with a colleague of mine, we were interviewing this old man who was from… Do you know that part of eastern Kharkiv that's completely destroyed?
Saltivka, yeah.
He was living in an apartment, it was completely bombed out. He was there alone. He was so traumatised that we couldn't use his testimony because you can't use traumatised people's testimonies in court. People who are traumatised, their sense of memory is distorted. But we realised we couldn't use his testimony, but he wanted to talk and we just listened to him.
The greatest skill that a journalist or a social worker or anyone could have is empathy , is to put yourself into their shoes. What would I feel like if I were an old person, having to be evacuated from the home I've lived in my entire life, leaving behind my animals and my roots, my home? I don't want to be a refugee going to Poland. I don't want to be a refugee going to Kyiv. I want to stay in my home. So, I try to put myself in their shoes.
That's very hard because it's very painful. Journalists are meant to be objective. Personally, I've never been objective. I will always be on the side of people who are suffering.
How do you protect yourself and your team from the burnout in this case because it's very traumatic?
Yeah. I think you protect yourself by having faith in what you do. Your work is going to save you. Your work, believing in what you are doing, is important – the most important thing to have during wartime. I know with my team, my Ukrainian team, that they feel they're doing something.
Otherwise, they would feel so helpless because the terrible thing that a war does is it strips you of power. You don't have the power to end the war. You don't have the power to protect people. But you do have the power to write about it. You do have the power to tell a story. You do have a power in a way to control the narrative, to make sure it's a truthful narrative.
You have to keep believing that. It's really hard to do that when a war's been going on for three years and you're really tired. You want it to end, and you want a normal life. You can't leave the country easily. Many people I know say they're not having children right now because they don't want to start a family. They don't want to bring a child into the world right now.
War is helplessness and I think the only way to overcome that helplessness is to have some sense of power by controlling your own destiny. You could write about it. You could keep a diary. You could take photographs. You can keep the part of you alive, which is hope. The war will end. I don't know if it's going to end with Trump or his conditions, but it will end. It absolutely will end.
When it does, life will begin again, and then you will have to put your life back together. But you will never forget what happened to you, and you might not be able to forgive. That will be a part of you forever.
But, in some way, it makes you stronger to appreciate when the day comes and the war's over and you could take a plane from Kyiv to Warsaw or to Greece or to Italy or to America. You're going to really appreciate that airplane in a way that you never have before.
I didn't take a shower in Bosnia for months and months on end, and I could tell you when I got somewhere where there was hot water, I never have taken for granted electricity or hot water ever again. Because I lived for years without electricity. I'm not the same person I was before I went to Bosnia and I'm really glad. I feel privileged to have lived through that.
In one of your interviews, you mentioned that memory it's a form of resistance. How can we as Ukrainians preserve the memory of this war?
You write about it, you take photographs, you draw, you create art, you create theater pieces, you use art or words in a way so that it never is forgotten because it's exactly what I said. In 30 years' time, whoever's in charge of Russia at that time will try to rewrite this whole story – "they didn't invade Ukraine, the Ukrainians invaded Moscow. There was no Bucha. There was no Irpin. There was no Mariupol." It's all lies, but you can say, "No, there was because here is my family's diary." That's why I always tell people to write. It's like the most important resistance you have is that you keep a diary.
Not just your journalistic work, but keep a diary because your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren are going to read that and say, "Wow, my grandmother had an app on her phone called Air Alert. And when there was a drone, it went off, and they had to go to a parking garage and sleep there!" or "Wow, 19,000 children were taken from Ukraine and put on buses and taken to Russia, and their names were stolen from them!" The Russians say that didn't happen, but it did happen because here's a list of the names.
So, yeah, memory is our greatest resistance. Memory and documentation. Because then no one could ever say you made it up. It's evidence, and evidence doesn't lie.