The Reckoning review – shattering stories of invasion in Ukraine
During the violent chaos following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a woman whose husband is missing receives a phone call from his number. Brief relief implodes when the speaker is not him but a stranger revealing that this device has been found beside a corpse covered by a tarpaulin.
This is one of numerous shattering anecdotes in a play by Dash Arts, based on work by The Reckoning Project, which collects verbatim testimony from conflict victims with the aim of bringing prosecutions for war crimes.
As one of the judgments by lawyers is whether invader behaviour meets 'the torture threshold', the material is inevitably disturbing. A testifier mimes the 'three knot' restraint, in which he was suspended from a ceiling with ropes tied in places likely to trigger involuntary movements. In a post-apocalyptic moment, a man walking through miles of ravaged land encounters a distressed stranger and realises that they are the only two survivors from a vast area.
Co-writers Anastasiia Kosidii and Josephine Burton take us back, beyond the headline death tolls and so far performative international diplomacy, to a few indelibly brutal details of what Putin's land-grab entailed. So horrific are the reminiscences that there is sensibly a softening framework in which a Stoyanka survivor prepares a Ukrainian summer salad – chopping tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and dill in real time – while talking to a Ukrainian journalist.
Though well played by Tom Godwin and Marianne Oldham, the use of British actors in the central roles can reduce the regional specificity of the story, with Ukrainian performers Simeon Kylsyi and Olga Safronova playing multiple small roles and also doubling as emcees. It might be intriguing to see a performance in which the acting pairs were swapped.
The piece ends with a quasi-Eucharistic distribution of tubs of salad. (Not the batch created on stage, presumably for hygiene reasons.) Delicious as it is, the parting gift cannot expel the terrible taste in the mouth from the forensic charge-sheet against the Russian invaders that, the piece reminds us, must be remembered even when a likely Russia-friendly 'peace' is eventually agreed.
At the Arcola theatre, London, until 28 June
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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Ukraine war briefing: Putin tells Trump in phone call Moscow ready to resume peace talks
Vladimir Putin told US counterpart Donald Trump on Saturday that Moscow was ready to hold a fresh round of peace talks with Kyiv after 22 June, once the sides complete exchanging prisoners and soldiers' bodies. Putin and Trump held a 50-minute phone call on Saturday to discuss the escalating situation in the Middle East and Ukraine peace talks, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said. Trump posted on Truth Social to say Putin had called 'to very nicely wish me a Happy Birthday' on the day he turned 79, but that 'more importantly' the two discussed the Iran-Israel crisis: 'He feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end, to which I explained, his war should also end,' Trump said, referring to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Putin and Trump held a call for the fifth time since the Republican took office, in a stark pivot from the approach of his predecessor Joe Biden's administration. Trump hinted at follow-up discussions on the war in Ukraine in the coming week. Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy meanwhile did not mention whether Ukraine would agree to the next round of talks, only saying that 'the exchanges will be completed and the parties will discuss the next step.' Zelenskyy urged the United States to 'shift tone' in its dialogue with Russia, saying it was 'too warm' and would not help to end the fighting. He said he hoped that the escalation between Israel and Iran would not result in a drop in military aid to Kyiv, according to remarks published on Saturday: 'We would like to see aid to Ukraine not decrease because of this,' he said. 'Last time, this was a factor that slowed down aid to Ukraine.' The recent escalation sparked fears Washington might relocate resources at its expense, to beef up the defence of its close ally Israel which unleashed a large-scale attack on Iran Friday. A sharp rise in global oil prices following Israeli strikes on Iran will benefit Russia and bolster its military capabilities in the war in Ukraine, Zelenskyy said on Friday in comments that were under embargo until Saturday afternoon. Speaking to journalists in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said the surge in oil prices threatened Ukraine's position on the battlefield, especially because western allies have not enforced effective price caps on Russian oil exports. 'The strikes led to a sharp increase in the price of oil, which is negative for us,' Zelenskyy said. 'The Russians are getting stronger due to greater income from oil exports.' Earlier on Saturday, Ukraine and Russia swapped prisoners in the fourth such exchange this week, part of a large-scale plan to bring back 1,000 wounded prisoners from each side and return the bodies of dead soldiers. The prisoner agreement was the only visible result of two recent rounds of talks in Istanbul. Photos published by Zelenskyy on Telegram showed men of various ages, draped in Ukrainian flags. Some were injured, others disembarked from buses and hugged those welcoming them, or were seen calling someone by phone, sometimes covering their faces or smiling. Moscow's defence ministry released its own video showing men in uniforms holding Russian flags, clapping and chanting 'Glory to Russia' and 'hooray', some raising their fists in the air. However, Russian state media reported that Moscow had not received any of its war dead back from Kyiv, echoing a statement Russia made on Friday, when it returned the bodies of 1,200 slain Ukrainian soldiers. Zelenskyy said he expected the prisoner swaps to continue until 20 or 21 June. Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured Andriivka village in northeastern Sumy region. Zelenskyy also claimed 'successful actions' near Pokrovsk, for months a focus of Russian attacks in their slow advance on the eastern front, and 'strong results' near Kupiansk, an area in northeastern Ukraine that has come under heavy Russian pressure. Global news agencies including Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports. Since the start of the month, Russia has intensified its advances along the frontline, especially in the north-eastern Ukrainian region of Sumy, where it seeks to establish a 'buffer zone'. Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that its forces had seized the village of Zelenyi Kut, southwest of Pokrovsk. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian troops had maintained defensive lines along more than 1,000 km of the frontline. He also dismissed Moscow's claims that Russian troops had crossed into the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk. Dnipropetrovsk borders three regions that are partially occupied by Russia – Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia now controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.
BBC News
8 hours ago
- BBC News
Ukraine war crime trial: A Russian soldier takes the stand for an execution
On the frozen frontline in the east of Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian soldier surveyed the fallout from a Russian assault. It was the middle of January 2024 and the ground was covered in ice. Two weeks earlier, an 18-strong Russian assault team had broken through the line and seized three positions, killing five Ukrainians and losing 10 Russians before ceding the thin stretch of land back to the Ukrainians just hours later. The three positions that had changed hands were each just a few foxholes in the ground – dots on a devastated landscape of craters and shredded Ukrainian soldier filmed as he looked over the remains of his fallen comrades. "This is Vitas, the small one," he said, using the dead man's callsign. He examined another body. "A silver ring, this is Grinch," he said. With difficulty, he turned over another frozen body. It was in bad condition, but the face was recognisable. The soldier sighed. "What can I find to cover you, so that you won't get cold," he said to the dead man. He picked up a nearby helmet and placed it over the damaged face. "We have found the Penguin," he said.A year later, in January 2025, a Russian soldier was frog-marched down the corridor of a rundown local courthouse in Zaporizhzhia flanked by five Ukrainian soldiers and a large rottweiler trained on the Russian's scent and straining at its leash to attack him. Dmitriy Kurashov, callsign 'Stalker', was about to go on trial for the alleged battlefield execution of Vitalii Hodniuk, a veteran 41-year-old Ukrainian soldier known by the callsign 'Penguin'. The trial was to be the first of its kind. According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian troops have executed at least 124 prisoners of war on the battlefield since the full-scale invasion began, but Kurashov is the first person to be brought to trial in Ukraine for the crime. His case is one of a tiny number among the tens of thousands of open war crimes cases where a suspect has been captured and can be made to stand in the dock. Adding to the unprecedented nature of the event, three members of Kurashov's own unit had agreed to testify against the bright, boxy courtroom, Kurashov was locked in a glass-enclosed dock. Short in stature, his head often bowed, he cut a subdued figure. When he did look around, he was forced to swivel his head because he had lost one eye to a grenade at the front. It was not Kurashov's first time in the dock; he had been jailed twice before in Russia, and was among the thousands of prisoners freed by the state to take part in the prosecutor read the charges. Kurashov was accused of shooting Hodniuk execution style as the Ukrainian soldier attempted to surrender – a violation of the laws of war. Kurashov had intially pleaded not guilty, during the pre-trial phase, but now in court he switched his plea to guilty. Informally, he maintained his innocence, and was making the switch purely to speed up the process, he to the UN, battlefield executions by Russians have increased at an alarming rate over the past year. In a February report, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said it had found evidence of 79 executions by Russian forces since August 2024, as well as evidence of three illegal killings by Ukraine using first-person drones. The UN also said it had found at least three calls by Russian public officials ordering or approving executions, and according to Ukraine there is evidence of Russian battlefield commanders ordering executions up and down the frontline. The assault on the front by Kurashov's unit was to be his first proper operation, just a few weeks after joining the war. The unit was part of "Storm-V", a detachment of the 127th motorised rifle division made up almost entirely of freed prisoners. The Storm-V units have been used by Russia as cannon fodder, sent to stage assaults on the worst parts of the frontline. They are a grim echo of similar units formed by Stalin, characterised principally by their extremely high rate of operation began early on the morning of 6 January 2024 under a dense fog. The 18-strong Storm-V team approached the frontline in two armoured vehicles and a tank and the assault began. Kurashov was directed towards the small cluster of foxholes where Hodniuk and others were hiding, following a Russian artillery is where Kurashov's account diverges from that of the prosecution and the Russian soldiers testifying against him. They say Kurashov called into a foxhole for those inside to surrender and Hodniuk emerged unarmed and kneeled on the ground, only for Kurashov to shoot him with a burst from his AK-47. Kurashov says that it was not him who fired the shots but another Russian, a medic with callsign "Sedoy", who was later Russians could not hold the position for long. Overpowered by Ukrainian forces just hours later, Kurashov and the other survivors crawled out of the foxholes and surrendered. They were marched away from the front to a Ukrainian armoured vehicle and taken as prisoners of war. Ukrainian soldiers who saw Hodniuk's body told the country's state security service, the SBU, that it lay face down with no weapon nearby. The SBU could not access the scene, because it was too close to the contact line, but the agency began what would become an extensive remote investigation. At an SBU location in Zaporizhzhia last month, the officer in charge – who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his work in the security service – drew a map of the scene and explained how they put Kurashov in the dock."The first step was interrogating the eight prisoners of war," he said. "They were questioned as witnesses and later their identities were fully confirmed via social networks, mobile phones, and partial radio intercepts that preceded the event. The entire unit in that sector was tracked."Initially, there were two suspected executions. Another Ukrainian, callsign 'Grinch', had been beaten to death with a shovel, one witness said. But the SBU couldn't prove it. "The polygraph didn't confirm the information and when the bodies were eventually recovered from the battlefield, none of them had such injuries," the investigator said. "My opinion, after examining all the facts, is that this was made up."It was, he said, an example of Ukraine's ability to investigate and prosecute war crimes impartially, despite being the victim and under an ongoing state of war from the aggressor. "Look, we have one suspect on trial for an execution," the SBU investigator said, referring to Kurashov. "I signed it and sent it to court because we've gathered enough evidence that points to guilt. If our goal was simply to suspect anyone and send them to court we would have ten prisoners passing through every day." The seriousness with which Ukraine is treating this criminal prosecution is apparent. The SBU investigation produced more than 2,000 pages of evidence. Each of the witnesses was put through filmed reconstructions of the event on a Ukrainian army shooting range. In court, all efforts have been made by the prosecutor and the judges to ensure that Kurashov understands his rights, that he can understand his translator, and is given the opportunity to cross examine witnesses against him – an opportunity he has so far declined. (Kurashov's state-appointed lawyer declined to speak to the BBC. She has spoken only briefly in court, on administrative matters and to clarify some descriptions of the event by witnesses.)The three Russian witnesses all testified on the first day of Kurashov's trial – three former prisoners who like Kurashov had gambled on surviving the war to gain their freedom. One had been serving 25 years to life for killing two drug dealers, another nine years for grievous bodily harm for killing a man with a brick in a fight, a third eight years, also for grievous bodily harm. Families of Ukraine's missing fear peace will not return themUkraine's front-line soldiers eye Russia talks with hopeHow Ukraine carried out daring 'Spider Web' attack They gave evidence via video link from an adjacent courtroom, so they could be locked in their own dock. Dmitry Zuev, 44, was to be the key witness. He told the court that he saw Kurashov call for the Ukrainians to come out of the foxhole and surrender, after which Hodniuk emerged and knelt with his hands up. Then there were more gunshots and explosions, Zuev said, and he saw Hodniuk fall face down into the mud. Zuev also told the court that he personally knew the medic, Sedoy, who Kurashov has accused of the killing, and Sedoy was not Zamyatin, 54, testified that Hodniuk was not holding a gun when he emerged from the foxhole. Zamyatin did not see Kurashov fire the alleged shots, he said, because there were explosions at the same moment."But I can say that it was him," Zamyatin told the court. "Because there was no one else at that spot except him."Konstantin Zelenin, 41, the commander of Kurashov's small assault group, told the court he was hiding in a crater when he saw Hodniuk exit the foxhole on the right side with his hands up."Then, just a split second later, as the shelling began again, I heard a burst from an automatic rifle," Zelenin said."On the right side was Stalker, and he was there alone." In the dock, Kurashov sat largely mute as his former unit mates testified against him, speaking only occasionally to his lawyer through a slim gap in the enclosure's door. It is not clear yet if he will testify on his own behalf. The day after one of his hearings, he agreed to talk to the BBC about how he had ended up on trial in interview was co-ordinated by the SBU and conducted at a derelict building in Zaporizhzhia being used as a kind of safe house by the service, which confirmed the basic facts of Kurashov's life. Kurashov appeared in good condition and said he had agreed freely to take part. The lead judge in his case permitted the interview, for which an SBU press officer was present some of the time. Kurashov's remarks to the BBC will not be admissible in journey to that miserable stretch of front where Hodniuk died – to becoming Stalker – began in an orphanage in Gremyachinsk, a decayed old coal town about a thousand miles from Moscow on the way to Siberia. Orphaned at birth, Kurashov was raised in a group home. As a teenager, he got into a fight with a police officer and was imprisoned for assault. He served four years, but on his release he had no family, friends or place to live, so he became a vagrant. He began robbing summer houses and shops for food and money, he said, resulting in another imprisonment, this time in a remote penal colony alongside men serving life sentences for the some of the most brutal months into that sentence, representatives from the Russian military came to the penal colony and told the convicts they had an opportunity to turn a new page in their lives. Kurashov still had five years to serve. "They told us you can have a clean slate, become a clean person," he said. "Just sign this contract and go.""Go" meant to the "special military operation" in Ukraine. Kurashov knew little about it, he said, but he thought anything was better than five more years in the penal colony or being turned out into the streets at the end of his sentence. So he signed, and was taken immediately to a training camp in occupied territory in Ukraine. Kurashov described his unit as made up entirely of "people who had been pushed down by life and rejected by society, who were outside of society". They were given 21 days training, he said, during which they were drunk almost all the time. "They did not want to study or train," he recalled. "They all said they were just there to die."There was no training on the Geneva Convention, to which Russia and Ukraine are both signatories, and which prohibits the killing of people who have surrendered or no longer pose a threat. In fact, the trainers told them the opposite, Kurashov said. "The ones who taught us how to take positions told us not to take any prisoners," he said. His description matches accounts from his unit mates, who told Ukrainian investigators they were instructed to execute prisoners and throw grenades into dugouts even if the enemy had also matches accounts from other Russian prisoners of war. "I don't recall training on international humanitarian law," a Russian POW told the UN recently. "During our military training and later, commanders told us not to take [Ukrainian soldiers] as prisoners of war. It is logistically cumbersome."According to Kurashov, the unit were told they would be carrying out logistical operations like digging trenches, but instead found themselves headed immediately for battle. During the brief assault on the Ukrainian position, Kurashov's impression was not one of an able military unit at war. "What I saw was people who just laid down and died," he said. Within hours, 10 of the 18-strong assault team were dead and the remaining eight were in a fortnight, the incident had become one of Ukraine's many thousands of war crimes cases. Ukraine has no specialist war crimes courts, so the cases generally fall to whichever court is local to the offence. In this case, the Zavodskyi District in Zaporizhzhia. Prior to the full scale invasion, 32-year-old Zavodskyi District prosecutor Mykyta Manevskyi had taken on a range of civil crimes like robbery, vandalism and fraud, plus two murder cases, but never a war crime. "When you're working with an ordinary murder case, it has difficulties but it's pretty simple," Manevskyi said. "You know where the murder took place, you can collect DNA and fingerprints, you can find the murder weapon. You have almost immediate access to the body. You can conduct forensic tests."In this case, Manevskyi's murder scene was on the contact line. "We could not even extract the body for two months," he said. "It made it difficult to perform any kind of forensic examination. The body was too long under the sun, the rain and snow, and it was harmed by artillery strikes."That made it difficult to ascertain anything concrete about the nature of the shots that killed Hodniuk. "This is not the level of detail, unfortunately, that we need when investigating a murder," Manevskyi said. "So we had to focus more on working with the witnesses we had."In fact, the prosecution is relying almost totally on the testimony of the Russian soldiers. There are no other eyewitnesses, no drone footage of the actual event and the physical evidence is circumstantial, much of it badly degraded by the battlefield conditions which persisted for weeks before the bodies could be recovered. But the testimony is not without its complications. The witnesses are all POWs, being held by the nation prosecuting the case. They were each interrogated up to 10 times by the Ukrainian state security service, during which time some of their stories evolved. One bore a grudge against Kurashov from their time together in training, he told investigators. Another said he resented the defendant for, in his view, getting them caught."It is a tricky area," said Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University of the Netherlands. "POWs are a particularly vulnerable category of witnesses, any evidence they give should be taken with a grain of salt." There was nothing inherently wrong with POWs testifying, Vasiliev said, but various factors could have affected their decision to appear for the prosecution. "Maybe they are expecting better treatment in Ukrainian custody, maybe they expect to be prioritised in a prisoner swap," he said. "They could have various incentives to lie."Kurashov maintains his story about the medic, Sedoy. He told the BBC he had pleaded guilty because he believed the sooner the trial was over the sooner he could be exchanged back to if Kurashov is found guilty, he is no longer a prisoner of war. He is simply a prisoner in Ukraine's civil legal system. Yuriy Belousov, the head of the war crimes department of Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General, told the BBC that Russian soldiers convicted of war crimes would go to prison in Ukraine and stay there. "We prosecute on behalf of the victims and their relatives and they should feel justice has been done," Belousov the end, it may not be that simple. Russia has captured many thousands of civilians during its full scale invasion of Ukraine and is effectively holding them hostage in Russian prisons. If the Kremlin decides it wants Kurashov back, it may have leverage to get him."That is less of a legal and more of an ethical issue," Belousov said. "If, let's say, 100 people would be offered to exchange for this one, then yes maybe. It is our obligation to prosecute on behalf of victims, but it is also our obligation to save our people who have been kept in Russia." Belousov and his colleagues are aiming at bigger fish than Kurashov. Their goal for this year and next is to bring cases against middle and higher level Russian command, he said. According to the testimony from the captured Russians in Kurashov's unit, their senior commander issued an order directly before the assault that no prisoners should be to Belousov, similar evidence has been found up and down the frontline. Grim video evidence, sometimes shared on Russian social media, appears to bear that out. Russia has in turn accused Ukrainian troops of extra-judicial killings, and Ukraine has launched several investigations into its own forces (the exact number is unclear). But the number of allegations against Russia far outweighs that against Ukraine. Russia has previously denied committing war crimes in the UN has also documented several cases of Russian public figures calling for executions. Last July, after Ukraine's Azov Brigade posted a social media video showing one of its members shooting a Russian soldier in a dugout, the deputy head of Russia's Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, called for "total executions" of Ukrainian servicemen."No words about mercy. No humanity. No pardon. They have no right to life. Execute, execute and execute," Medvedev wrote on the Telegram social media words will not cost him anything. Instead they run downhill until they reach the level of Vitalii Hodniuk, Dmitry Kurashov, and all the other Russian and Ukrainian men killing each other in service of the war's obscure goals. In this case, one of those men stands accused of breaking the laws of the killing he had been sent to do – laws he may well have been ordered to found guilty, Kurashov faces up to life in prison. At the end of his conversation with the BBC, he said that he had no real vision for the future, other than a desire to return to Russia. "At least I will have a disability," he said, referring to the loss of his eye, and the anticipated benefits it would draw. "I won't have to be a vagrant anymore."Vitalii Hodniuk cannot return home, of course. It was two months before his body could even be recovered. His family did not want to speak publicly about his passing, but they did assist in the SBU in its investigation. Hodniuk's record shows that he was an experienced soldier who defended Ukraine against Russian-backed forces from 2015 to 2020 and joined up to fight again in May, six months after he died, the Penguin was brought back to his village to be buried. On a bright morning, just a stone's throw from where he grew up and went to school, people lined the street on their knees to watch his coffin pass trial continues. Daria Mitiuk contributed to this report. Photographs by Joel Gunter.
Sky News
10 hours ago
- Sky News
The bodies of more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers returned to Kyiv after prisoner swap
Why you can trust Sky News More than 1,000 Ukrainian bodies have been handed back to Kyiv after a prisoner-of-war exchange - as Volodymyr Zelenskyy renews calls for sanctions. The Ukrainian president said on social media that many of those released by Russia had been "held captive since 2022". "It is our absolute duty to free them all," he added. "And we are working toward exactly that - to leave no one behind in the enemy's hands. I thank everyone who is helping." Russia's defence ministry said it had handed over the bodies of 1,200 dead Ukrainian soldiers on Friday, but state media reported on Saturday that Moscow had not received any of its war dead back from Kyiv. The ministry added that its soldiers are in Belarus, where they are receiving medical treatment before being transferred back to Russia. It comes after both sides agreed to exchange those held captive at talks in Istanbul earlier this month. However, the talks failed to lead to a ceasefire. In a post on X, Mr Zelenskyy renewed calls for sanctions on Russia, saying that "no one has been able to stop Putin" and that "he must lose money" to end the war. "Capping the price of Russian energy is critical, because oil is their main source of income," Mr Zelenskyy added. " What happens in the Middle East is now driving oil prices up, and that, in turn, affects Europe's security. "That's why oil price caps are such a powerful tool." He went on to say talks between the US and Russia "feels too warm", adding: "Putin must understand clearly: America will stand with Ukraine, including by imposing sanctions and supporting our army. "Any signals of reduced aid, or of treating Ukraine and Russia as equals, are deeply unfair. Russia is the aggressor. They started this war. They do not want to end it." It comes as the Ukrainian president dismissed claims that Russian troops had crossed into the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk - which had remained under Ukrainian control since the war started in February 2022. Mr Zelenskyy also said Ukrainian troops had stopped Russian troops from advancing in the northeastern Sumy region, and are fighting to regain control of the border. He said: "You should understand that the enemy has been stopped there. And the maximum depth at which the fighting takes place is 7km from the border."
