Here is the introduction to the New York Times piece
KOROPY, Ukraine – Four men tugged at long strips of fabric to lift a coffin out of the gaping hole in the backyard of a small house. They flung the lid open to reveal the moldy corpse of Oleksiy Ketler, who had been killed instantly by shrapnel when a mortar fell on the road in Koropy, a village outside Khavkiv in northeastern Ukraine, in March.
Ketler, a father of two young children, would have celebrated his 33rd birthday on June 25, if he had not been outside his house at the wrong time. Now, his body has become another exhibit in Ukraine’s wide-ranging effort to collect evidence to prosecute Russia and its military for war crimes in the brutal killings of Ukrainian civilians.
Experts say the process is proceeding with extraordinary speed and may become the biggest effort in history to hold war criminals to account. But it faces an array of formidable challenges.
For one, the investigations are being undertaken even as the war rages in the east. As the investigators examined Ketler’s body, the booms of incoming and outgoing shelling thundered nearby. Ukrainian helicopters, most likely bringing new troops to the front line, flew low overhead.
?Also, although investigators from inside and outside Ukraine are all collecting evidence, there is little coordination. And despite the influx of experts, “there are really not enough people” to investigate, indict and judge the cases, said Andrey Kravchenko, the region’s deputy prosecutor, who was sitting in his office in downtown Kharkiv as the sound of outgoing shelling seemed to grow closer.
One building that prosecutors had been using as an office was struck by missiles in what Kravchenko believed was an intentional attack, and now his team changes its headquarters often.
Demand for accountability is strong.
Ukraine’s judicial system is now almost wholly devoted to investigating war crimes, with most of its 8,300 prosecutors fanned out across the country collecting evidence, said Yuriy Belousov, Ukraine’s chief war crimes prosecutor.
Ukrainian courts have already handed down six guilty sentences to Russian soldiers. Ukraine’s top prosecutor said this past week that almost 20,000 more cases – involving accusations of torture, rape, execution-style killings and the deportation of what Belousov said could be tens of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia – were being investigated.
At the same time, hundreds of international experts, investigators and prosecutors have descended on Ukraine from an alphabet soup of international agencies.
