PACE delegation to meet with survivors of Russian war crimes in Ukraine soon

A group of members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), representing the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, will visit Ukraine next week. Ukrinform media agency reported that the visit is part of Ukraine's strategy for gathering proof of Russia's war crimes.

"On Tuesday, a delegation of 14 people is coming to us, members of the Council of Europe’s Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee representing different countries," Maria Mezentseva, Head of Ukraine’s delegation to PACE, told Ukrinform. She further added, "So we do not slow down the pace of our cooperation."

She also stated that the European parliamentarians would become acquainted with the realities of war crimes and meet with survivors, prosecutor's office representatives, and Verkhovna Rada colleagues. Meanwhile, in his opening speech to the PACE summer session on June 20, President Tiny Kox called on members to observe a minute of silence for all Ukrainian war victims, imploring them to help stop the suffering of the Ukrainian people and to continue demonstrating solidarity.

Russia-Ukraine war

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already lasted 119 days, with invading soldiers gaining pace in the Donbass region. On June 21, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the Russian army is planning a new onslaught against Kharkiv. He remarked during a World Refugee Day event regarding the conditions produced by Russian soldiers that the war has displaced approximately 12 million Ukrainians, five million of whom have had to quit the country entirely. Russia withdrew from Kharkiv in mid-May, after weeks of heavy pounding.

Mykolaiv, which has a population of roughly 500,000 people, is regularly bombarded, according to Ukraine's president. Zelenskyy added that Russian troops intend to conquer and fully destroy Sloviansk, which had a population of 100,000 before the conflict, after naming previously destroyed cities such as Mariupol and Severodonetsk.

On June 20, Zelenskyy stated that Russian forces have escalated pressure and taken territory along a front-line river in two vital cities in eastern Ukraine. Toshkivka, a settlement on the largely Ukrainian-held western bank of the Siverskyi Donets river south of Severodonetsk, has been claimed as having been taken by Moscow's separatist proxies.

Image: AP