Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Discusses Potential War Crimes

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You just heard the U.N. ambassador say that they are trying very hard to help you gather the evidence, get as much of the necessary equipment and ability to prosecute these crimes. What are the U.N. and other countries doing for you? Is it enough?

IRYNA VENEDIKTOVA, UKRAINIAN PROSECUTOR GENERAL: At first, Christiane, I want to send you that you are here in Ukraine. We are very appreciative of American citizens. I know about this support, about this sincerely feeling. You know that we are now fighting for our independence. And American understand — Americans understand us very well. About fixing evidence, of course, today’s 42nd day of war. And for prosecutors, the main goal, to fix everything what now is going on in Ukraine. We have, for today, more than two — more than 400…

AMANPOUR: Four thousand.

VENEDIKTOVA: I wanted to say 4,500 cases only about war crimes, and 2,500 cases which are connected to the war crimes. Especially, we understand that these cases are absolutely different in their size. In one case, we have only one, for example, fact, fact of bombing our kid who — it was his little sister. His name is Rostislav. He was 14 years old. And we have the case about his death. It was a projectile — piece of projectile in his chest. For us, it’s very difficult and important, but it’s case only with one fact. In other cases, we have thousands now small pieces of such circumstances. But, again, we can’t say that this one case is more important or less important. That’s why fixing evidence — of course, sorry that I speak maybe too long, but I want to explain that, from first days of war, we started to fix evidence on the common hub for whole state agency in our country. And ordinary citizens, journalists, NGOs can ask — can give statement to this common hub. Now we have more than 7,000 claimant which will be acceptable in our courts.