21-Year-Old Russian Soldier Gets Life Sentence For Killing Civilian – Report

A 21-year-old Russian soldier was handed life in prison sentence by a Ukrainian court on Monday, May 23, for reportedly killing a civilian.

The soldier was identified as Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin, marking the first conviction for war crimes since the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in March.

Shishimarin pleaded guilty to killing a 62-year-old man, shooting the male civilian in the head at a village in the northeastern Summy region in the early days of the war, the Associated Press reported.

The 21-year-old admitted to shooting the man identified as Oleksandr Shelipov in the head after he was ordered to do so.

Shishimarin claim that an unnamed official told him that the deceased could pinpoint their location in Ukraine. The soldier spoke to his superior on a mobile phone at the time.

The sentencing marks the first one with Ukrainian prosecutors looking into thousands of potential war crimes. Russia is being held accountable for its invasion, including innocent civilians who have unfortunately been caught in the middle.

One of them includes the bombing of a Russian theater where civilians were sheltered. This also struck a maternity hospital.

Additionally, mass graves were discovered and streets were strewn with bodies in several towns such as Bucha. This happened not long after Moscow withdrew from Kyiv some weeks ago.

Aside from civilian casualties, the effect of their invasion of Ukraine has been severely affected by prices of energy and food spiking.

For its part, the United Nations has helped several displaced individuals worldwide, most driven away from their homes and ending up in different regions across the globe.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for “maximum” sanctions against Russia when he spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He explained how the sanctions against Moscow needed to go further to stop Russia’s aggression, including an oil embargo, all of its banks blocking and cutting off trade with Russia completely.