What did 21 September 2022 show about civilians in war?
A look back at a sentencing in occupied Luhansk set against the civilian toll uncovered in Kharkiv Oblast in the preceding days.
What did 21 September 2022 reveal about the position of civilians in Russia's war on Ukraine? On that date, a court in the separatist Luhansk People's Republic sentenced two Ukrainian staffers of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to 13 years in prison. The charges were high treason and espionage for the United States.
The sentencing came days after other reports from Kharkiv Oblast. On 15 September 2022, Ukrainian police said a mass grave containing more than 440 bodies had been discovered in the recently recaptured city of Izium. Later accounts described several mass graves in woods near the city and said the dead had been killed by Russian forces. The Ukrainian government believes that more than 1,000 civilian residents died during the battle for Izium and the subsequent Russian occupation.
On 18 September 2022, Russian forces shelled a psychiatric hospital in Strelechya, Kharkiv Oblast. Four medics were killed and two patients were injured.
Why the sequence matters
The three reports concern different kinds of harm: a court verdict against two international-organisation staffers, the discovery of a grave in a city that had just returned to Ukrainian control, and shelling of a medical facility. Taken together, they show civilians and civilian workers in the war exposed to violence and to prosecution, in both recaptured and occupied territory.
For Ukraine's institutions, the Izium discovery pointed to the work of documenting deaths in newly recovered areas, with police among those reporting the find. The Luhansk verdict showed how courts in the separatist-held territory were being used against Ukrainians, including staff of an international body.
The Strelechya attack, on a hospital, underlined that medical workers were among those killed in the shelling of Kharkiv Oblast in mid-September.
