\n Ukraine on Friday said it had handed over a captured Russian soldier to Lithuania, where he will be put on trial for alleged war crimes, an extradition it hailed as a \"historic\" first.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"For the first time since the start of full-scale aggression, Ukraine has handed over a Russian serviceman to a foreign state, Lithuania, for real criminal prosecution for war crimes,\" Ukraine's prosecutor general Ruslan Kravchenko said on Telegram.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kyiv is determined to hold Russian military figures personally responsible for the 2022 invasion and is seeking international justice for numerous alleged atrocities committed by the Russian army.\n<\/p>\n
\n Officials said the extradited man -- a sailor who had served in the Russian military police -- was captured by the Ukrainian army in the Zaporizhzhia region near the southern village of Robotyne.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was \"involved in the illegal detention, torture, and inhumane treatment of civilians and prisoners of war,\" Kravchenko said.\n<\/p>\n
\n One of his victims was a Lithuanian citizen, Kravchenko added.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said Vilnius was pressing war crimes charges against the man who could face life imprisonment in the Baltic state, a NATO and EU member and Ukraine's staunch ally.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kravchenko called the extradition \"a historic and important precedent for the entire international justice system.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is a clear signal to every war criminal: you will not be able to hide from justice in any country of the free world.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The Lithuanian prosecutor general's office said in a statement that the country's law enforcement officers cooperated with Kyiv on the case.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is suspected that together with other Russian soldiers, the suspect not only guarded the illegally detained civilians and prisoners of war, but also participated in their beating and torture,\" it said.\n<\/p>\n
\n It alleged the torture involved \"imprisoning the victims in a metal safe, suffocating them until unconsciousness, hanging them with tied hands, pouring cold water on them in freezing weather, and traumatising with electric shocks.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n A court in Vilnius ruled to keep the man in jail for at least three months ahead of a trial, the prosecutor general's office said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine on Friday said it had handed over a captured Russian soldier to Lithuania, where he will be put on trial for alleged war crimes, an extradition it hailed as a \"historic\" first. \"For the first time since the start of full-scale aggression, Ukraine has handed over a Russian serviceman to a foreign state, Lithuania, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-151603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n