Colonel Serhii Bolvinov doesn’t let being on a Russian hit-list stop him from investigating the horrors of Russian atrocities committed by President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion army
One of Ukraine’s most senior war crimes investigators has described the horror of probing tens of thousands of Russian war atrocities. Veteran police officer Colonel Serhii Bolvinov landed 448 crimes in the immediate aftermath of the Kremlin invasion – a task that has now swollen to 22,000 atrocities.
And his grim job has put him high up on Russia ’s hit list. US President Donald Trump will tomorrow hold his peace summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who is an International Criminal Court war crimes suspect. And there has been no mention of the tens of thousands of war crimes allegedly committed by Russian troops during the war.
As the world awaits the result of Friday’s Alaska meeting International law firm Global Right Compliance, has warned any peace deal must not side-step the quest for justice for Ukrainian victims.. And Col Bolvinov, 43, is on the frontline of that quest. Col Bolvinov tells how he and his officers arrived at a forest outside the city of Izium, which is close to the Russian border. It comes after Putin warns of nuclear war after unleashing another night of hell on Ukraine
Soon after Vladimir Putin’s tanks and troops poured into Ukraine on February 24 2022 they threw themselves into an orgy of violence and depravity. In the weeks after the invasion the Mirror witnessed the aftermath of these crimes in areas such as Bucha, north west of Kyiv, where corpses were dug up in huge mass graves. Civilians had been forced at gunpoint to bury their neighbours in these grim pits as the Russians did not want to be reminded of their crimes.
It was the same wherever Russian troops appeared after the invasion and Col Bolvinov’s team spent months exhuming decomposing civilian bodies after Putin’s cowardly troops fled a ferocious Ukrainian counter-offensive. More than two years later Colonel Bolvinov, who commands the Kharkiv police investigations department, recalls:
“The smell was terrible from the very first minutes of the exhumation. Most of the bodies were badly decomposed because they were just thrown into the ground. As police investigators, we have seen many things. But this was terrifying because we were confronted with hundreds of bodies that had to be exhumed and accounted for.
“But all those war crimes must be accounted for – however long it takes.”
In 2021 Bolvinov was appointed as head of police investigations for Kharkiv, which borders Russia, population 2.6m and the size of the Netherlands.
On February 23, 2022, Bolvinov finished work in Kharkiv city at midnight and went to his rural home where he lived with his wife and three children. He said: “My wife waited up for me and we talked about possible invasion and what we should do. She had prepared the car, but we did not think there would be an invasion.
“At about 4.30am, my wife heard these explosions, and she hit me so hard that I fell out of the bed. In 20 minutes, we had fully packed the car, we hugged goodbye and at that point we did not know if we would ever see each other again. It was horrible.”
Bolvinov put his uniform on and headed into work in Kharkiv city, just 25 miles from the Russian border. His family, who he cannot name for safety reasons, have remained abroad ever since. He said: “At 6pm I was at my post, ready to show my colleagues we needed to protect the city.
“I started to do typical police work. I slept on the floor in the office but by the 27th the Russians were just 500 metres away. We developed a rule of two walls. If a rocket or bomb is coming your way you need to be behind two walls. But I was beginning to get videos on Telegram from civilians and colleagues.
“We started to collect these videos from across the Kharkiv region and share them with the Ukrainian military, but we also had to control the situation because there were also looters and ordinary criminals.” Bolvinov and his 1000-strong team began to create a map of the region in order to track the shifting frontline. Three days later it came to their front door.
He said: “On February 27th the Russians infiltrated Kharkiv city. They were 500 metres from my office and I was at the office at the time. As a police officer you have to stay in your position. It doesn’t matter who the criminal is, whether it is a civilian or Russian military. We started to collect evidence about war crimes.”
Bolvinov and his team adapted quickly to survive. He said: “As police officers we had never seen this before and didn’t even know what war crimes were. But we started to collect evidence because there were a lot of dead people, a lot of wounded people, injured people, because Russia used cluster bombs, ballistic missiles, high explosive bombs dropped from the air.
“We started to learn about international law, how to gather evidence to the same standard, understand the weapons used. There were so many dead bodies in the streets.”
Within months mobile DNA vans arrived, meaning it took hours instead of months or even years to identify victims. As civilian police they focus on civilians and civilian property when it comes to war crimes. These cover murder, torture, rape, and wounding, as well as destruction of property.
Among them so far are 2854 civilians killed, including 96 children. The Russians have targeted Bolvinov and his colleagues, with their buildings hit by bombs and missiles and they have to dodge from building to building.
In 2023 Bolvinov narrowly dodged being killed. He said: “One day I was 200 metres away from a Russian rocket explosion. I was in a car driving through Kharkiv and there were no air defence systems at that time. They hit a building very close to me, the noise was deafening and very scary.”
The Russians have him on their hit list, publishing his personal details, including his phone number. In October 2023, Bolvinov went to a village called Hroza after a Russian strike on a cafe. He said: “Collaborators had sent information that a café was a Ukrainian military location and Russia used ballistic missiles. Because it was such a large missile, we could visually identify only 20 people. There were 59 civilians there, so many in such a small location there were a lot of body parts.
“That was when we started using mobile DNA labs and we spent five days and nights at the scene. It was a human horrible puzzle with parts from a head, an arm. Eventually we pieced together the DNA picture of the victims and pieced together the remains of perhaps a single victim, including a 12-year-old child.”
But the scale of the “cemetery” in Izium continues to haunt Bolvinov. “It required two mobile DNA vans for two months, without days off. We took DNA from the cheeks and lips. It was clear that we are dealing with a big case of Russians murdering civilians. To complicate matters the area had been heavily mined by the Russians.”
In one grave marked 319 lay Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who had been seized by soldiers in March, his fate unknown. Investigators calculated he had been shot twice with a semi-automatic Makarov pistol after being taken away by three men from the so-called Lushansk People’s Republic.
The case was built using eyewitnesses, who identified their car, and heard their call signs, or military names, their commander, and documents abandoned by the Russians. The trio remain at large but only last month, his team presented their case to the Kharkiv court naming Dmytro Katkalov, 36, as one of three soldier suspects.
Bolvinov is emphatic that justice will be served. He said: “One hundred percent. . We are experienced at collecting the evidence, we have the expertise. We know who the criminals are and we know who the victims are. We do this for the future, for justice and we do this risking our lives.”
When asked about whether Russian war criminals will ever be brought to justice Bolvinov says: “You know, that is not my brief. I investigate war crimes and believe in the truth. You know who Hitler is and I know who Putin is. It is the same. I have visited Croatia and it took more than 30 years to get justice.”
Wayne Jordash KC, President of international law firm Global Right Compliance, tells the Mirror: “While a ceasefire would be a welcome development for Ukraine, any deal that sidesteps justice for victims or ignores documented atrocities risks abandoning the fundamental principles of international law.
“It’s vital a deal is followed by steadfast support for Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecution, to ensure that Russian forces who have committed horrific crimes, including widespread and systematic torture, including sexual violence, killing, and starvation, and a range of other crimes against humanity, are held to account.”
