Yurii Bilous struggles to find the right words in English to explain the suffering he saw in the man in Mariupol who lost his mother, wife, and two children in a Russian attack.
His face crumpled, he says to TT during a break from the human rights organization Civil Rights Defenders' conference in Stockholm at the end of October.
Ukrainian Yurii Bilous had been a business lawyer for four years when Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February 2022. As a resident of the Bucha region just outside Kyiv, the violence quickly came close and on March 1, he decided to start documenting the war crimes that were taking place around him.
The case in Mariupol stands out for Yurii Bilous precisely because the man's pain was so visible – but the story of his loss is one of hundreds that Bilous has collected by seeking out and interviewing those who have been hardest hit by the war and finding visual material that supports the testimonies.
Seeking alternative justice
Bilous sends all documentation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Ukraine's chief prosecutor.
But he also hopes to achieve something beyond what the ICC deals with in The Hague, where mainly leaders and high-ranking officials are held accountable.
Of course, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the former Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu should be punished, but there is another aspect of justice – where Ukrainian authorities must bring individual perpetrators to justice, he says.
It's our job, which must be done within our systems.
For the former business lawyer, there is also a strong focus on seeking compensation for the material damage caused by the large-scale invasion.
Russia destroys our cities. We must find a way to demand payment for it, he says.
Empty benches in court
Russian aggression against Ukraine has historically not been documented as well as during today's war. Much of what Yurii Bilous is doing now is about doing just that.
Therefore, it doesn't play a big role that the Ukrainian trials he is involved in take place with an empty bench where the defendant should sit.
We must carry out the legal processes anyway, to counter Russian propaganda and future legal attacks from Russia. The war is not only being fought militarily.
