Who Killed Rita Horbick A War Crime In Ukraine Frustration And A Flawed Investigation National

Her dad, Andrii, was at the wheel, and he brought up the rear of a convoy of three vehicles evacuating families from the village of Stepanki. Bodies lay in the streets. Rockets exploded. Soldiers opened fire. The next thing the Horbyks knew, 13-year-old Rita was down with a fatal head injury.

		Read more: Uncovering the evidence of Russia’s war crimes in eastern Ukraine 		

The incident is among thousands being investigated by Ukrainian authorities, who are treating the Russian invasion not just as war but as a series of war crimes. But it does reveal the challenges of that approach, especially during a large-scale armed conflict like the Ukraine war. Rita Horbyk’s mother Liudmyla, center, and father Andrii, right, in Sumy region, Ukraine, June 21, 2022. Stewart Bell/Global News An investigation by Global News found that beleaguered prosecutors failed to do basic work before publicly announcing their findings and their suspect, a Russian commander. The family was not interviewed. Captured Russian soldiers who were incriminating witnesses were allowed to leave the country in prisoner exchanges. A crucial piece of evidence, the car in which Rita was killed, has been sold. “The world needs to know what happened,” said Rita’s mother, Liudmyla Horbyk. But here’s the problem: What happened? The Victim Rita was a 7th grader at Vilkhivka school, an only child living with her parents and grandfather on his estate in Stepanki, a village east of Kharkiv. Rita Horbyk, left, with mother Liudmyla. Family Brochure She collected books, loved animals and saw to it that the local cats and dogs were fed. She was a dancer and always doing something with her hands. He hoped to become a dentist and was learning Korean online, dreaming of traveling to Seoul. The neighbors adored her. “Rita was like one of our own children,” said Natalia Karikova, who lives down the street from the Horbyks. “When he went to school, they would come with us and talk to us,” he said. “She was a very good girl.” On February 24, the Horbyks watched a procession of Russian tanks and army vehicles roll past their front windows. Helicopters and jets flew overhead. They hid from the bombings in the cellar. On the third day of the invasion, the power went out and they could only charge their phones in the car. In those painful early days of the Russian occupation, Rita somehow became the reassuring voice, telling her parents not to worry, that everything would be fine. The Horbyk home in Stepanki, Ukraine is seen through a bullet hole. Stewart Bell/World News “She was never afraid of anything,” her mother said. “Even when the war started she was always so calm and told us, don’t be afraid. I was more worried than her.” The crime A month passed before Ukrainian defense forces began to retake the area. As the Russians fell back, they seized the Horbyks’ property, placed a tank in the field behind the house, and told the family to leave if they wanted to live. After consulting with the neighbors, they all decided to leave in an escort. They left Stepanki and entered the next town, Vilkivka. Lyudmila held Rita’s head down so the teenager couldn’t see all the bodies. They went down the Ukrainian road, but it was blocked, so they turned back. Two or three rockets fell and exploded. They tried Myru St. and they arrived at Central St. Although the Horbyks didn’t know it, Central St. had become front line. The Russians controlled the area north of the road, while the Ukrainians controlled the south. As they turned onto Central St. and they proceeded to Kharkiv, Rita sat down and Russian soldiers stationed around a BTR armored vehicle started shooting at them and an elderly woman in the main vehicle of the convoy was killed. Andrii stopped the car and told everyone to get out. Rita stayed inside with her head down. Lyudmila went to her and saw that part of her skull was gone. Andrii called out to the soldiers for help. “Get out of here,” one of them replied. The Horbyks got back in the car and sped into town, barely slowing down at the checkpoints, telling the soldiers to do whatever they wanted, but he didn’t stop because his girl was injured. A damaged Russian vehicle blocks the entrance to Vilkhivka, Ukraine, on May 19, 2022, near the site where Rita Horbyk suffered a fatal head injury. Stewart Bell/World News They drove to the regional hospital in Kharkiv’s eastern Saltivka district. From there, an ambulance took Rita to Kharkiv Regional Hospital, where she underwent surgery. “It was so scary for us because he told us that you shouldn’t wait for a miracle,” Liudmyla said. Three days later, her temperature normalized and they were hopeful, but the doctor told them to leave her room and 30 minutes later, they were told they had to go to the morgue. The research Rita Horbyk’s death landed in the office of Andrii Kravchenko, a prosecutor in the Kharkiv region who was assigned to the fast-growing team investigating Russian war crimes. The program was the result of a decision to treat the Russian invasion as a series of crimes that required investigation and prosecution. Months after the invasion, Kravchenko’s office was working on at least 2,000 cases, each estimated to last six months to a year, requiring analysis of victims and expert evidence. War crimes prosecutors in Kharkiv, seen here at the scene of a Russian missile attack on the city of Kharkiv, have been overwhelmed by the Russian attack. Stewart Bell/World News According to Kravchenko, on March 26, a Russian commander ordered TOS-1 missiles to be fired at civilian areas. This was done to create a sense of panic among the population, he said. The council’s village office in Vilkivka was hit, along with the school in nearby Mala Rohan. A girl was injured at her home, he said. Her name was Margarita, she was 13, and she died in hospital on March 30, he said. The case was in the preliminary investigation stage, he added, and while it was not always possible to know who was responsible for the war crimes, “in this case we identified the person.” Six witnesses, all of them captured Russian soldiers, pointed the finger at an artillery commander named Colonel Sergei Viktorovich Maximov. They told investigators that Maximov had ordered the launch of a TOS-1 multiple launch missile system located in a clearing on the edge of Mala Rohan. Prosecutors have a map with the launch site circled. The colonel is suspected of war crimes and attempted murder. The Russian soldiers were not charged. They claimed they were only given the coordinates of the targets and did not know they were shooting at civilians. Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova, seen here at the scene of a Russian missile attack on a shopping center in Kremenchuk, June 28, 2022. Stewart Bell/Global News On May 23, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, released a statement saying that Colonel Maksimov ordered his subordinates to fire a TOS-1 on residential areas of Mala Rogan and Vilkhivka. “He was well aware that there were no military objects there,” he said. As a result of the attack, he said, a 13-year-old girl was killed. Kravchenko said prosecutors were just following evidence and it made no difference if it led to a senior Russian commander. “To us, it doesn’t matter, big or small,” he shrugged. The suspect Colonel Maximov was born in Uzhhorod, a town in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine. Held on the Slovenian border, the region has largely escaped the horrors of the Russian invasion. Ukraine’s top prosecutor accused Russian colonel Sergei Viktorovich Maximov of Rita’s death. Stewart Bell/World News In 1996, Maksimov graduated from the Russian Airborne School in Ryazan. He took command of the 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment in 2013, according to Russian news. In 2019, he was named in a news release as the commander of the 83rd Air Assault Brigade. During the invasion of Ukraine, he commanded the 138th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, Ukrainian authorities said. The battle group was among several that attempted to capture Kharkiv on 24 February. But the Russians ran into tough Ukrainian defenses and, after seizing villages around the city for a month and taking what the Ukrainian military described as “significant casualties,” retreated toward Russia. Neither Maximov nor the Russian government has publicly responded to Ukraine’s claim that he was responsible for Rita’s death. The interview The Horbyks’ house in Stepanki is just as the Russian soldiers left it when they fled: makeshift beds on the floor, socks drying on a line, bullet holes in the fence. The family has not returned since Rita’s death. They now live in Maiorivka, a village six hours away in the Sumy region. Liudmyla and Andrii Horbyk in Sumy region, Ukraine, June 21, 2022. Stewart Bell/Global News Lyudmila sat in the living room with her phone, scrolling through pictures of Rita: In front of the Christmas tree. hugging her father. giving the peace sign in front of a waterfall. at school on Peace Day. “We only lived because of her,” said Liudmyla. The family saw the attorney general’s statement about Rita’s death and insisted it was inaccurate. He was killed on March 27th, not the 26th. And he didn’t die at home, he was in the car. But the most important mistake is that he was not killed by a missile. Rather,…