In total, around 133,000 cases of Russian war crimes are currently being investigated in Ukraine, Klaus Hoffmann, the German adviser to the Ukrainian attorney general, said in comments published on Sunday.
The figure was “a huge increase,” Hoffmann told the Neue Osnabrücke Zeitung. “Many of them are extremely extensively documented,” he added.
The figure is up from 56,000 cases at the end of 2022.
Hoffmann cited Russian airstrikes on civilian targets and forced adoptions of Ukrainian children as examples of war crimes.
Although he did not want to prejudge a legal verdict, he expressed his personal opinion that Russia’s actions “can only be described as terrorism against the civilian population.”
Many of the alleged crimes had been documented by the Russians themselves, as the commanding officers responsible received awards for their work.
Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, Hoffmann has been an advisor to the Ukrainian Attorney General. He is currently seconded to the public prosecutor’s office in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
He previously worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.