Witness of Missile Launches

Launch of a “Grad” system by Russian troops. Source: euroradio.fm

Legal qualification:

Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute: Aiding and abetting in the commission of war crimes.

Contextual crime: Article 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute (Intentional attacks against civilians or civilian objects).

Article 3(f) of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314: Allowing territory to be used for aggression.

V.I., 55, had lived his whole life in a village in the Homyel Region, near the Zyabrouka airfield. He worked as a mechanic in a local collective farm. Zyabrouka had been an abandoned airfield, but at the end of 2021, activity began there. Rumors spread about the “Union Resolve” exercises. In January 2022, his village was flooded with Russian troops. They looked nothing like the Belarusian conscripts he was used to seeing. These were battle-hardened contract soldiers with expensive gear and an arrogant demeanor. They set up a camp in the forest near the village.

“They behaved like masters,” V.I. later said after moving to his children in Poland. “They bought all the vodka and cigarettes in the mobile shop. They said they'd come to ‘protect us from NATO.’ And our local police officer and village council chairman tiptoed around them.”

On the morning of 24 February, V.I. did not wake up to an alarm clock. He woke up because his house was shaking. “I thought an earthquake had begun. I ran outside. The sky in the east was red, and there was a roar you don’t just hear — you feel it inside your chest. As if the earth was tearing apart. It was planes taking off from Zyabrouka and missile launches. One after another. One — five minutes later another. And so it went all morning.”

In the first weeks of the war, his village became a frontline zone. Day and night, columns of Russian vehicles marked with “V” passed along their road. In the forest where V.I. used to pick mushrooms, Russians deployed “Iskander” missile systems.

“We were warned not to go into the forest. Belarusian soldiers, our soldiers, cordoned off the area and guarded the Russians,” V.I. recalled. “I saw everything from the window of my tractor while working in the field. They launched missiles right from there. At night — a flash lighting up half the sky, then a terrible roar, and the missile flew toward Ukraine. And an hour later, I'd turn on the radio, which picked up Ukrainian stations, and hear: ‘Strike on Chernihiv,’ ‘Hit on a residential building in Kyiv.’”

Fear mixed with shame in the village. People were afraid to talk. A neighbor who tried to film a column on his phone was taken by the Belarusian KGB. He disappeared for two weeks. When he returned, he was gray-haired and with broken ribs.

“The worst thing,” said V.I., “was the feeling of complicity. I repaired my tractor, and a kilometer away stood a launcher that was killing people right now. People who spoke the same trasjanka as we do. My aunt lived in Chernihiv. I couldn’t call her… What would I say? ‘Sorry, aunt, they’re firing at you from our backyard’?”

In March, when Russian troops retreated from Kyiv, Zyabrouka turned into a hospital and repair base. “They brought equipment — destroyed, burned. And wounded soldiers. By helicopter, by Ural trucks. Our Belarusian conscripts were forced to load them. I saw them pull out the burned ones… And then rumors spread in the village that Russians were selling diesel stolen in Ukraine. And not only diesel. Washing machines, TVs…”

When V.I. left, he looked at the airfield one last time. The Russian base was still there, guarded by the Belarusian army. “I didn’t fight. But I feel like a criminal. Because this happened with my silent consent. From our land. And our authorities and our military helped them. They are accomplices. And we, probably, are too.”

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