‘They’re Killing Civilians’: Ukrainians Describe ‘Unimaginable’ War Crimes — Kidnapped Children and Massacres

Ukrainian civilians have come forward in a recent televised report to describe what they call "unimaginable" atrocities carried out since the full-scale invasion three years ago: mass killings of noncombatants, the abduction of children and widespread destruction of towns and villages.

Correspondent Scott Pelley reported that Ukrainian prosecutors have catalogued more than 178,000 alleged war crimes now under investigation. Survivors and legal experts say the scale and character of many attacks point to deliberate targeting of civilians rather than isolated battlefield incidents.

“They’re killing civilians,” Natalia Tenytska said. “It’s elimination of the Ukrainian nation. They’re just wiping our cities off the face of the Earth.”

Tenytska survived a Palm Sunday strike on the city of Sumy earlier this year, an attack she says killed more than 30 worshippers and civilians. The report described footage showing people in the street and inside a church abruptly rocked when a high-speed warhead struck the area.

Beth Van Schaack, who served as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, said investigators have documented repeated strikes on towns with “no discernible military objectives.” She added that many attacks appear intended to maximize destruction and terrorize the civilian population.

Of the range of alleged crimes tied to the campaign, prosecutors and human-rights investigators have highlighted one allegation that has led to an arrest warrant: a campaign to abduct children from occupied areas. Van Schaack described a pattern in which children are taken from families, subjected to forced Russification and sometimes military-style training, pressured to renounce their Ukrainian identity, and in many cases placed in Russian foster homes or adopted into Russian families.

"The aim appears to be to weaken Ukraine’s future as an independent state by raising these children as Russians so they will eventually reject their cultural heritage," Van Schaack said.

Context and political backdrop

The report was published amid renewed diplomatic pressure: former U.S. President Donald Trump has urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept a proposed peace plan by Thanksgiving, saying that if Zelensky declines he can "fight his little heart out," while also stating he would prefer to reach a peaceful settlement.

Ukrainian officials and international legal experts continue to gather evidence for war-crimes investigations, and they say accountability will require detailed documentation, witness testimony and international cooperation. Survivors call for sustained global attention to both the human and legal dimensions of the conflict.