Russian soldiers murdered civilian in Donetsk Oblast village, prosecutors say

Russian soldiers shot dead an unarmed woman walking on the street of the front-line village of Terny in Donetsk Oblast, the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office reported on Nov. 14.

Numerous cases of Russian troops murdering or abusing civilians have surfaced since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion in 2022, underscoring the humanitarian disaster wrought by the war.

Pictures shared on the prosecutor's office's Telegram channel show a woman in a pink jacket walking on the outskirts of the village, with a subsequent picture showing her lying on the ground with her face in the mud.

"Russian soldiers saw a local resident walking down the street along the houses destroyed by the enemy. The soldiers opened fire on the woman. A shot from small arms killed the civilian," the statement read.

According to the prosecutors, the killing took place on Nov. 10. Ukrainian authorities have launched a war crime investigation.

Terny is a front-line village in northern Donetsk Oblast, some 35 kilometers (20 miles) northeast of the city of Sloviansk.

Russia has committed 137,000 war crimes in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the United for Justice conference in Kyiv in September.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced in June that it had issued arrest warrants for Sergei Shoigu, Russia's former defense minister, and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian army, for intentionally harming civilians and other charges related to Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

The court also issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023 over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.