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Valentyna Matyash, 50, on the street where neighbour Olksandr Shelepov was killed.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail

Valentyna Matyash heard the noise of an approaching car, rumbling loud on the asphalt from a tire that ruptured when Russian soldiers hijacked it. She dashed inside her neighbour Oleksandr Shelipov’s house, where her son, daughter and grandson were already taking cover. She did not hear the spray of gunfire aimed at Mr. Shelipov, who was outside just metres from his front door, talking on the phone.

But moments later, Ms. Matyash left the house to find him lying on the ground, his ruptured skull positioned between two plum trees.

“He was already dead,” she said.

Mr. Shelipov, 62, was unarmed, dressed in boots and civilian clothes.

Russian soldier pleads guilty to killing an unarmed civilian at war crimes trial in Ukraine

His killing on Feb. 28 made him one of the early casualties of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin, the soldier who admits to opening fire on Mr. Shelipov, was stopped from escaping the village by a group of local hunters armed with shotguns.

Now, his act has become the basis of the first war crimes trial to emerge from the conflict.

In a Kyiv court this week, Sgt. Shishimarin, a commander in Russia’s 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division, has admitted guilt, saying he followed orders to gun down Mr. Shelipov from the back seat as he and three other soldiers raced past in a commandeered Volkswagen Passat. He is being tried for killing a civilian non-combatant, a war crime. Prosecutors have called for him to be sentenced to life in prison.

Conducting a war crimes trial in the midst of the war in question is unusual. But the case has global importance as a judicial inquiry into Russian wrongdoing, particularly as Ukraine seeks to continue marshalling international support to its side.

Around Mr. Shelipov’s hometown, his death has also raised questions about the cost of this war, and what constitutes justice.

The 2,000 people in Chupakhivka live in a farming and timber region known for its carp fishing. Mr. Shelipov was a retired tractor operator who made his home on the village’s verdant fringe. He planted nut trees beside his house, situated in a remote and quiet corner of Ukraine, 60 kilometres from the Russian border.

That made it among the first places traversed by heavy armour when Russia invaded.

On Feb. 28, one tank column came under attack by Ukrainian forces two kilometres from Mr. Shelipov’s home. He told his wife, Kateryna, that he wanted to see for himself, ignoring her pleas to stay home. She was outside getting water from a well when she heard shots ring out. She saw Sgt. Shishimarin in the back of the car, a Kalashnikov AK-74 in his hand. The Russian soldier’s face seared in her memory.

Then she saw her dead husband.

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Mykola Masliuk, secretary of the Chupakhivka community council, at the cemetery in Chupakhivka, Ukraine. on May 19.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail

“I started to scream,” Ms. Shelipova said in court Thursday.

Russian troops moved quickly through Chupakhivka as they sought to conquer Kyiv, hundreds of kilometres to the west. But the war has still fallen heavily here. Ms. Matyash’s son-in-law was killed by a rocket in a nearby town on the second day of the war. She is herself a widow who cares for an adult son with cerebral palsy. Mr. Shelipov was kind to them, chopping wood and spending time with her son.

“I keep thinking, if my son-in-law was alive, he could help me. And now there isn’t even a neighbour left to help me,” Ms. Matyash said.

At the local cemetery where Mr. Shelipov is buried on a rise overlooking the village, great clusters of flowers adorn graves for local men killed fighting in the war. Six soldiers from the area have died. And a second civilian was killed on Feb. 28, burned to death after soldiers opened fire on his car, which they also wanted to hijack.

“This war is unjust, and has brought us pain,” said Mykola Masliuk, secretary of the Chupakhivka community council. “We were living our lives peacefully. We were a threat to no one.”

Seeing a Russian soldier on trial this week, however, “gives me hope that every crime committed against civilians will be punished,” Mr. Masliuk said.

For others, the marauding violence of the Russian invasion has made distant courtroom deliberations seem like inadequate justice for Sgt. Shishimarin.

“They would be better to drop him off here and we can deliver a proper judgment for him,” said Oleksandr, one of several hunters who helped block the Russian soldier’s escape after the killing of Mr. Shelipov.

The Globe and Mail spoke with five of the men involved, but is not identifying their surnames because, with the war still going on, they fear Russian reprisal.

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Local hunters point to the spot where they shot at a group of Russian soldiers.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail

Oleksandr showed The Globe the spot where he kneeled beside a bush on Feb. 28, looking down a double-barrelled shotgun at the road from Chupakhivka. Minutes earlier, a phone call had warned that five Russian soldiers were approaching by car. When the vehicle came into view, Oleksandr waited until it was roughly 45 metres away, then emptied both barrels.

He typically hunts foxes and hares. But with a Russian soldier in his sights, “my hand wasn’t shaking,” Oleksandr said.

His shots killed the driver and the car careened into the ditch. The other four soldiers emerged, spraying bullets at the local hunters that splintered nearby trees. Then they retreated into a nearby swamp that was partly covered in ice. They stayed in the cold until morning, then left. The hunters watched, reporting their movements.

The soldiers eventually surrendered. “I wanted to save my life,” Sgt. Shishimarin said in court Thursday. “I didn’t want to go to war.”

He added: “I admit my guilt and I understand what I have done. And I ask to be forgiven.”

The hunters are not eager to offer their own pardon. “He smashed a man’s skull in half and now he is asking to be forgiven?” said Nikolay, who was near Oleksandr when he shot the soldier. “Our people don’t forgive such things.”

On Thursday afternoon, the hunters pushed aside grass growing in the ditch where they had laid the dead soldier. Still on the ground is an unused condom, one of several they say they found in his pockets.

“If we didn’t stop them, who knows what would they have gone on to do,” Nikolay said.

“I think we did the right thing,” said Vitaliy, another of the hunters. “My only regret is we didn’t kill them all.”

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