We're going to start this episode with a number, 50,000.

That's the number of investigations happening right now into alleged war crimes committed

by Russian troops in Ukraine, hospital bombings, kidnappings, and notably thousands of executions

of unarmed Ukrainian civilians.

Oleksandr Amatvichuk heads the Center for Civil Liberties, one of the recipients of

this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

She believes the numbers obscure the sheer scale of the loss.

Yes, and professional human rights lawyer, but first of all I'm a human being, and what

I started to notice that I started to use numbers instead of names.

This is up for Sunday, I'm Rachel Martin, and today we're going to hear from NPR investigative

correspondent Tim Mac.

Tim was in Ukraine in the first days of the war, as terrified Ukrainian civilians faced

the Russian onslaught.

As the war went on over so many months, Tim wondered if anyone could ever be held accountable

for the civilians who were murdered in Ukraine.

So we decided to focus on his own number, one.

He wanted to investigate just one alleged war crime.

He had heard a rumor about a man who was brutally killed.

His body lay in the streets of a town for 30 days.

One killing, one man, one story that might show the challenge that war crimes investigators

face all over Ukraine.

Tim didn't know very much about this man, just that he may have served in the French foreign

...