This is The Guardian.

Ukraine's True Detectives, the investigators closing in on Russian war criminals by Lauren Wolfe.

On the 8th of March, two weeks into the war in Ukraine, Yannina Chimunevich stood in her grassy garden in Bulbrik, 35 miles northeast of Kiev, smoking a cigarette.

As it burned to the filter, she counted 87 Russian heavy armored vehicles going by, including earth moving equipment, trucks, armored personnel carriers, and cars with long-barreled guns attached.

The next day, she watched the Russians bring in rocket launchers.

Three months later, Chimunevich, 39, who had worked at a petrol station before the war, was steadily recounting the details of the occupation of Bulbrik as she sat on a sun porch in a plaid shirt and pink socks.

A Ukrainian human rights investigator, Marina Slobodanik, listened intently as she spoke.

Slobodanik, 40, is a slight woman with a poof of rust-colored hair and a voice so quiet that you have to lean in close to hear her properly.

But her mild manner is deceptive.

As the head of investigations at Ukrainian nonprofit Truth Hounds, researching war crimes and crimes against humanity, she has been to the front lines in Donetsk, Mikhailaiv, and Harkiv.

Enduring constant bombardment to record the stories of traumatized survivors.

Chimunevich described a visit from Russian soldiers in March, the men, who Chimunevich identified by their accents as Chechens or Armenians, lined her and four of her relatives up along a wall, confiscated their phones and asked for water.

The family had already deleted their social media accounts in case there was anything pro-Ukrainian the Russians could find.

Throughout her recounting, Chimunevich slouched in a wooden chair and spoke in flat tones, her recitation almost mechanical.

Like many Ukrainians I met during my three weeks in the country, after repeated questioning by journalists and investigators, she described terrifying events in a way that made them sound as bland as a discussion of the weather.

Her husband asked the Russians why they had come to Ukraine, to kill Zelensky and the Nazis, one of them replied.

The Russians were in Bulbrik for three weeks. While they were there, a group of Russian soldiers had taken over a neighbor's property.

Chimunevich had been able to watch them through narrow gaps in her boarded up windows.

She described hearing explosions from the direction of a nearby lake.

She had heard from neighbors that the town's mayor and a shop owner had been kidnapped, led away with plastic bags over their heads.

Both men had endured beatings. The shop owner was later shot in the arm.

He was told his crime was to have had a security camera at his store. It did not seem to matter that the camera wasn't working.

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