Tamila Pegida, a retired teacher, watched with tears as gravediggers exhumed her husband’s remains while a forensic expert examined them to determine the cause of death, Reuters writes.

Serhii, who was 70 years old when he died in June in the southern Ukrainian village of Visokopylla, was suspected to have been killed by shrapnel during heavy artillery fire as Ukraine tried to retake the territory from the Russians.

The gruesome trial is being organized by the Ukrainian authorities, who are gathering evidence about how people died and whether potential war crimes were committed by Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

They, as well as many of the relatives involved, want to hold Russia accountable for what happened after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

“Of course they have to be responsible for everything, both mentally and physically,” Tamila told Reuters on Monday, standing next to her dead husband’s makeshift grave. “How much suffering they brought here. To children, grandchildren,” she says.

Like many Ukrainians in villages and towns that were largely destroyed in artillery fire and hand-to-hand combat, she fled Visokopill when she could. Sergey decided to stay.

58-year-old Tetyana Muzychko, deputy head of the local municipality, did the same, who ran to Serhiy’s house when she heard loud explosions. She said he was conscious when she found him, but the injuries to his legs and lower body were so severe that he died.

“The injuries were incompatible with life,” she said, reassuring Tamila on a cold, sunless day.

Snow dusted the hastily dug graves, where, according to Muzychka, more than 20 peasants killed in the fighting are probably buried.

“They (Russian troops) said: “Why are you shooting at us? We have come to release you.” I asked them: “Why are you releasing us? Because we live well, better than you?”.

She expressed hope that Russia will be held accountable at the highest level for alleged violations during the war, including by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Moscow has previously denied accusations that it targeted civilians and dismissed accusations of war crimes. Tens of thousands of people died in the fighting, both combatants and civilians.

“Under continuous bombardment”

Ruslan Gavrilov, the head of the district prosecutor’s office in the neighboring city of Beryslava, supervised the exhumation and examination. Because the cause of death was clear, he said an autopsy was not necessary.

He and others who investigate potential crimes face the unusual and sometimes dangerous task of doing so in a time of conflict.

Last week, prosecutor Oleg Palahniuk was photographing the damage caused by a nighttime rocket attack on a residential building in the city of Kherson, when a flurry of rockets from across the Dnipro fell on a nearby neighborhood.

He instinctively put on his helmet, but there was nowhere to hide, so he continued to work.

Palagniuk’s work intensified after Russian troops withdrew from Kherson on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River last month. After the retreat, Russian troops mercilessly bombarded Kherson.

“The investigation team arrives, records everything and quickly leaves the scene because there is a risk of further explosions,” he told Reuters.

“After yesterday’s explosions, half of the city is again without electricity, water and communication. It is really very difficult. But you have to work,” he says.

Since the liberation of the city, the local prosecutor’s office has registered 1,500 suspicious crimes in the city of Kherson, he added. There are too many for him and his team to properly analyze.

Several war crimes investigations are underway in Ukraine against alleged participants in the conflict, starting with Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Overburdened local courts are expected to refer cases involving high-level criminals, mass atrocities and widespread violations of humanitarian law to the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court.

Which specific cases will eventually reach The Hague will be determined by Ukraine’s Attorney General Andriy Kostin with the help of a group of international humanitarian law experts who work alongside prosecutors like Palahniuk.