Terry Prone: Wartime foot soldiers pay the price while top table offenders get off scot-free

Gibson and his Dambusters team killed 1,400 civilians who offered no threat to him or his country. The young Russian sentenced last week killed one civilian he believed offered a threat to him and his companions. The Russian became a convict. The Briton became a national legend.

A Ukrainian court sentenced 21-year-old Russian soldier, Sgt Vadim Shishimarin, to life in prison for killing a Ukrainian civilian — following the first war crimes trial since Russia’s invasion. Picture: Roman Hrytsyna/AP

HE sat there, silently, the shaved head making him look a bit older than his 21 years. But not much older. He is still a kid. A self-confessed killer but still a kid in a box, his head tilted sideways to hear the translator whispering through a hole in the glass, explaining what was going on in the Ukrainian court.

Much of what was going on came under the heading of “formalities” since the young Russian solder Sgt Vadim Shishimarin, admitted from the outset that he had shot dead a 62-year-old civilian, Oleksandr Shelipov, in the northern region of Sumy in the first days of the war. All that remained for the judge, last week, was to sentence the sergeant to life in prison.