Russian war crimes continue in Ukraine, UN denounces

Ginebra/After two years of invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities continue to commit violations of international law that constitute war crimes, including attacks on civilian areas and widespread use of torture against prisoners, a United Nations report denounces this Friday.

The new document from the Independent International Commission for Ukraine, which will be presented next week to the UN Human Rights Council, concludes that Russian forces routinely ignore the effects of their attacks on civilian areas, or use “systematically and “extended form” of torture.

“We are concerned about the scale, duration and severity of human rights violations”

“We are concerned about the scale, duration and severity of the human rights violations and crimes that we have investigated, and their impact on victims and affected communities,” summarized Norwegian expert Erik Mose, president of the UN, when presenting the report at a press conference. the Commission.

Regarding torture, the commission completed by the Colombian Pablo de Greiff and the Indian Vrinda Grover has identified torture of Ukrainian prisoners in at least four provinces of Ukraine and three of Russia, where prisoners of war were detained between 9 and 15 months and They often suffered abuse throughout that period.

In the Russian Federation, torture was routinely carried out by members of the Special Purpose Units, the so-called “spetsnaz”, in interrogations led by employees of the Federal Security Service FSB, heir to the Soviet KGB.

In many detention centers, prisoners were already received with beatings and electroshocks while being told “welcome to hell”; The torture continued for months, in any part of the detention center, sometimes accompanied by sexual abuse, according to the report.

Detention conditions were inhumane, and many former prisoners told the commission that they had to resort to feeding themselves worms, soap, paper or dog food.

In the section on indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, the report recalls that at least 10,582 civilians have died and 19,875 were injured in more than two years of invasion, many of them due to the impact of aerial and artillery bombardments.

The report especially remembers the siege of Mariupol, between February 24 and May 20, 2022, where the attacks damaged 15,555 structures and Ukrainian authorities estimate that thousands of civilians died.

The siege included tank attacks on hospitals, says the report, which also refers to more recent cases, such as the attack on a cafe in Hroza, Kharkiv province, which left 36 women, 22 men and a child dead on October 5. of 2022.

On December 29 of last year, a wave of Russian attacks against eight Ukrainian cities caused the death of more than fifty people, and the following day a similar offensive against the Russian city of Belgorod caused the death of 25 people.

The report also documents attacks against cultural heritage, including bombings against historic centers

The report also documents attacks against cultural heritage, including bombings against the historic centers of Odessa and Lviv, part of the World Heritage list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The report also denounces the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to areas under Russian control, such as the Crimean peninsula, and cases of rape and sexual abuse against Ukrainian women.

The document speaks to a lesser extent of abuses by Ukraine in the conflict, but does cite human rights violations against detainees on suspicion of collaboration with the Russian occupation.