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A U. N. report documented cases in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which remain partly under Moscow’s control.
By Constant Méheut
A U. N. commission has laid out new evidence that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, adding to planned killings, rapes and the displacement of Ukrainian children, according to a report released Friday. Victims’ testimonies also affirmed the systematic use of torture in several Russian countries. detention centers, according to the report.
Based on more than 450 interviews with victims and witnesses in spaces liberated by Ukrainian troops or who fled Russian-controlled territory, the report documents the use of electric shocks against prisoners accused of supporting Ukrainian forces and the rape of women over the age of 16. at the age of 83 and the transfer of unaccompanied Ukrainian youths to Russian territory.
The report, written through a committee commissioned by the U. N. Human Rights Council, focused on the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces temporarily seized territory at the start of their full-scale invasion last year. Unlike north-central Ukraine, which Kyiv’s forces liberated, allowing investigators to more temporarily uncover crimes committed through Russian forces, parts of those two regions remain under Moscow’s control and are largely inaccessible to foreign organizations. This has confounded investigations and fuelled fears that the millions of people living there are at risk of human rights violations.
The report’s testimonies paint a damning picture of life under Russian occupation, with the commission stating in a statement that acts of “rape and other types of sexual violence were occasionally committed alongside other acts of violence against victims, in addition to severe beatings, strangulation and suffocation. “”, slash, shot to the victim’s head, and voluntary manslaughter.
Ukrainian forces have also been accused of abuses, and the report documents three cases of mistreatment of Ukrainians accused of collaborating with Russia. Previous U. N. reports have described abuses of Russian prisoners of war through Ukrainians.
But prosecutors and human rights teams say those examples fall short of the scale of crimes committed by Russian forces, which include the execution of citizens of Bucha and indiscriminate attacks on civilians with missiles and rockets.
The commission found that torture was widely used against Ukrainians in detention centers in Russian-controlled territories in Ukraine, as well as in Russia. The prisoners, many of whom said they were detained only because they held pro-Ukrainian views, reported on the living styles of the rooms. in particular, reserved for violent interrogations. Torture strategies included beatings with batons and guns, as well as the use of electric shocks with wires attached to earlobes, toes, or genitals.
“It was so painful that I couldn’t help but scream like crazy,” an anonymous woman who suffered electric shocks told investigators. Witnesses also described the conditions in which the torture was committed with such brutality that it led to death.
In addition to torture cases, the commission investigated rape cases in small villages in the Kherson region from March 2022 to July 2022, when Russian forces seized the domain at the start of their invasion.
In one case, three Russian infantrymen broke into the home of a couple who stayed behind to care for an elderly relative. The report states that the infantrymen took turns beating the husband and raping the wife. After the couple reported the rape to a Russian officer, three other infantrymen went to their home and shot them, according to the report.
UN investigators have also been investigating one of the most painful problems of the war in Ukraine: the displacement of children to Russia. The commission documented the transfer of 31 children from Ukraine to Russia in May 2022, out of a total of nearly 20,000 children. who, according to the Ukrainian government, took them.
Efforts have been made to reunite the young people with their families (only about 400 have returned in total, adding 3 on Saturday, the Ukrainian government said), but most remain in Russia.
Constant Méheut is France office of the Times Paris since 2020. Learn more about Constant Méheut
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