KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – UN human rights monitors have documented dozens of summary killings of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners of war, as well as other possible war crimes such as the use of torture, human shields and other ill-treatment against prisoners of war since Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, according to a report released on Friday.
The UN Human Rights Office’s mission to Ukraine’s first full overview of the treatment of prisoners of war has been released, along with an update on overall human rights violations over the six months to January. The report was based on interviews with about 400 prisoners of war – half Ukrainians who had been released and half Russians held captive in Ukraine.
The team said it does not have access to prisoners of war being held in Russia or Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, where it has identified 48 detention sites. The mission said it nevertheless documented about 40 summary executions over the course of the 13-month war.
The UN legal office, which has had a monitoring team in Ukraine since fighting erupted in areas of eastern Ukraine claimed by Russian-backed separatists in 2014, said its findings are based on confirmed cases and typically underestimate actual tolls.
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The world body’s reporting is part of a meticulous effort to uncover details and establish the truth behind reports of atrocities and violations of the laws of war committed during the current conflict. UN documentation can be used as evidence in possible trials in the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutors examine reports of killings and child abductions, or in other courts.
“We are deeply concerned about the summary executions of up to 25 Russian prisoners of war and people ordered to fight by Ukrainian forces that we have documented,” Matilda Bogner, the head of the UN monitoring mission, said at a news conference in Kyiv.
Bogner detailed abuses allegedly committed by both sides, but noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was at the root of the violence against civilians and prisoners of war. She said Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating some cases, but none have been brought to court yet.
“Regarding the treatment of Ukrainian POWs, we are also deeply concerned by the summary execution of 15 Ukrainian POWs shortly after their capture by Russian forces,” Bogner said. “The Wagner Group — military and security companies — carried out 11 of those executions.”
It also documented five cases in which Ukrainian prisoners of war had died as a result of torture or other ill-treatment, and four deaths due to lack of medical care during internment.
The report found that while torture and ill-treatment of prisoners of war occurred on both sides, it was far more common among Ukrainians – more than 9 in 10 respondents reported such ill-treatment – than among Russians, about half of whom reported such ill-treatment.
In its update on rights violations affecting other groups, the Human Rights Office said children from the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine were sent to “summer camps” in Russia with their parents’ consent, but were not returned home after the holiday season as expected. Several parts of Kharkiv province were occupied by Russia last year before the Ukrainian military recaptured them in a late summer counteroffensive.
About 200 children who were sent to a camp in the Russian city of Krasnodarskyi stayed there after the summer and were enrolled in a local school, according to the second report. The update noted that Russian authorities said in October that up to 2,500 children from Ukraine were living in temporary accommodation centers in Russia and some had stayed there.
However, the Human Rights Office warned that it remains unclear how many unaccompanied children are being placed in camps, temporary housing or institutional facilities in Russia, and how many children are being taken there with their parents.
The monitors said they had confirmed dozens of killings of civilians perceived as so-called “traitors” to Ukraine for alleged collaboration with Russian forces in occupied territories.
The UN office expressed concern that some of the killings may have been carried out by agents of the Ukrainian government or with their consent and called for a full, impartial investigation.
The semi-annual update enumerated 621 cases of enforced disappearance or arbitrary detention by Russian forces and chronicled, sometimes in chilling detail, the types of abuse reported: cave searches; hitting or tasing of genitals; Threats of torture or killing of family members and worse.
“The horrific human cost of war is also evident in the cases of conflict-related sexual violence that we have documented since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022,” Bogner said.
As of January 31, her office recorded 133 victims of such violence: 85 men, 45 women and three girls. According to the report released on Friday, over four-fifths of the cases were attributed to the Russian military, law enforcement and prison staff, and the rest to the Ukrainian security forces.
A woman, the mother of a member of the Ukrainian security service, was strangled, electrocuted, beaten, kicked, repeatedly raped and forced to perform oral sex in July after members of Russia’s Federal Security Service, a successor agency to the KGB, broke into her home in July July said the update.
The UN reported earlier this week that it had recorded the deaths of 8,317 civilians in Ukraine since the start of the war and the injury of another 13,809 people linked to the conflict. It warned that these numbers underestimated actual casualties. .
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Keaten reported from Geneva. Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.
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