Russians executed more than 30 Ukrainian prisoners of war over winter – UN report
26 March 2024 23:54
Between 1 December 2023 and 29 February 2024, the Russian occupiers executed 32 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
This is stated in the report of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Kommersant ukrainskyi
reports.
As noted, UN representatives interviewed 60 Ukrainian defenders released from captivity.
The Ukrainian military spoke about the terrible treatment in captivity by the occupiers, the inability to communicate with their families and the lack of satisfactory food and medical care.
In particular, Russian military and officials torture prisoners, including beatings, electric shocks, forcing them to stay in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time, threatening them with execution or imitating it. More than half of the prisoners survived sexual violence.
The authors of the report note that these findings confirm that the Russian army continues to use previously established practices of torture, ill-treatment, deaths in captivity, incommunicado detention, enforced disappearances and appalling conditions of detention.
In addition, the HRMMU documented credible reports of executions of at least 32 Ukrainian prisoners of war in 12 separate cases between December 2023 and February 2024, significantly more than in any previous period. The HRMMU has independently verified three of these cases,
– the report says.
The UN also cites interviews with 44 Russian prisoners of war who, although not alleging torture in official places of detention, gave “evidence of torture and ill-treatment in places of temporary detention after evacuation from the battlefield”.
In addition, the mission’s report contains information about the Russian administration’s violence against residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine. This includes the killing of civilians, arbitrary detentions and restrictions on freedom of expression.
According to the UN, the total number of confirmed civilian casualties in Ukraine “remains comparable to the number of casualties in the previous period”.
As reported earlier, an independent UN commission of inquiry into violations in Ukraine issued a report with evidence that the Russian authorities and their troops committed war crimes in the occupied territories of Ukraine and violated international and humanitarian law.
The report describes indiscriminate attacks by Russians on civilians, the events in the city of Mariupol, the destruction of hospitals and cultural heritage sites, and the systematic torture, rape and torture of prisoners of war.
