GENEVA – United Nations investigators in Ukraine say they are receiving accounts of Russian forces torturing civilian and military prisoners – sometimes to the point of death. At the same time, people are disappearing regularly in areas controlled by Russia and its proxies.
Christian Salazar Volkmann, the United Nations’ director of field operations, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday that most of the recorded torture cases involved Ukrainian prisoners. In two cases, he said, members of the Ukrainian army were tortured to death.
Based on more than a thousand interviews with victims and witnesses conducted by the United Nations monitoring mission in Ukraine, the UN investigation also recorded the deaths of three Ukrainian men. died in a cellar in the Kyiv region with his hands and feet bound. and with knife wounds and severed fingers.
The Ukrainian military has also tortured and mistreated prisoners of war while they are in custody or in transit to detention sites, but “on a smaller scale,” Volkmann said. United Nations investigators have also documented 47 arbitrary arrests by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, although the investigators did not specify who the Ukrainians had detained.
Last week, a United Nations-appointed commission of inquiry told the Human Rights Council that war crimes were committed in Ukraine, citing Russian soldiers raping, executing and torturing children. em.
Russia dismissed Mr Volkmann’s report as “one-sided and disproportionate”, saying it did not honestly report on war crimes and human rights abuses by Ukrainian forces. Guzal Khusanova, first secretary of Russia’s diplomatic mission in Geneva, told the panel that it presented its findings in a “vague and ambiguous” manner that allowed Ukraine to go unpunished.
Volkmann said the UN human rights office had also documented the forced disappearance and arbitrary detention of 407 people in Russian-controlled territory from early February to the end of July, including 47 women and one woman. boys. He added, 18 of these have died.
The Russian invasion has caused “unspeakable suffering and devastation” to Ukraine, Volkmann said, adding that the Kremlin’s recent annexation of four Ukrainian regions following referendums Fake intentions will only exacerbate human rights violations.
