The UN report on Ukraine revealed crimes on both sides of the conflict

On Wednesday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published another report on war crimes and rights violations during the war in Ukraine. It contains data collected by the international commission from February 1 to July 31 of this year. The facts of crimes committed by both Russian and Ukrainian servicemen are documented.

Of the 56 Ukrainian prisoners of war interviewed by the commission, 51 spoke of torture and ill-treatment in Russian captivity. Of the 26 Russian prisoners, 12 people expressed such mourning. During the research period, six murders of Ukrainian prisoners and not a single murder of Russians in captivity in the Armed Forces were recorded. In total, according to UN data, since the beginning of the war on February 24, 2022, 25 Russian and 21 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been killed in captivity or died from torture.

The commission also recorded crimes against the civilian population. From February 1 to July 31, 1,028 civilians were killed, including 47 children. 3,593 were injured, 202 of them children. The real figures may be much higher, the report emphasizes. 64% of these cases occur in the front-line territories – in the Zaporozhye, Kherson, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.

Since the beginning of the war, the commission has established about a thousand cases of violent detention of Ukrainian civilians, including those who were kidnapped. 80 Ukrainians died in places of forced detention, traces of violence were found on their bodies. 468 are still in captivity. On the part of Ukraine, 33 cases of illegal detention of people were noted, mainly on suspicion of cooperation with the Russian army.

The report talks about the export of Ukrainian children to Russia or the occupied territories. In addition, as the investigators found, men in the occupied regions are threatened to join the Russian army, and their families receive threats as well.

Cases of oppression of religious freedom and violence against priests and parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church associated with the Moscow Patriarchate have been noted on the territory controlled by Ukraine. The commission also considers the authorities’ termination of the lease agreement of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra complex a violation. In the territories occupied by Russia and in the annexed Crimea, the Russian authorities persecute priests of both the UOC and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), and also continue to persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses – their church is recognized as an extremist organization in Russia.

• The UN Commission emphasizes that the data presented in the report may be incomplete, primarily in terms of violations from the Russian side. Administrations appointed by Russia do not allow observers into the occupied territories.