A UN monitoring mission in Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russia has detained more than 800 Ukrainian civilians since the conflict began last February, of whom 77 have been executed.
The report showed that Ukraine had also violated international law by arbitrarily detaining civilians, but on a considerably smaller scale.
“(The UN rights office) identified patterns of conduct that have led to arbitrary arrests, as well as other human rights violations, including torture, ill-treatment and enforced disappearances,” the report said, adding that the Russian arrests had taken place in both Ukraine and Russia.
“Although conduct of this type was found in relation to both parties to the conflict, there was a higher prevalence of conduct attributed to forces of the Russian Federation.”
At least 864 Ukrainian civilians, including 94 women and seven children, have been arbitrarily detained by the Russian occupation forces, according to the document presented today at a press conference by the head of the UN Office for Human Rights. Humans in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, and which also indicates that in 91% of the cases the detainees reported having suffered torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence.
The report was produced with the help of the UN Fact-Finding Mission in Ukraine and also documents 75 possible cases of arbitrary detention of civilians by Ukrainian security forces, often in incommunicado detention to force confessions.
The office headed by High Commissioner Volker Türk qualifies that, while Ukraine has collaborated with his institution by providing access to detainees (with the exception of 87 Russian sailors detained near the border with Romania) Russia has not provided any facilities, so the data from one side and the other “should not be compared.”
In the case of those detained by Russian forces, they were often deprived of their liberty in so-called “leak” operations, in order to look for possible links of civilians to the Ukrainian military, or to gather information about other people in the occupied territory. .
In at least 260 cases, civilians were detained for their alleged political views, including public officials, civil society activists, aid workers, social leaders, teachers, and priests.
In a quarter of the cases (221, including a minor) the detainees were transferred to other detention centers, even deported to the territory of the Russian Federation, a practice that the report denounced is contrary to international humanitarian law. .
The detainees were deprived of their liberty in various locations including Kyiv, Kharkov, Kherson, Zaporizhia or Odesa, and held in at least 161 centers (35 of them in Russia and two in Belarus).
According to the document, the arrests were mainly carried out by soldiers or officials of the FSB, the Russian secret service, “generally in large numbers, mounted on military vehicles, with balaclavas and combat weapons.”
If detainees were transferred illegally, “they were transported with their hands tied and blindfolded, mounted in awkward positions in crowded trucks or military vehicles, without access to a bathroom during long journeys.” “At night they were left in the open air, lying on the ground, exposed to the cold and hostilities,” the report added.
As for the forms of torture described by the civilians detained by the Russian forces, they range from cuts and blows to the introduction of pointed objects under the fingernails, drowning or “waterboarding”, electrocutions, exposure to extreme cold and heat, deprivation of food and water or mock executions.
The report documents at least 36 cases of sexual violence against 25 men and 11 women, which included rape, threats, electric shocks to the genitals or nipples, or forced stripping.
In addition to the 77 documented executions by the Russian invaders of civilians (72 men and five women), the report denounces the death of two other detainees for not surviving the torture they suffered, receiving mistreatment and not providing them with medical treatment.
The report cites specific cases of human rights violations in the context of these arrests, such as those suffered by a Kherson woman detained at her home in July 2022 after being accused of providing information to her brother, a soldier in the Ukrainian armed forces. .
“She was held incommunicado for three days, during which she was interrogated and beaten with a water bottle,” to later suffer sexual violence, “including electric shocks through cables attached to her nipples.” When she was released and returned to her house, she discovered that she had been looted by Russian forces, the text recounts.
Another detainee, in the first days of the conflict, suffered mutilation of his feet after his Russian captors took off his shoes and forced him to remain outdoors in low temperatures, the report added.
In the cases of those detained by Ukrainian forces, 43 said they had been tortured or ill-treated, in most cases in unofficial places of detention, including basements of houses.
The report underscores that while Ukraine has investigated some of these abuses, resulting in the convictions of 23 people, Russia is not reported to have launched any proceedings to hold those responsible for human rights violations to account.
The report urges the parties to the conflict to stop these abuses, identify those responsible and hold them accountable.
The investigation included 70 visits to detention centers, and 1,136 interviews with detainees, relatives or witnesses: given the lack of access to the territory occupied by Russia, the data was obtained from relatives, relatives or people who had already been released .
