UN says thousands of civilians killed in Russian invasion of Ukraine
KYIV - The UN human rights office said on Friday it had confirmed thousands of civilian casualties in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including 21 killed by Russian forces in executions or individual attacks.
A year after the Russian Federation launched a full-scale armed attack against Ukraine, the hostilities continue to exert a serious toll on children, women and men across the country, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights OHCHR said in a new report.
Between Aug 1, 2022 and Jan 31, 2023, it found 5,987 civilians killed or injured, a number it said was likely to be a significant underestimate since it only covered those cases that its investigators hadn't been able to verify.
The report said that at least four times more civilian casualties occurred in Ukrainian-held territory than Russian-held areas because of the evidence that indiscriminate explosive weapons were responsible for a large number of civilian casualties.
A majority of 133 instances of conflict-related sexual violence documented by OHCHR took place on Russian-occupied territory, including during so-called 'filtration' processes it said.
Russia's Permanent Mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment on the findings.
Moscow has denied repeatedly that its forces committed atrocities during the invasion, which it claims is a special military operation. The report documented the disappearance or arbitrary detention of 214 Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territory and 91 such cases in Ukrainian government-held areas. Most of those arrested by Ukraine were suspected collaborators, it said.
The report said the OHCHR was gravely concerned about what it described as the mistreatment, torture and disappearance of children by Russian forces, including the abduction of five teenage boys, all of whom were tortured.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin last week for the war crime of deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. The move was deemed unacceptable and outrageous by the Kremlin.
Russia has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
A separate report from the OHCHR released on Friday blamed Russian and Ukrainian forces for the mistreatment of prisoners of war. The Ukrainian government provided full and confidential access to official internment sites.
It said that the summary execution of 15 Ukrainian POWs and 25 Russian POWs may constitute war crimes, but the findings were influenced by the level and kind of access to detention facilities and POWs. The UN said Ukrainian authorities have actively engaged on UN concerns over POW treatment.
The OHCHR called on all parties to protect victims and punish perpetrators.
Moscow and Kyiv didn't immediately comment on the OHCHR report on prisoners of war.