Russia tortured several Ukrainian prisoners to death, claims UN panel

A UN-mandated investigating panel has claimed that Russian forces forced families to watch while they raped women next door and tortured Ukrainians so cruelly that some of their victims died.

The head of the Ukrainian Commission of Inquiry, Erik Mse, reported to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that his team had “gathered additional evidence indicating that the use of torture by Russian armed forces in areas under their control has been widespread and systematic.”

“In some cases, torture was inflicted with such brutality that it caused the death of the victim,” he said.

“Russian soldiers raped and committed sexual violence against women of ages ranging from 19 to 83 years” in occupied parts of Kherson province, he said.

He went on to claim that family members were frequently detained next door and made to hear the violations.

Russia denies attacking civilians in Ukraine or committing atrocities there. Mse claimed that the commission’s attempts to contact Russia had been unsuccessful. At the council session, Moscow had the chance to refute the accusations, but no Russian representative showed up. An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the Russian defence ministry.

Pablo de Greiff, a commission member, responded that it was impossible to know the exact number of cases of torture that resulted in deaths due to access restrictions, but that it was a “fairly large number and…it comes from very different regions across the country, close and far from the lines of battle.”

Mse’s panel travelled to territories of Ukraine that were once controlled by Russian forces in August and September, including the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia districts. It was discovered that torture was primarily carried out against prisoners who were allegedly Ukrainian informants in detention facilities run by the Russian government.

The panel has already stated that crimes against humanity may have been perpetrated in Ukraine by Russian forces, including the use of torture.

According to Mse, the UN panel also discovered a “few cases” of abuses by Ukrainian forces, including instances of indiscriminate attacks and cruel treatment of Russian detainees. As previously said, Kiev verifies all information pertaining to the treatment of POWs, and it will look into any violations and take the necessary legal action.

The committee has visited Ukraine numerous times and interviewed hundreds of people since being given a mandate by the council in March 2022 to look into abuses that have occurred there since the start of the war. There are times when information obtained through U.N.-ordered investigations is used in national and international tribunals, including war crimes charges.

(With agency inputs)