Russia Accused of Extensive War Crime In Ukraine

Erik Mose, a former Norwegian Supreme Court and European Court of Human rights judge who led the investigation; pointed out the presence of elements of planning and resource availability, which indicates the committing of torture crimes against humanity.

In the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, they are accounted to have committed numerous war crimes, as concluded by the investigative commission of the UN Human Rights Council. 

The list of atrocities includes an attack on civilians, rapes, forced deportations of children, unlawful detention and intentional killing of the people who were not involved via any combative forms, as the report presented on Thursday night in the UN commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. 

The UNHRC scrutinises war crimes, abuses and violations in Ukraine

The human rights report made public has emphasised an urgent debate. The report has come to the forefront after a year to the day after a Russian airstrike on a theatre in Mariupol killed hundreds of people that were taking shelter under it, which has marked a massively unusual contamination of a member of the UN Security Council. This commission report is one of the most powerful tools used by UNHRC to scrutinize the abuses and violations globally.

The commission reports elaborate on the blow of attacks by the Russian forces including attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and the ‘systematic and widespread’ means of torture that can be considered as an act of committing a crime against humanity. The report cites the potential crime against humanity and repeated attacks which have targeted the Ukrainian infrastructure since the war started. This has resulted in people in numbers of thousands and hundreds being without any heat and electricity, and that too in the coldest months.

The documentation further discusses other small numbers of cases which were committed by the armed forces of Ukraine, which included indiscriminate attacks and two other cases of Russian prisoners being shot by them, and others tortured and wounded.

It reports that during the time of house-to-house searches, many other willful killings, unlawful confinement, rapes, and sexual violence were committed, which were targeted to locate the supporters of the Ukrainian armed forces or order to find weapons. 

As some of them were arbitrarily arrested and further held captive under overcrowded cells, and the conditions of the cells were found to be worst in the possible circumstances, as the report documents. There was the filtering of the captives, wherein Ukrainian were signalled out for detention, torture and inhumane conditions. 

The commission found that rapes committed by Russian armed forces were forcefully made watched by the family members on which the violence was being perpetrated; even children were forced to watch. Some of the children were deported and hence restrained their reunification with their respective family members. 

The team inspected the site about 8 times.

The investigation commission travelled to the site of the occupied region and conducted visits to 56 towns and settlements. The team travelled eight times to conduct the investigation.

The team has also inspected makeshift jails and graves, and they further visited the torture facilities. There was an evaluation of the photos and satellite images. During the investigation, there was questioning as well of a total of 600 people.

The UN count puts the killing numbers as 8000 civilian killings and 13000 or more injured since the full-blown scale of a military invasion launched over Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022. 

The United Nations has however warned that the true numbers for the war crimes committed by Russia are higher than being reported.