The Russian military committed war crimes during its seven-month war in Ukraine, United Nations investigators recently concluded.
The Independent Intentional Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine investigated the Russian military’s actions mainly in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy regions and visited 27 towns and settlements, interviewing more than 150 victims and witnesses.
“Based on the evidence gathered so far during the Commission’s existence, we found out after having carried out the investigations in these four areas just mentioned, we found that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” Commission Chairman Erik Mose told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday.
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The investigators documented a “large number of executions” in 16 towns where there was a pattern of “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats.”
“We were struck by a large number of executions and other violations by Russian forces, and the Commission received consistent accounts of torture and ill-treatment,” the report also said.
The Russian soldiers also engaged in sexual and gender-based violence with the age of their victims ranging from 4 to 82 years old. In some cases, relatives were forced to watch the crimes committed against their loved ones.
“The Commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined. Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons,” Mose explained. “The exposure to repeated explosions, crimes, forced displacement and separation from family members deeply affected their well-being and mental health.”
Russian Federation forces were not “distinguishing between civilians and combatants in populated areas,” the report stated. “We were struck by a large number of executions and other violations by Russian forces, and the Commission received consistent accounts of torture and ill-treatment.”
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When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, they initially sought to topple the capital, Kyiv, and install a puppet government, but those troops ultimately retreated from the surrounding area after failing to break through Ukraine’s resistance forces. In the retreat, the horrific carnage from Russian soldiers was uncovered — civilians bound and murdered, torture chambers, and mass graves.
The same was uncovered in northeastern Ukraine when forces were able to liberate significant portions of the area. Ukrainian officials found 445 unmarked graves and a mass grave containing the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers in Izyum earlier this month.
