The Russian military has engaged in “patterns” of behavior that amount to violations of international law in Ukraine, according to a new report.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe released a report on Wednesday detailing alleged violations of humanitarian and human rights law, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The investigation began on March 14, and the report was submitted on April 5, limiting the findings to this time period.
Russian troops have deported approximately 500,000 civilians from Ukraine to Russia, bringing them to “filtration camps in Russia near the Ukrainian border,” the report says, citing the human rights ombudsperson of the Ukrainian Parliament.
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While Russia has denied responsibility for these deportations and most of the other allegations, the investigators noted that “if (some of) these deportations where forcible (including because Russia created a coercive environment in which those civilians had no other choice than to leave Russia) and as they necessarily concern civilians who had fallen into the power of Russia as an occupying power, this violates in each case [international humanitarian law] and constitutes a war crime.”
In addition to reports of deportations, the OSCE alleges that Russian forces raped and sometimes gang-raped civilian women. Russian soldiers assaulted 25 females between the ages of 14 and 24 who were hiding in a basement located in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv where atrocities allegedly occurred after the evaluators were evacuated.
A mass grave filled with hundreds of bodies was discovered there, while other civilians were found shot and killed with their wrists bound behind them.
“In particular, the Mission notes allegations received after the formal end of its investigations of summary executions of a large number of civilians during the Russian occupation of villages in the proximity of Kyiv, in particular Bucha and at the occasion of the withdrawal of Russian forces. There are photos and videos of civilians killed in the streets partly with their hands tied and reports about one or more mass graves,” the report states. “This evidence points to a major war crime and a crime against humanity committed by the Russian forces. Such an event deserves and requires a serious international enquiry, on the spot, with forensic experts.”
Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said it had begun investigating roughly 5,800 allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russian forces.
Russian forces have also used the Red Cross emblem as a disguise for their “military non-medical vehicles,” which is a violation of international law, and used Ukrainian flags, army and police uniforms or vehicles, a white flag, and OSCE symbols for the same reason.
An International Committee of the Red Cross team led a convoy last week of private cars and buses carrying more than 1,000 people from Berdyansk to Zaporizhzhia, but they weren’t able to get to the city of Mariupol because “security conditions on the ground made it impossible to enter.”
Mariupol, a key port city in the southern part of Ukraine, has faced a significant brunt of Russian military aggression, as its location holds strategic value to the Russians.
Russian forces shelled a maternity hospital, bombed a Mariupol theater that was serving as a shelter even though locals had spelled out the word “children” in Russian in the front and back of the facility to prevent such an attack, and bombed a school that was housing hundreds of people in the city.
The OSCE investigators concluded the attack on the theater “must have been deliberate” based on satellite imagery and Russian statements after the attack alleging it was staged and then switching the explanation. As a result, the attack “constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law and those responsible for it have committed a war crime.”
The targeting of the Mariupol hospital was one of 52 healthcare facilities that were attacked from the day the invasion began to March 22.
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“In Ukraine, a database collecting data on destroyed healthcare facilities counts 52 affected facilities between 24 February 2022 and 22 March 2022,” the report alleges. “The [United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine], present in the field, has verified 74 incidents in which medical facilities were affected with various degrees of damage, including 46 hospitals, seven psycho-neurological facilities and 21 other medical facilities. As a result, 54 medical establishments were damaged, 10 destroyed, and two were looted. Sixty-one of the attacks which damaged medical facilities occurred in government-controlled territory.”
At least 50 people were killed, and nearly 100 others were wounded following a Russian attack on a crowded train station in the Donetsk region, which, like the atrocities in Bucha, occurred after the investigators’ window of operation had closed.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he believed Russian actions in Ukraine amounted to a “genocide” during a biofuel event in Menlo, Iowa, marking the first time a member of his administration qualified the situation as such.
“It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is trying to wipe out the idea of being Ukrainian,” he reaffirmed later in the day, adding, “The evidence is mounting. It looks different than last week. More evidence is coming out, literally, of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine.”
