Russia executed 77 civilians arbitrarily detained during its invasion of Ukraine, killings that amount to war crimes, the United Nations said Tuesday.
Since the beginning of the invasion in Ukraine, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented 864 individual cases of arbitrary detention by Russia (763 men, 94 women and 7 children), many of which also They constitute forced disappearances.
“We documented the summary execution of 77 civilians while they were arbitrarily detained by the Russian Federation,” Matilda Bogner, head of the mission, said at a press conference in Geneva, according to The Moscow Times.
“There are clearly more” summary executions than the mission was able to document, “but we don’t expect these to be huge numbers,” he added.
The UN human rights office released a report on detentions of civilians in the war, based on the mission’s findings. It covers the period from the start of the Russian invasion on February 24 of last year to May 23 of this year.
More than 91 percent of the civilians detained by Russia told interviewers they had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, and in some cases sexual violence, including rape and electric shocks to the genitals.
The torture methods used included punching and cutting detainees, strangulation, drowning, electric shocks, deprivation of water and food, placing sharp objects under fingernails, and mock executions.
Conflict-related detainees were also subjected to so-called welcome beatings and random group beatings, according to the report.
The report’s findings were based on 1,136 interviews with victims, witnesses and others, in addition to 274 site visits and 70 visits to official places of detention run by Ukrainian authorities.
Ukraine gave the monitoring mission unimpeded confidential access to official places of detention and detainees, with one exception. Russia did not grant such access, despite requests.
In about a quarter of the known cases, civilian detainees were transferred to other locations within Russian-occupied territory or deported to Russia.
In addition to those held by Russia, the mission documented 75 individual cases of arbitrary detention of civilians by Ukrainian security forces, mostly people suspected of conflict-related crimes.
The mission has not documented any summary executions of detained civilians by Ukrainian forces.
The report says that serious conflict-related human rights violations of detainees, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, “must stop immediately.”
Russia must “immediately cease the summary execution of civilians and take the necessary measures to ensure that it does not happen again,” the report said.
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