Deportation of children, rape and torture. The UN Commission presented a report on Russian war crimes in Ukraine to the General Assembly

The UN’s independent international commission investigating the events in Ukraine found additional evidence of war crimes committed by the Russian occupiers. This was stated in the report that the commission presented to the UN General Assembly.

The commission confirmed that 24 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed as a result of a Russian attack on a high-rise apartment building in Uman in April 2023. The commission’s investigation also confirmed that the Russian authorities widely and systematically used torture in places of detention. The new evidence collected by the commission members in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions “shows the same picture of torture” in the temporarily occupied territories. In the cases studied by the commission, the Russians mostly tortured men who were suspected of supporting the defenders of Ukraine.

After speaking with witnesses and survivors of Russian captivity, the commission declared “deep disregard for human dignity on the part of the Russian authorities.” Witnesses told about cases when the torture was so brutal that a person died. In the torture chamber on the territory of the school in the village of Bilyaivka, Kherson region, the prisoner showed signs of respiratory failure immediately after the torture, but the Russians did not provide him with help, and he died within an hour.

The commission confirmed that rape and other forms of sexual violence were frequently committed by Russian nationals, along with other acts of violence, including severe beatings, strangulation, gunshots to the head, and intentional homicide.

The report describes how a Russian soldier attacked a 75-year-old woman, beat and strangled her, ordered her to undress, and when she refused, tore off her clothes, cut her stomach and raped her several times. The woman suffered rib fractures, the occupier knocked out several of her teeth. The Russian man also tortured a woman.

The commission also documented the removal of 31 children from Ukraine to Russia in May 2022 and concluded that this was a war crime of illegal deportation. The commission is “concerned about information about measures clearly aimed at allowing some children to stay in the Russian Federation for a long period of time.”