Russia committed 77 extrajudicial executions in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine – UN report

The UN has confirmed that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, the Russians have committed extrajudicial executions of 77 civilians detained by the so-called occupation authorities in the temporarily occupied territories.

Source: report of the monitoring mission of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “Detention of civilians in the context of the armed attack of the Russian Federation on Ukraine”.

The report specified that the Russians carried out extrajudicial executions of 72 men and five women. In addition, human rights defenders noted that at least one other detainee died “as a result of torture, inhuman conditions of detention and denial of medical care.”

In total, the UN mission recorded 864 cases of detention of civilians by the occupying Russians, most of the detention of local officials, volunteers, representatives of civil society, priests and teachers took place during the so-called “filtration” in the temporarily occupied territory. The detainees were accused of supporting Ukraine.

“Torture was used to force the victims to confess to helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces, to force them to cooperate with the occupation authorities, or to intimidate those with pro-Ukrainian views,” said Matilda Bogner, head of the UN Human Rights Mission in Ukraine.

The report highlighted that detainees were often held incommunicado and their families were denied information for long periods of time. Human rights activists add that a number of illegally detained civilians were taken to other occupied territories of Ukraine or deported to the Russian Federation.

It should be noted that the Russians prepared the infrastructure for the deportation of the Ukrainian population from the occupied territories even before the start of the full-scale invasion.

The mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is to work on the protection of all human rights; to help empower people to exercise their rights and to assist individuals in asserting such rights.