The United Nations has said its investigators have concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, including bombing civilian areas, mass executions, torture and horrific sexual violence.
The UN has made investigating human rights violations in the war a priority, and in May its top human rights body commissioned a team of experts to begin work in the country.
Since then, UN investigators have risked their lives to collect evidence of crimes against civilians, even in areas still threatened by enemy forces or mines.
The team of three independent experts presented its first oral update to the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, after starting initial investigations in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy areas, adding that it would expand their investigations.
Speaking a day before the seven-month anniversary of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, Erik Mose, the head of the investigative team, told the council that based on evidence gathered by the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine , “has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine”.
The team of researchers visited 27 towns and settlements, as well as graves and detention and torture centers; they interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses; and met with advocacy groups and government officials.
Mose said the team had been particularly “shocked by the large number of executions in the areas we visited” and the frequent “visible signs of executions on the bodies, such as hands tied behind their backs, stab wounds bullet to the head and cut necks”. “.
He added that he was investigating these deaths in 16 cities and settlements and that he had received credible reports of many more cases that he would try to document. Investigators had also received “consistent accounts of ill-treatment and torture, which took place during the illegal confinement”, the council said.
In the settlements of Bucha, Hostomel and Borodianka, occupied for about a month by Russian troops, Ukrainian investigators found dozens of mass graves where the bodies of tortured and murdered civilians had been buried.
Since the Russians withdrew from the area, a group of young volunteers has worked tirelessly to exhume the bodies and send them to medical examiners who have been collecting evidence of crimes committed by Russian troops.
Some of the victims had told investigators they were taken to Russia and held for weeks in prisons. Others had “disappeared” after these transfers. “Interlocutors described beatings, electric shocks and forced nudity, as well as other types of violations in these detention centers,” Mose said.
Mose said the team had also “processed two incidents of ill-treatment of soldiers of the Russian Federation by Ukrainian forces”, adding that “although they are few, these cases continue to be the subject of our attention” .
He said investigators had also documented cases of sexual and gender-based violence, in some cases establishing that Russian soldiers were the perpetrators.
“There are examples of cases where family members were forced to witness crimes,” he said. “In the cases we investigated, the ages of victims of sexual and gender-based violence ranged from four to 82.”
The commission had documented a wide range of crimes against children, Mose added, including children who were “raped, tortured and illegally confined”.
In April, medical examiners told the Guardian they had found evidence that some women were raped before being killed by Russian forces. “We already have some cases that suggest these women were raped before they were shot dead,” Vladyslav Perovskyi, a Ukrainian medical examiner who has conducted dozens of autopsies on people from Bucha, Irpin and Borodianka, told the Guardian.
At least two men on a list of indicted Russian war criminals released by Ukrainian prosecutors are accused of sexual assault and rape.
Mose, in his report to the council, also noted “the Russian Federation’s use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas,” which he said was “a source of harm and suffering immense for civilians”.
The UN stressed that several attacks the team had investigated “had been carried out without distinguishing between civilians and combatants”, including attacks using cluster munitions, which are banned by most of the world under treaty of 2008.
Since the start of the invasion of Moscow, Russian troops have been accused of using a range of illegal weapons that have killed hundreds of civilians in Ukraine’s Kyiv region, including extremely powerful unguided bombs in areas towns, which have destroyed at least eight civilian buildings. .
According to the evidence, cluster munitions were released in areas where there were no military personnel or military infrastructure.
The commission’s work could ultimately contribute to the work of international criminal court prosecutors who could bring war crimes charges against Ukraine, although it remains unclear whether Russia or other alleged perpetrators will ever face justice .
In another development on Friday, Ukrainian officials said they had exhumed some 436 bodies from a burial site in the newly recaptured city of Izium and that at least 30 of them showed signs of torture.
Mose said, “This is of course a new incident, but we certainly intend to look into the Izium event as well.”