The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, presented on Thursday a report from his Cabinet documenting the murder of at least 441 civilians in Ukraine, which may constitute war crimes by Russian invaders.
The total of 441 civilians killed by Russian troops includes 341 men, 72 women and 28 children (20 boys and eight girls), according to the same source.
“There are strong indications that the summary executions documented in the report may constitute deliberate killings, a war crime,” Türk stressed when presenting the document at a special session of the Human Rights Council on Ukraine.
The report, which details about a hundred of these murders, was produced after three field visits and focuses in particular on rapes committed between February 24 and April 6 in 102 cities in the kyiv, Chernigiv regions and sumi.
“In some cases, Russian soldiers executed civilians in makeshift places of detention, while in other cases they executed them in their homes, backyards, driveways or on-the-ground security checkpoints,” the High Commissioner said.
The executions were carried out even in cases “where the victim clearly showed that they did not pose a threat, for example by raising their hands,” it added.
Türk also indicated that the fact that 88% of those killed were men and boys seems to indicate that they were disproportionately targeted as victims based on their gender.
The High Commissioner also denounced other human rights violations by Russian forces, such as attacks by armed vehicles and tanks on residential buildings, which led to more civilian deaths.
The report indicates that the place where the UN documented the most killings of civilians in the period studied was the city of Bucha, on the outskirts of kyiv, where the executions of 73 people took place (54 men, 16 women and three children – two children and a girl) between March 4 and 30.
“In a 150-meter stretch of Yablunska street in Bucha, 14 civilians (including a girl) were killed and their bodies were left there,” Türk said.
In addition to the more than 400 murders verified by the UN office, the organization is investigating, through interviews with witnesses and survivors, the allegations of another 198, including 105 in Bucha, and will continue its investigations in the Kharkiv and Kherson, according to the High Commissioner. .
Not only executions will be investigated, but also other allegations of violations, such as arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence, it added.
The report presented today parallels the one prepared by the UN fact-finding mission in Ukraine, made up of three experts and which also denounced indications of Russian war crimes in the neighboring country when it presented its preliminary conclusions in September (it will be updated in March 2023). .
Türk recalled that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has left 18 million people, almost half of the national population, in urgent need of humanitarian aid, while 7.83 million Ukrainians have fled the country and another 6.5 million are internally displaced.
Ten million Ukrainians suffer power outages when Russian missiles attack their infrastructure, including power plants, and millions more have no access to water supplies or heating networks, he recalled.
To these figures, the High Commissioner added that 1.5 million Ukrainian children survive “at risk of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and other mental conditions” after experiencing a war “marked by serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights “. “.
Türk expressed the wish that allegations of human rights violations are properly investigated and that perpetrators are held accountable through a fair and independent legal process, “ensuring that all reports of violations, recent but also starting in 2014, are investigated.” quickly and transparently. he said.
However, Türk expressed doubts about this possibility, since the Russian authorities have not yet investigated any of the reported abuses, while Ukraine “faces resource and capacity problems to do so.”
Source: TSF
