A U.N. investigation finds that Russian forces are torturing civilian and military prisoners.
GENEVA — United Nations investigators in Ukraine say they are receiving accounts of Russian forces torturing civilian and military prisoners — sometimes to the point of death. At the same time, people are disappearing frequently in areas controlled by Russia and its proxies.
Most of the documented cases of torture involved Ukrainian prisoners, Christian Salazar Volkmann, director of United Nations field operations, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday. In two cases, he said, members of the Ukrainian military were tortured to death.
Drawing on more than a thousand interviews with victims and witnesses conducted by the United Nations monitoring mission in Ukraine, the U.N. investigation also documented the deaths of three Ukrainian men who were found dead in a cellar in the Kyiv region with their hands and legs tied, and with knife wounds and severed fingers.
Ukrainian troops have also tortured and abused prisoners of war during their capture or transit to detention sites, but “on a lesser scale,” Mr. Volkmann said. U.N. investigators have also logged 47 arbitrary detentions by Ukrainian law enforcement authorities, though investigators did not specify who the Ukrainians had detained.
Last week, a U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry told the Human Rights Council that war crimes had been committed in Ukraine, and it cited the rape of children by Russian soldiers, executions and torture.
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