The United Nations has been able to document the torture and rape of children on the ground in Ukraine.
The head of a United Nations-appointed panel on Ukraine said they found war crimes were committed in the country, according to Reuters.
In a UN statement, the head of the commission, Norwegian Erik Moss (71), wrote that they are concerned about the suffering the conflict has caused civilians in Ukraine.
He further wrote that the commission visited 27 towns and villages, and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses. In addition, they visited a number of crime scenes.
– Based on the information collected by the commission, we came to the conclusion that war crimes were committed on Ukrainian territory.
Did you read: VG traveled in. Report from the city of death.
On Friday, Moss said that a higher number of incidents consistent with Russia’s war crimes had been discovered, but that it had not been able to prove that crimes against humanity had been committed.
Investigation Committee Appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March, It is composed of three independent experts. They have investigated the accidents in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions, and warn that they will expand the investigation in the future.
Commission Chair Moss wrote that they also witnessed the abuse of Russian soldiers by Ukrainian soldiers.
– Despite the small number of cases, we continue to monitor this.
Moss (71) was a judge in the court settlement after the Rwandan genocide, and is the chair of the UN-appointed commission. VG spoke to When he returned from a ten-day trip in Ukraine in June.
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Leading the UN’s research on war crimes in Ukraine: – Extremely intense
Eric Moss, 71, was a judge in the post-genocide court settlement in Rwanda.
Rape as a weapon
The commission found that children were raped, tortured and detained. They further write that the commission’s next task is to look into the allegations of forced deportation and forcible adoption of Ukrainian children to Russia.
The commission found that some soldiers from the Russian Federation had committed sexual assault and rape.
There are also examples of cases where relatives of victims were forced to witness such crimes while they were committed. In the cases we investigated, the ages of sexual and gender-based violence victims were between 4 and 82 years.
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Life under occupation: Many of them never returned
For half a year, 17-year-old student Genya lived under the Russian occupying power.
in April VG . Books 25 girls and women between the ages of 14 and 24 were systematically raped in a basement in Botsja.
Sexual violence is used as a weapon by the Russian military, says Lesia Vasylenko in the Verkhovna Rada Then to VG.
After a visit to Ukraine in June, the United Nations Special Representative for Combating Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, said an increasing number of Ukrainians say they have experienced sexual violence in the war.
Most of them were girls and women, but there were also reports of abuse of boys and men.
torture and murder
In March, Russian forces withdrew from Bucha after stiff resistance from the Ukrainians. It later emerged that the Russian soldiers had tortured and executed the city’s residents. Civilians were found dead along the country road.
In recent weeks, Russian forces Paid to fly in Kharkiv in the NorthAnd the drained over a long period of time in Kherson in the south. Also in the most important spoils of war for the Russians, Luhansk and Donetsk, the Ukrainian forces were now on the offensive.
Read more: Horror stories from liberated villages
In Kharkiv, where Ukraine has regained control of almost the entire province, harrowing stories come from residents of liberated areas.
The Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office signs the Telegram account on September 14 The police found people shot dead by Russian soldiers in Balaklija.
Townspeople describe how Russian soldiers ordered townspeople to dress naked. They were looking for tattoos with Nazi symbols, which Russians mistakenly believe many Ukrainians have.
In the report, Moss wrote that evidence of the use of torture was found. Some of the victims were taken to Russia and held there against their will for several weeks.
Witnesses described beatings, electric shocks, and forced nudity, as well as other types of ill-treatment in these detention centers, Moss said.
Some Ukrainians who were sent to Russia have disappeared without anyone knowing what happened to them.
Moss also asserts that the commission investigated two cases in which Ukrainian forces allegedly mistreated Russian soldiers.
in Statement Moss said a number of the attacks the group investigated were “carried out indiscriminately between civilians and military personnel,” including cluster bomb attacks in populated areas. Among other things, homes, schools and hospitals were affected, NTB writes.
An elderly woman who was forced to flee after violent bombings in the Kharkiv region told the commission that the attacks made her feel as if she had nothing to live for anymore.
I don’t live, I just exist. She said there is nothing left in my soul.
Moss goes on to say that the group saw evidence of a large number of executions in the areas they visited. According to the commission, such executions are being investigated in 16 different cities of Ukraine.
Among other things, clear signs were found that people’s hands were “cuffed behind their backs, shot in the head, or throats cut”.
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