UN accuses Russians of shooting captured Ukrainian soldiers
The UN interviewed 60 recently released Ukrainians who had spent three weeks to two years in captivity
A UN monitoring mission has documented the executions of at least 32 Ukrainian prisoners of war between December 2023 and February 2024.
This is stated in the latest UN report on the human rights situation in Ukraine, published on 26 March.
The intentional killings of combatants who laid down their arms occurred in 12 incidents, "significantly more than in any previous period". The Mission independently verified three of them, which confirmed that Russian soldiers "executed seven Ukrainian servicemen without a fight".
One of these cases was caught on video. The video shows a group of armed Russian soldiers behind three Ukrainian servicemen kneeling with their hands behind their heads. A few seconds later, they are shot: the Ukrainian soldiers fall to the ground. A Russian soldier then approaches and shoots one of them in the back.
A Ukrainian soldier recently released from captivity said that this happened near the village of Robotyne, Zaporizhzhia region, in December 2023, and that the soldiers from his unit were executed.
From December to February, when Russian troops stormed Avdiivka in Donetsk region, there were other videos of Russian soldiers killing Ukrainian prisoners of war who laid down their arms or using them as human shields.
The UN interviewed 60 recently released Ukrainian prisoners of war who had been held in captivity for three weeks to two years. One of them described the execution of three soldiers in early January 2024 in Zaporizhzhia region. According to the eyewitness, two Ukrainian soldiers were killed on the spot, while the third was killed by a mine when the Russians forced him to carry out demining work.
Another prisoner was executed during interrogation. According to a witness, on 18 December, two captured Ukrainian servicemen were taken to the basement of a house. During interrogation, one of them was shot in the leg, allegedly because he was slurring his speech. Shortly afterwards, the same Russian soldier shot the prisoner twice in the back.
58 of the 60 Ukrainian servicemen interviewed also described torture and ill-treatment in Russian captivity. According to them, the most common methods were beatings, electric shocks, mock executions and torture.
In addition, 39 out of 60 prisoners of war reported to the UN that they had been subjected to sexual violence. In addition, they were threatened with castration and repeatedly forced to take off their clothes and go out in the cold.
The mission's report notes that these accounts "confirmed previously documented facts of widespread torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian captivity, as well as conditions of detention that do not meet international law".
According to Kyiv, at least 8,000 Ukrainians, including more than 1,600 civilians, were held in Russian captivity at the end of January.
Background. As a reminder, the UN accuses Russia of forcibly Russifying the occupied territories of Ukraine.
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