UN report details accounts of rape, torture and executions
War crime prosecutor of Kharkiv Oblast stands with forensic technician and policeman at the site of a mass burial in a forest during exhumation on September 16, 2022 in Izium, Ukraine.
Yevhenii Zavhorodnii | Global Images Ukraine | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Editor’s note: The following article contains graphic photos of dead bodies and extremely graphic material detailing reports of executions, rape and torture of people in Ukraine, including of young children.
UNITED NATIONS – A report commissioned by the United Nations this month found Russian forces in Ukraine committed an array of war crimes, including summary executions, torture, rape and other acts of sexual violence against Ukrainian civilians.
The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine details violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in four regions occupied by Russian armed forces. The commission focused its investigations largely in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.
In preparing the report, the commission conducted 191 interviews and traveled to 27 cities over five separate visits. In some cases, the commission found that Ukrainian forces committed war crimes against Russian troops, though those incidents were less frequent.
Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations that its forces deliberately target civilians since the full scale invasion began in late February.
In one of the most disturbing examples of sexual violence, the commission details an incident involving a four-year-old girl:
In Kyiv region, in March 2022, two Russian soldiers entered a home, raped a 22-year-old woman several times, committed acts of sexual violence on her husband and forced the couple to have sexual intercourse in their presence.
Then, one of the soldiers forced their four-year-old daughter to perform oral sex on him, which is rape
The commission said that the ages of victims of sexual assault ranged from four years of age to over 80 years old.
“Perpetrators raped the women and girls in their homes or took them and raped them in unoccupied dwellings,” the group wrote in the Oct. 18 report.
The group also wrote that spouses and family members, including children, were sometimes forced to witness the crimes committed by Russian troops who “frequently seemed under the influence of alcohol.”
The commission detailed separate incidents in March involving a middle-aged and an elderly woman in a village outside of Kyiv:
A 56-year-old woman explained how two of the three Russian armed forces who broke into her home gang-raped her as the third one watched while masturbating. They stole food and money from her. She learned a couple of weeks later that, in a separate incident, her husband had been tortured and executed.
An 83-year-old woman described how, while her village was occupied by Russian armed forces, she was raped by a Russian armed forces serviceman in her house where her physically disabled husband was also present.
The commission wrote…
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