The Russia Report

Issue 174

From the editor

A report by the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, which was set up in March last year, has found new evidence that Russia has committed violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law in areas of Ukraine that it has occupied. The crimes include “indiscriminate attacks by Russian armed forces” and “wilful killing, torture, rape and other sexual violence, and the deportation of children to the Russian Federation,” the report says.

Russia struck a Nova Poshta post office facility in Kharkiv Oblast on Saturday

“The Commission’s investigations confirmed its previous finding that Russian authorities have used torture in a widespread and systematic way in various types of detention facilities which they maintained,” it continues. “Interviews with victims and witnesses illustrated a profound disregard towards human dignity by Russian authorities in these circumstances. The Commission also documented cases in which Russian soldiers burst into houses of villages they occupied, raped women and a girl, and committed additional war crimes against the victims and their family members.” The Commission also found that in three cases Ukrainian authorities had committed human rights violations against people accused of collaborating with Russia.

The Commission said that it appreciated the access and cooperation extended by the government of Ukraine, while its efforts to engage with the Russian Federation remained unsuccessful. “The Commission has addressed to Russian officials 19 written requests for meetings, access and information, without receiving any answer,” the report says.

A victim of torture by Russians in Ukraine told the Commission: “Every time I answered that I didn’t know or didn’t remember something, they gave me electric shocks… I don’t know how long it lasted. It felt like an eternity.” The victim reported not being able to walk properly for days and suffering from deep anxiety in the aftermath. The husband of a victim, who was held in a neighbouring cell while she was tortured, said, “I will never forget her screaming of [sic] pain.” Witnesses told the Commission that some torture was so brutal it resulted in death. “In a detention facility in a school in Biliayivka village, Kherson province, co-detainees requested medical care when a victim presented signs of respiratory distress immediately after being tortured. However, Russian armed forces refused and the victim died less than one hour later,” the report says.

The Commission documented severe beatings in all detention facilities it examined. “According to witnesses’ accounts, these were carried out using a variety of objects, such as batons, bats, rifle butts, a machine gun, a wooden hammer, and a plastic pipe,” the report says. “Perpetrators also hit the victims with their knees and feet. Two victims stated that they were lying face down on the floor during beating. One woman told the Commission that she lost her teeth after the soldiers banged her head against the wall. A former detainee recounted that during a session in which he was heavily beaten, together with his friend, the perpetrator asked them to choose “which […] of the knees they were ready to sacrifice.”

These are just a few of the details gathered in the Commission’s 466 interviews with 445 people during visits to 32 settlements in nine regions of Ukraine. But the horrors continue every day, one of the latest being Russia’s attack on a postal depot in the village of Korotych, Kharkiv Oblast on Saturday, which killed six people and injured 17 others. Russian forces used S-300 missiles to strike the facility. The fear is that Russia will be able to get away with more than ever now that the war in the Middle East is dominating the news and politicians’ attention. Ukrainians’ long wait for peace and justice doesn’t look set to end yet.

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Anti-war activist dies after fall from tree

Olga Nazarenko, 48, an anti-war activist in Ivanovo who had been fined, fired from her job as a teacher at a medical academy and criminally prosecuted for her multiple pickets, has died after two weeks in intensive care following an accident. Nazarenko was reportedly trying to hang up a banner on Vladimir Putin’s birthday, Oct. 7, when she fell out of a tree. Nazarenko, whose grandparents were from Ukraine, kept a Ukrainian flag in the window of her flat and tied blue and yellow ribbons to her backpack. She left behind a husband and two children.

Nizhny Novgorod man sentenced to six years for fakes about army

A military court in Moscow has sentenced former Torpedo hockey club press service employee from Nizhny Novgorod Mikhail Zharikov to six years in prison with a four-year ban on using the internet for “spreading fakes motivated by hatred”, “public justification of terrorism” and “rehabilitation of Nazism” for his social media posts. The case against Zharikov was opened in July over an Instagram post about murders, rape and looting by Russian troops in Ukraine. In another Instagram post Zharikov commented on the car bombing of pro-Kremlin writer Zakhar Prilepin. The charge of rehabilitation of Nazism was based on two VKontakte posts in which he wrote that Prague was liberated in World War II by Russian collaborators with the Nazis and the Czech resistance, and not Soviet troops.