Russian attacks against civilians in Ukraine, including systematic torture and killing in occupied regions, amount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, according to a report from a UN-backed inquiry.
The sweeping human rights report, released a year to the day after a Russian air strike killed hundreds sheltering in a theatre in Mariupol, marked a highly unusual condemnation of a member of the U.N. Security Council.
Among potential crimes against humanity, the report cited repeated attacks targeting Ukrainian infrastructure since the autumn that left hundreds of thousands without heat and electricity during the coldest months, as well as the “systematic and widespread” use of torture across multiple regions under Russian occupation.
🇺🇦#Russian authorities committed a wide range of violations of int'l human rights and int'l humanitarian law in #Ukraine & the Russian Federation, many of which amount to #WarCrimes – the Independent Int'l Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. Press release➡️ https://t.co/aktjDT3GPW pic.twitter.com/LNXqwAsp0k
— UN Human Rights Council 📍#HRC52 (@UN_HRC) March 16, 2023
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“There were elements of planning and availability of resources which indicate that the Russian authorities may have committed torture as crimes against humanity,” said Erik Mose, a former Norwegian Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights judge who led the investigation.
The investigation also found crimes committed against Ukrainians on Russian territory, including deported Ukrainian children who were prevented from reuniting with their families, a “filtration” system aimed at singling out Ukrainians for detention, and torture and inhumane detention conditions.
A commission of inquiry is the most powerful tool used by the UN-backed Human Rights Council to scrutinise abuses and violations around the world.
The investigation, released on Thursday, was set up during an urgent debate shortly after Russia’s invasion last year.
The commission’s three members are independent human rights experts, and its staff gets support and funding from the council and the U.N. human rights office.
The report’s authors noted a “small number” of apparent violations by Ukrainian forces, including one they said was under criminal investigation by Ukrainian authorities, but reserved the vast majority of their report for allegations against Russia.
Russia did not respond to the inquiry’s appeals for information.
Most of the abuses highlighted by the investigation were already well known, and the report is far from the first to accuse Russia of war crimes.
However, the inquiry’s findings come with the imprimatur of the international community: The experts work under a mandate overwhelmingly created last year by the Human Rights Council, which brings together the governments of 47 UN member countries.
Mr Mose, who served as president of an international tribunal established to prosecute genocide cases from the massacre of members of Rwanda’s ethnic Tutsi minority in 1994, said investigators have created a list of individuals to hold accountable for human rights violations in Ukraine.
He said the list would be “submitted to the relevant authorities in this issue,” but the team acknowledged the difficulty of investigations involving a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Ultimately, the report may add to efforts to boost accountability for crimes committed in the war — whether by the International Criminal Court or by some individual countries that have taken on the right to apply “universal jurisdiction” to prosecute atrocities, wherever they may take place.
