ALLEGED WAR CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION WITH CAPITAL IN MOSCOW IN THE 2022 TO 2025 RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR

0004WC19112025RUSSOUKRAINIANWAR

29 October 2024

Ukraine - Russian forces committed torture as a crime against humanity, UN Commission says

TRANSCRIPT

okay uh good morning everyone uh thank you all for joining us at this press conference with the UN Commission of inquiry on Ukraine as you may know the commission was created by the Human Rights Council in March of 2022 to investigate human rights violations in the context of the aggression against Ukraine by the Russian Federation they presented their latest report to the general assembly on Tuesday and we're pleased to have with us today all three members of the commission who wanted to take this opportunity to meet with you and take your questions in the middle we have the chair of the commission Mr Eric Merc um to his right is Mr Pao Pablo de De Graff and uh on the far left is Miss vinda Grover now um the chair will begin with some opening remarks followed by fellow Commissioners and then we'll take your questions thank you good morning we are here to share with you the main find ings of our report that we presented before the third Committee of the general assembly Tuesday this week our most important conclusion is that Russian authorities have committed torture as a crime against humanity during our two previous mandates we reported on the widespread and systematic use of torture as a war crime by Russian authorities both in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation the victims were civilians and prisoners of War both women and men our recent findings demonstrate that Russian authorities have committed torture in all provinces of Ukraine that came under their control as well as in the detention facilities that the commission has investigated in the Russian Federation a map illustrating this region is posted on our website the New Evidence reinforces the previous conclusion that torture was widespread the commission also previously concluded that the use of torture was systematic we identified common elements concerning the categories of person targeted the aims for which torture was used and the similarity of methods employed this report contains evidence of further common elements including first the transposition of violent practices common in Russian Federation detention facilities to similar facilities in occupied areas of Ukraine second the rec current use of sexual violence third the deployment of specific services and security forces from the Russian Federation to the occupied areas they controlled in Ukraine who acted in a coordinated Manner and according to a specific division of labor and fourth orders of superiors as well as an appearent sense of impunity among perpetrators now based on this body of evidence we have concluded that the Russian authorities acted pursuant to a coordinated State policy of torturing Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of War therefore in addition to torture as a war crime they also committed torture as a crime against humanity our report also describes sexual violence attacks on energy related infrastructure and attacks with explosive weapons that affected civilians and civilian objects going back to the new common elements of torture I will first talk about the transposition of violent practices from detention facilities in Russian Federation to similar facilities in Ukraine in areas under the control of Russian Federation former Deton consistently described the use of the same harsh practices in the same sequence demonstrating the replication of practices of torture testimonies described a brutal so-called admission procedure harsh practices designed to scare break humiliate coers and punish Deton were used routinely Personnel monitored compliance with their rules through surveillance cameras and impose severe Collective punishment for any breach interrogations were accompanied by some of the most violent treatment documented another disturbing element documented by the commission is the recurrent use of sexual viol violence as a form of torture in detention facilities under the control of Russian authorities Deton were subjected to rape attempted rape attacks on genital organs through beatings electric shocks or Burns long periods of forced nudity threats of sexual mutilation and castration and intrusive humiliating body searches former Deton reported beatings and electric shocks in the showers when they were naked and wet the commission's investigations found that the victims were both men and women civilians and prisoners of War however the majority were men most prisoners of War reported having been subjected to sexual violence victims reported longlasting psychological trauma as a consequence of these violations I will now turn to another aspect we found numerous situations in which Medical Care was denied in detention facilities even where the Ukrainian dety had visible serious injuries testimonies further disclose the involvement of medical personnel in committing negligent or abusive acts against Deton in the Russian Federation in breach of their ethical standards we concluded that the Russian authorities thereby violated the international humanitarian law obligation to respect the health and integrity of detained civilians and provide medical attention to prisoners of War as well as the Deton human right to health another important new element of which the commission now has evidence are the organizational aspects that enable torture in the wellestablished detention facilities Personnel of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation were in charge of the interrogations which were held in the presence of the federal penitentiary service regular person as well as special purpose units the So-Cal SP Nets multiple testimonies showed that these Services had regular rotations and acted in coordination with one another and in accordance with the division of labor the special purpose units of the penitentiary service were the main perpetrators of torture during the various pH cases of the detention moreover the commission now has evidence that the leadership of detention facilities or other higher ranking Russian authorities ordered encouraged tolerated or took no action to stop torture or ill treatment I will now move to the commission's investigation of NE attacks with explosive weapons they have targeted civilian targets including hospitals and other medical facilities cultural objects and civilian sites such as a shopping center and markets at times of the day when many civilians were present some of these attacks were indiscriminate in violation of international humanitarian law we have also looked into attacks with explosive weapons in territory under Russian Federation control but have not been able to complete investigations due to lack of access despite many requests to the Russian Federation finally the commission has previously examined in detail large scale waves of attacks on Ukraine's energy related infrastructure since 10 October 22 and already concluded that those attacks were widespread and systematic in the current mandate we have investigated nine additional waves of attacks between January 2023 and September 2024 and have assessed the impact of those attacks the full impact on civilians is not yet known in this report we focus on the right to health and education of ukrainians the impact is particularly severe on certain categories of persons including children and older persons as well as persons with a disability or a medical condition primary carers of the former categories of persons mostly women were also serious affected by the attacks and the commission will continue its investigations on this topic thank you very much thank you Commissioners for those questions now we'll open the uh floor to your questions if you could please identify yourself and the agency you work for Ed from Associated Press uh thank you on behalf of the United Nations correspondence Association for doing this briefing my name is Edith lettera from the Associated Press um first a quick question um was your report presented to the Russian Federation and did you receive any response and you've certainly painted a pretty Grim picture of what they've been doing um has have these um VI ation been getting worse since the beginning of the um war in February of 2022 um and um is aside from basically the megaphone of telling us and doing reports and printing uh presenting your findings to the human rights C Council um is there anything else that that you can do to try to either halt or mitigate these actions thank you thank you very much for your questions um it's normal procedure in such commissions of inquiry that the draft report is presented to all relevant parties affected by it this also happened in our situation we have always presented our drafts report both to the Ukrainian authorities and to the Russian authorities um the Russian authorities usually do not comment they never comment upon our report um more generally uh the Russian authorities have declined to grant us access to territories under their control and um I understand that they do not really recognize the commission or wants to cooperate with it um your second questions question related to whether it has got worse that is a difficult question to answer what we can because we are of course uh investigating evidence as evidence comes to our knowledge that evidence may be recent or not so recent so it's rather the speed by which we discover or receive evidence um that is what we focus on and it makes it difficult it is not so much to see whether uh it has been a gradual development we cannot tell you that that is the case based on the evidence we have so far um and what can we do to alleviate the situation uh well uh this opens up a box let me first say that our work is of course the basis for possible um judicial proceedings by other entities we are not a court we are the commission of inquiry but we make known our views as to whether they are violations of um human rights and breaches and crimes committed but um they it will be for other entities to follow this up and they may ask for evidence from us and that is the purpose of the commission we serve as some kind of um depository for evidence which may be useful in judicial proceedings but there is also another aspect of um what we can do and that brings us more to non-judicial accountability yes so if I may and first let me start by thanking you for your interest on you collectively I think that it's very important for these to be known the commission has always defended what we call a broad notion of accountability that includes both judicial and nonjudicial responses to the violations after all the right of victims Beyond criminal accountability is well established victims have a right to reparation they have a right to truth and of course there is a general right to nonrecurrence and we have spoken about the non-judicial aspect of accountability in most of our reports just to illustrate for example the need for mental health and psychosocial support in the context of Ukraine as in the context of many other postconflict situations is very acute and we have spoken about this in previous reports and if I may add a short point to what the chair said about Trends it is correct of course that we cannot speak about Trends but there is something important in this report about the gradual institutionalization of uh a whole apparatus of torture we know that violations do not happen just out of chance this degree of systematicity in violations requires the establishment of for example a division of labor between different Services The Establishment not just of makeshift places of torture but well established sites and that of course is a process that takes place over time so I would like to emphasize that there is in fact a process of institutionalization that has accompanied the findings that we report now okay um any other questions okay please go ahead hello my name is Gabriel alzando from Al jazer English news channel thanks a lot for your briefing just a couple questions if I may uh you mentioned uh Mr chairman I believe in your briefing in Geneva in September if I'm not mistaking but you might have mentioned it here as well that um there was coordinated use of torture by Personnel from specific Services of the Russian Federation which Services yes so because I addressed this part in The Briefing so in the well established detention centers that we have examined and uh we have examined a variety in total 41 different detention centers of different degrees of complexity and duration from makeshift places to what we call well established centes in all of them torture were was a common practice we didn't find any and they include detention centers in nine regions in Ukraine in the occupied areas of Ukraine and also so eight regions eight areas we should say to be precise in the Russian Federation all the interrogations and the detention centers are under the authority of the Federal Security Services of the Russian Federation the main and of course personel regular Personnel of the federal penitentiary service are in charge of the administration of the wellestablished detention centers the main perpetrators of torture Accord in accordance with the testimony that we have received our Personnel from the Federal Security Services we ask one followup thank you is um some member states um say have made claims over the last year that the the orders for torture go all the way up to the Kremlin in your investigation or your reporting are you able to trace how high the orders come from in Russia for the to order the tort the orders to commit torture or not uh we have not concluded on that P point in our reports it goes without saying that the totality of the evidence can show Trends and point in directions but there is no specific conclusion at this stage okay sorry we um Evelyn did you have a question yes thank you uh I came in late so maybe you've covered this um are they still abducting children and taking them to Russia yeah all right uh we have um as you may recall dealt with children in our previous reports and we have listed examples of for instance Abdu abductions which were clearly in breach of international Norms in this report we have not dealt with this issue the reason being that we have focused on the four issues that we mentioned at the beginning of our conference namely um torture sexual violence explosive weapons and attacks against energy related infrastructure so this does not mean that we are not continuing our investigations on the issue of children but uh there was this is something to come in subsequent report depending on our investigations one follow-up question when uh uh Minister lavro had his press conference here um I asked him why they keep and emphasizing buha do you pronounce it that way when it was such a massacre and he sort of cherry pick to show that it was not uh do you do you cover that one this time too CU it was quite shocking that he would mention that in his speech to the general assembly so we are aware of this comment and we have been asked whether we have a full list of victim which is what Minister La was asking for and our role of course is not to keep F list of victims of any incident but yes we have investigated bua and we have plenty of testimonies of people that witnessed family members being and others being killed and U that corroborate some of the evidence that uh and some of the reports that have been made public so this is this was a subject of one of our previous reports including some of the testimony that we received about what happened in BO okay thank you um let's go to a question in the front row please go ahead thank you my name Isam aim jid newspaper I have two follow-ups uh the first one you talked about widespread torture um if you could um elaborate on statistics and numbers uh as far as you can have this because I I'm aware of the fact that you don't have access uh and the other question is about accountability where do you see possibilities of accountability for victims um whether outside um Russia Ukraine or Europe which roads do you see that should be taken thank you starting with the issue of how widespread matters were that is the novelty in this report U we have gradually investigated several provinces of Ukraine but now we have gone through all that were under Russian occupied occupation at some stage and in all of them we found approximately nine all of them we found that there was torture against civilians and that prisoners of War also was subject to to treatment um the these uh provinces or these and in these areas both in Ukraine and then also the new the other new element namely the detention centers in Russia also there we have found gone through quite a few of the um detention centers in Russia and there two we have found that in all of those that we have investigated the practice is the same similar so that is the new issue with this report um when it comes to accountability um now accountability for victims in a way again that's twofold it's partly the judicial accountability and partly the non-judicial accountability I will deal with the first aspect first and first of all uh as we know uh the prosecutor General and the prosecuting Authority in Ukraine are constantly pursuing um cases before the courts um with the aim of obtaining convictions if people are guilty and they have uh completed a large number of such trials within Ukraine so that's the national authorities in addition comes of course International authorities and we are all in this room aware of the IC um initiatives the of arrests that have been tabled and uh that and the IC is cont continuing its accountability U ex work there is in principle a third way that is that other countries um in possession of evidence uh can choose in their jurisdiction if they have Global jurisdiction covering at least what Happ in Ukraine can Institute criminal proceedings U so that these are the three roads in a way and in addition there is a plan to establish other um tribunals one concerning um aggression but that's not uh a completed exercise so that is for the judicial accountability yeah and as for the nonjudicial parts of accountability I guess that the most most noteworthy bit of progress that can be mentioned is the adoption by the general assembly of the resolution on the register of Damages the subsequent Council of Europe resolution doing the same and in fact the establishment of the register now which is open to the filing of claims by Ukrainian victims so a process has been started on the reparations front on the question of other forms of assistance to victims there is a great deal of interest on the part of many different groups both nationally and international groups on the provision of mental health and psychosocial support I think that the International Community including the UN can do a bit more to try to coordinate and to support those efforts since it is so well established scientifically that the earlier that you provide support the more you spare victims what could be potential years and years of trauma and it is also very well established that trauma travels intergenerationally and that is something that we need to avoid so greater attention to this topic would not be undue but again it has started under the Ukrainian government of course is aware of it I think that a bit more attention to this on the part of the International Community would be very useful and I would like to supplement my answer since you asked for statistics well statistic is a big word but we have some numbers and let me provide you with some specific numbers and you will find that in the annex of our report and you will see that in the areas under Russian Federation controlled in Ukraine um we um have mentioned nine provinces where torture took place and we have investigated the situation in 21 facilities in those nine provinces and turning now to the other aspects namely prisoners of War in the Russian Federation or civilians in the Russian Federation we have eight areas in that uh country um and there there are nine facilities and the Striking is that in all these facilities we have these similarities which we have already explained you have you have approximate numbers about how many people we are talking about in this it's a considerable number but we don't have a list counting so but it's a it's a considerable number because after all the topic is widespread and systematic and that requires a considerable portion of evidence so uh and we have come we have um had these investigations going for a couple of years now almost we are getting closer to the third Al after 3 years and gradually we have form this body of evidence okay any other questions from the room or online I don't see any online okay all right well we'll wrap this up thank you very much for joining us today and um have a good day

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/coiukraine/20241031-COI-Ukraine-Statement-EN.pdf

Press statement by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, New York

31 October 2024