The latest investigations undertaken by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine have found “widespread and systematic” torture conducted by Russia’s armed forces against “persons accused of being informants of the Ukrainian armed forces.” As reported by JURIST on September 26, 2023, the Commission had travelled to Ukraine ten separate times and met with survivors of Russian atrocities before reporting their findings to the Human Rights Council. The Commission noted numerous instances of torture committed throughout Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in “various detention cent[er]s controlled by Russian authorities,” and that “similar methods of torture were used across different facilities during interrogation sessions.” One such method involved the use of electric shocks in attempts to extract information from the victims. The Commission found multiple cases in which “torture was inflicted with such brutality that it caused the death of the victim.” The Commission noted that evidence of the existence of torture facilities “reinforc[es] its findings that torture was widely used by Russian authorities.”

The Commission further found that Russian forces, particularly in the Kherson region, “raped and committed sexual violence against women of ages ranging from 19 to 83 years, often together with threats or commission of other violations.” Oftentimes the families of the victims “were kept in an adjacent room,” forcing them “to hear the violations taking place.”

The Ukraine Commission expressed its concerns over allegation of genocide and the war’s effects on children and their transfer to Russia, and will continue to investigate those issues, especially because “some of the rhetoric transmitted in Russian state and other media may constitute incitement to genocide.” The report noted that, in regard to children, there is “a lack of clarity and transparency on the full extent” of their transfer to Russia which risks “hamper[ing] their expeditious return.”

Ending its report, the Commission called for accountability and “reiterated its deep concern at the scale and gravity of violations and corresponding crimes” that Russian forces have committed in the occupied regions of Ukraine. While the report focused almost entirely on Russian violations (as they make up the vast majority of human rights violations committed in Ukraine), the Commission was not one-sided, as they called on Ukraine to investigate “the few cases of violations by its own forces.”

JURIST’s report quoted the American delegation to the Commission as calling the report “essential to ensuring accountability for thousands of victims,” while the British Ambassador to the WTO and UN inquired as to “further investigation into the forcible transfer of children” from Ukraine to Russia, “including the widely reported use of … ‘summer camps’ for systematic political indoctrination.”