The systematic and massive forced abductions and torture committed by Russian troops in Ukraine amount to crimes against humanity. This was warned by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into Crimes in Ukraine. According to its report, presented yesterday to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Russian authorities have detained a large number of civilians in the territories they control in Ukraine.
The victims are representatives of local authorities, civil servants, journalists and other individuals whom “the Russian authorities considered a threat to their military objectives in Ukraine“. Among them are Ukrainian prisoners of war, human rights activists claim.
Torture and sexual violence
According to the authors of the report, the victims were taken to detention centers in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine or were directly deported to the Russian Federation. There, crimes were committed against them, including torture and sexual violence, the UN commission also claims. There, many of them have been missing for months or even years, and some have died.
The fate and whereabouts of a large number of them remain unknown, the report also states. Behind the torture are also employees of the Russian Federal Security Service and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the world organization also claims. It is with the representatives of these two bodies that the “most cruel forms of torture“ are associated during interrogations, the report also said.
Cases of rape and sexual violence against women were also reported. In a previous report published in 2024, the commission of inquiry concluded that Russia had systematically tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Experts: “coordinated state policy“ of the Russian Federation
The commission concluded that this case involved “coordinated state policy“ and “crimes against humanity“. The commission examined a number of incidents of Ukrainian soldiers who had been captured or surrendered by the Russian military being killed or injured by the Russian military.
The experts also found that both sides in the conflict, using drones, are killing or injuring soldiers who are apparently unable to defend themselves. And this constitutes a war crime, human rights activists also warn.
The report also describes a number of human rights violations committed by the Ukrainian side against individuals accused of collaborating with the Russian authorities.
US suspends program on abductions of Ukrainian children
The Donald Trump administration is terminating a program to track Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia, which included searching for them and collecting other evidence of alleged crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine. The decision means losing access to a large amount of information, including satellite images and biometric data of about 30,000 Ukrainian children abducted from Ukraine, Reuters explains.
„We have reason to believe that the data from the repository has been irretrievably deleted. "If true, it would have devastating consequences," the agency quoted a letter from Democratic lawmakers, led by Ohio Representative Greg Landsman, to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant.
According to the “Washington Post“, employees at the Yale University Humanities Research Laboratory, under whose leadership the program operated, were informed in February that their contracts had been terminated by the US State Department.