The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published a report on the war crimes of the Russian army in the occupied territories of southern Ukraine – in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. We are talking about torture, abduction and murder of civilians and prisoners of war.
HRW human rights activists talked to dozens of people from Kherson, Melitopol, Berdyansk, Skadovsk and 10 other cities in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. They described 42 cases where the Russian military could be involved in the disappearance of civilians. Many of them had been tortured before. HRW also documented evidence of torture of three captive members of the Territorial Defense Forces. Two of them died.
The report notes that the purpose of these war crimes is to obtain information and intimidate people so that they do not resist the occupiers.
One of the residents of southern Ukraine told human rights activists that the Russian military conducted a search in July in her house, took away her husband for four days, who was beaten with a metal rod, and used a stun gun on him. The man suffered a concussion and a severe shoulder injury.
Describing the fear felt by residents of the occupied cities, a Kherson journalist told human rights activists Human Rights Watch: “You don’t know when they will come for you and when they will let you go.”
Russia denies involvement in crimes in Ukraine. Commenting on the accusations of massacres in Bucha and other settlements in the Kyiv region, the Russian Federation stated that this was a “staging”, or it was about real murders committed by the Ukrainian military.
The world learned about the killings of civilians in Bucha on April 2. Then the journalists and the Ukrainian military entered the city liberated from Russian occupation and saw the streets strewn with corpses. Some of them had their hands tied behind their backs, some died from shots in the back of the head. The Insider spoke to the residents of Bucha, and they told how the Russian military shot random passers-by, robbed houses and did not let them leave.