UN: Russia has detained hundreds of civilians since the start of the Ukraine war

A United Nations monitoring group states that Russia has detained over 800 civilians since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine, executing 77 of them. The 36-page report by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, based on 70 visits to detention facilities and over a thousand interviews, was published on Tuesday, July 6. It reveals that Ukraine has also violated international law by arbitrarily detaining civilians, albeit to a much lesser extent. Matilda Bogner, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, who attended a press conference via video link from Ukraine, stated that her team identified over 900 cases of arbitrary detention of civilians, including children and the elderly. She emphasized that most of these cases were committed by the Russian Federation, adding that the executions carried out by Russia constitute a 'war crime.' The UN Human Rights Office in Geneva reports that it has documented detailed information regarding 178 of the total 864 civilians detained by Russia. According to this UN body, over 90% of these detainees have been subjected to torture. The report mentions torture methods such as waterboarding, electric shocks, and confinement in a 'hot box' (a chamber with extremely high temperatures) in solitary confinement. UN documents also indicate 75 cases of civilian detentions by Ukrainian forces. The UN report adds that while Ukraine granted full access to its investigators in all but one case, Russia prevented them from accessing detainees despite repeated requests. Following Russia's military attack on Ukraine in March 2022, the United States has repeatedly emphasized its support for Ukraine in defending its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, providing tens of billions of dollars in humanitarian, financial, economic, and military aid to Ukraine.