Russian forces carried out war crimes on Kherson prisoners

Editor’s note: The next article incorporates graphic material detailing reports of torture of individuals in Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — The identification of Russian forces who carried out various types of torture and sexual violence on prisoners within the Ukrainian city of Kherson is “well underway,” in accordance with a team of international lawyers investigating alleged war crimes.

Kherson, once home to greater than 280,000 people, was the primary major city to fall to Russian forces during Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After months of Russian occupation, the southeastern city was liberated in November by Ukrainian forces, which reopened Kherson to international humanitarian and investigation teams.

“It will be significant that we’re assisting the Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General not only with bringing the perpetrators of those severe sexual crimes to justice but in addition with constructing successful cases against those that gave the orders,” Wayne Jordash, a global human rights lawyer and managing partner of the law firm Global Rights Compliance, told CNBC.

“The pattern that we’re observing is consistent with a cynical and calculated plan to humiliate and terrorize tens of millions of Ukrainian residents so as to subjugate them to the diktat of the Kremlin,” added Jordash, who leads a Mobile Justice Team, a gaggle of international lawyers and investigators supporting Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office.

Read more: Russian forces have relocated at the very least 6,000 Ukrainian children to camps since start of war, recent report says

The Mobile Justice Team is one component of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, which is funded by the State Department, European Union and the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

In accordance with the brand new evidence gathered by the investigation, at the very least 36 victims described using electrocution during interrogations, and of those cases nearly half involved electrocution of genitals. Others detailed incidents where genital mutilation was threatened and at the very least one person said they were forced to witness the rape of one other detainee by a foreign object.

Other techniques commonly used against detainees within the greater than 35 torture chambers in Kherson were suffocation, waterboarding, severe beatings and threats of rape, in accordance with the evidence gathered.

In March, the Mobile Justice Team reported that at the very least 20 torture sites in Kherson were directly financed by the Kremlin and managed by various Russian security agencies, including Russia’s Federal Security Services, generally known as the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

The Kremlin has previously denied that its forces committed war crimes or deliberately targeted civilians. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.

Military, former military, law enforcement, volunteers, activists, community leaders, medical employees and teachers were amongst those held prisoner on the Russian-operated Kherson torture centers.

“What we’re witnessing in Kherson is just the tip of the iceberg in Putin’s barbaric plan to obliterate a complete population,” said Anna Mykytenko, a senior legal adviser for Global Rights Compliance.

“The true scale of Russia’s war crimes stays unknown, but what we are able to say for certain is that the psychological consequences of those cruel crimes on Ukrainian people will likely be engrained of their minds for years to come back,” Mykytenko added.