Editor’s note: The next article accommodates graphic material detailing reports of torture and sexual violence.
The window within the door frames the corridor on the District Police Department utilized by Russian occupiers for torture, Balakliia, Kharkiv Region, northeastern Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy | Ukrinform | Future Publishing | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A report commissioned by the United Nations found that Russian forces have committed widespread abuse against prisoners captured throughout the invasion of Ukraine.
The report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights found that each Russia and Ukraine have captured a high variety of prisoners of war. In some cases, the investigators found that Ukrainian forces tortured Russian troops, though those incidents were less frequent.
In preparing the report, investigators conducted 159 interviews over the course of eight months. The report follows a separate U.N. account of widespread human rights abuses by Russia throughout the war.
Investigators said that before Ukrainian service members were transferred to a makeshift Russian detention facility or penal colony, they were stripped of their belongings, including money, bank cards, jewelry, military clothes and boots.
The report said prisoners of war, or POWs, were then sent to places of internment in inhumane ways:
They were often transported in overcrowded trucks or buses and sometimes lacked access to water or toilets for greater than a day.
Their hands were tied and eyes covered so tightly with duct tape that wounds were left on their wrists and faces that continued to bleed for as much as several days.
Some former Ukrainian POWs recounted sporadic incidents where Russian soldiers who had captured, transported or guarded Ukrainian POWs beat them in apparent retribution for military setbacks or within the immediate aftermath of battle.
The conditions of the Russian detention facilities were described as overcrowded and dirty with insufficient lighting and warmth, in response to investigators.
Prisoners said they were denied access to natural light or fresh air, and were kept in a single cell with as much as 30 other people. In addition they described an absence of beds, toilets, showers and hygiene items akin to toothbrushes and toothpaste, the report said.
Female prisoners told investigators they were subjected to invasive examinations during admission procedures within the presence of male guards. The ladies prisoners also said they were forced to undress and walk naked down hallways. Some women said they were ordered to undress, bend over and touch their feet while guards beat their backs with batons, in response to the report.
The ladies prisoners who were interviewed said that while they weren’t physically tortured, they were placed in cells near where male prisoners were being beaten and tortured.
“They were continually psychologically tormented by the screams of male POWs being tortured or ill-treated. Such episodes lasted as much as hours and took place in any respect times of the day and night,” the report said.
One woman told U.N. investigators, “I still cannot stand the sound of duct tape. Guards used it to immobilize their victims and begin torturing them.”
Kherson, UkraineNov. 16, 2022A Ukrainian police officer stands inside a prison utilized by the Russian forces for interrogations, detentions, and torture in response to the Ukrainian authorities on Nov. 16, 2022.
Carolyn Cole | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
Ukrainian prisoners described so-called “admission procedures” upon arrival on the place of internment, which involved prolonged beatings, strangling, twisting or breaking of joints or bones, attacks by dog, tasering, mock executions, sexual violence, stripping and use of stress positions. The prisoners also said they were forced to sing Russian kid’s songs and were beaten in the event that they refused or made mistakes, in response to U.N. investigators.
The report found that probably the most widespread type of torture was “beatings by hand, batons or wood hammers and kicks to varied parts of the body, but normally avoiding the pinnacle and other vital areas.”
One prisoner told investigators he was captured and detained in a Russian penal colony near the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. He said that in one interrogation session, Russians “attached wires to my genitalia and nose and shocked me.”
“They simply had a good time and weren’t all for my replies to their questions,” he told U.N. investigators.
The report added that other prisoners described similar types of sexual violence akin to “pulling a victim by a rope tied around his genitalia.”
Russian guards also inserted burning cigarettes in a victim’s nostrils, hung prisoners by hands or legs for prolonged periods of time and applied tourniquet-like devices to painfully constrict blood circulation to limbs, in response to the report.
Investigators from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said prisoners described methods during which “food became an instrument of humiliation:”
Several POWs released from various places of detention described being forced to eat their food in a harmful or humiliating manner. In some cases, POWs had only 45 seconds to 2 minutes to eat, including highly regarded food that may burn their mouths and throats.
Others said that they had to eat from dirty dishes or dishes with detergent residue, which caused them digestive problems.
Investigators said greater than 80% of the previous Ukrainian prisoners of war interviewed complained concerning the insufficient amount or poor quality of food.
“They said they got, for instance, undercooked bread, meals with rotten ingredients, or porridge or spaghetti with sand or small rocks in it,” in response to the report.
Investigators found that some prisoners lost as much as 1 / 4 of their body weight because of this of the shortage of food, poor hygiene and sickness. Usually, Ukrainian prisoners were released without having received adequate medical care.
“Some identified hunger as probably the most severe hardship suffered while in captivity,” the authors of the report wrote.
