More than 400 arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances by Russian forces in Ukraine, as well as dozens by Ukrainian forces, according to UN investigators who released their findings on Friday.
Head of the UN Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine since 2014 Matilda Bogner lamented a sharp increase in rights violations following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February.
She described thousands of civilian deaths, hundreds of arbitrary detentions, and recorded torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war in her remarks to media from Odessa.
It would be a war crime, she argued, if it could be demonstrated in court that a prisoner of war had been tortured and mistreated while being held.
She said that her team had conclusively established that 416 persons had been unjustly arrested or vanished in regions under the authority or occupation of Russian soldiers and allied militias.
“Of those, 16 were found dead and 166 released,” she said.
Additionally, according to Bogner, they had evidence of 51 instances of arbitrary detentions and 30 more that might be considered forced disappearances by Ukrainian law enforcement.
