Both Ukraine and Russia have committed war crimes by torturing prisoners of war, according to the UN monitoring mission in Ukraine. In addition to physical abuse and torture, they must also have been periodically deprived of access to water and toilets.
The abuses committed by the Russian side are more systematic, according to investigators who have interviewed 159 Ukrainian and 175 Russian prisoners of war in recent months.
— Torture and abuse were not only used to force prisoners of war to reveal military information. It was used, those interviewed said, on a daily basis to intimidate and humiliate them, says the head of the UN mission, Matilda Bogner, according to the AFP news agency.
According to Bogner, a Ukrainian man is said to have told how steel wire was attached to his nose and genitals and how he then received electric shocks via the wire. Others say they were stabbed, shot with stun guns, threatened with mock executions, hanged by the hands and feet and burned with cigarettes.
Bogner states that above all the Russian side must also have used sexual violence.
“We also documented various forms of sexual violence, such as dragging a male victim with a rope tied around his genitals, or forced nudity combined with threats of rape,” she says.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine is a group established in Ukraine in 2014 by the UN Secretary-General.