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Civilians are being tortured, illegally arrested and forcibly removed by Russian forces in occupied areas of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions of southern Ukraine, a new report shows.
“Russian forces have turned occupied areas of southern Ukraine into an abyss of fear and savage lawlessness,” says Julia Gorbunova, analyst at the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), which is behind the report.
The data documented by HRW comes from 71 people from 14 different cities in the two regions. They have been interviewed on site or by phone and have described 42 instances where Russian forces either abducted civilians or otherwise took them into custody.
Many have been tortured, according to the report. Several interviewees have described being tortured or witnessing torture through beatings and in some cases electric shocks.
The purpose of the action is assumed to be that the Russian forces want to gain access to information and that by intimidating civilians they want to make them accept the occupation.
In several cases, the Russian soldiers allegedly released people who had been detained after they signed to “cooperate” with the authorities,” or recorded a video urging others to cooperate.