The UN released a report on the illegal detention of civilians during the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. The organization has documented 900 such cases involving, in particular, children and the elderly. Russia is responsible for the vast majority of them.
The UN emphasized that Ukraine gave unrestricted access to the official places of detention of detainees, while the Russian Federation refused to do so.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has detained 864 civilians, of whom 77 have been executed, according to data obtained by the UN. People were detained during "filtering" in the temporarily occupied territories — for their pro-Ukrainian position, status of former Ukrainian military servicemen, etc. Among them were officials, volunteers, activists, priests, and teachers.
"Many civilian detainees were held incommunicado, in unofficial places of detention, often in terrible conditions [...] Russian armed forces, law enforcement and penitentiary authorities massively used torture and ill-treatment of detained civilians," added the UN.
At the same time, the organization identified 75 cases of detention by Ukrainian security forces, mostly people suspected of war-related crimes. More than half of the detainees, as documented by the UN, were tortured and ill-treated.
The UN noted that martial law conditions gave Ukraine more powers to detain people for national security purposes. In particular, the UN believes that the law on collaborationism, adopted in March 2022, does not comply with international law.
- The UN accused the Russian (and Ukrainian) army of killing children during the war. Secretary General Antonio Guterres accused Russia of killing 136 children in Ukraine in 2022 and added Russia to the global list of criminals.