UN report details horrifying Ukrainian accounts of abuse and torture in Russian prisons

WASHINGTON — A study commissioned by the United Nations recovered that Russian forces person committed wide maltreatment against prisoners captured during the penetration of Ukraine.

The report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recovered that some Russia and Ukraine person captured a precocious fig of prisoners of war. In immoderate cases, the investigators recovered that Ukrainian forces tortured Russian troops, though those incidents were little frequent.

In preparing the report, investigators conducted 159 interviews implicit the people of 8 months. The study follows a abstracted U.N. relationship of wide quality rights abuses by Russia during the war.

Investigators said that earlier Ukrainian work members were transferred to a makeshift Russian detention installation oregon penal colony, they were stripped of their belongings, including money, recognition cards, jewelry, subject apparel and boots.

The study said prisoners of war, oregon POWs, were past sent to places of internment successful inhumane ways:

The conditions of the Russian detention facilities were described arsenic overcrowded and soiled with insufficient lighting and heat, according to investigators.

Prisoners said they were denied entree to earthy airy oregon caller air, and were kept successful a azygous compartment with up to 30 different people. They besides described a deficiency of beds, toilets, showers and hygiene items specified arsenic toothbrushes and toothpaste, the study said.

Female prisoners told investigators they were subjected to invasive examinations during admittance procedures successful the beingness of antheral guards. The women prisoners besides said they were forced to undress and locomotion bare down hallways. Some women said they were ordered to undress, crook implicit and interaction their feet portion guards bushed their backs with batons, according to the report.

The women prisoners who were interviewed said that portion they were not physically tortured, they were placed successful cells adjacent to wherever antheral prisoners were being beaten and tortured.

"They were perpetually psychologically tormented by the screams of antheral POWs being tortured oregon ill-treated. Such episodes lasted up to hours and took spot astatine each times of the time and night," the study said.

One pistillate told U.N. investigators, "I inactive cannot basal the dependable of duct tape. Guards utilized it to immobilize their victims and commencement torturing them."

Ukrainian prisoners described alleged "admission procedures" upon accomplishment astatine the spot of internment, which progressive prolonged beatings, strangling, twisting oregon breaking of joints oregon bones, attacks by dog, tasering, mock executions, intersexual violence, stripping and usage of accent positions. The prisoners besides said they were forced to sing Russian children's songs and were beaten if they refused oregon made mistakes, according to U.N. investigators.

The study recovered that the astir wide signifier of torture was "beatings by hand, batons oregon woody hammers and kicks to assorted parts of the body, but usually avoiding the caput and different captious areas."

One captive told investigators helium was captured and detained successful a Russian penal colony adjacent the eastbound Ukrainian metropolis of Donetsk. He said that during 1 interrogation session, Russians "attached wires to my genitalia and chemoreceptor and shocked me."

"They simply had amusive and were not funny successful my replies to their questions," helium told U.N. investigators.

The study added that different prisoners described akin forms of intersexual unit specified arsenic "pulling a unfortunate by a enactment tied astir his genitalia."

Russian guards besides inserted burning cigarettes successful a victim's nostrils, hung prisoners by hands oregon legs for extended periods of clip and applied tourniquet-like devices to painfully constrict humor circulation to limbs, according to the report.

Investigators from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said prisoners described methods successful which "food became an instrumentality of humiliation:"

Investigators said much than 80% of the erstwhile Ukrainian prisoners of warfare interviewed complained astir the insufficient magnitude oregon mediocre prime of food.

"They said they were given, for example, undercooked bread, meals with rotten ingredients, oregon porridge oregon spaghetti with soil oregon tiny rocks successful it," according to the report.

Investigators recovered that immoderate prisoners mislaid up to a 4th of their assemblage value arsenic a effect of the deficiency of food, mediocre hygiene and sickness. In astir cases, Ukrainian prisoners were released without having received capable aesculapian care.

"Some identified hunger arsenic the astir terrible hardship suffered portion successful captivity," the authors of the study wrote.