On Wednesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, urged Russia to respect humanitarian law after briefly explaining the evidence published in a report on arbitrary detention, torture, and sexual violence against civilians in Ukraine.
Turk told the council, "More than 90 percent of those detained by the Russian Federation who we managed to interview stated that they had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence in some cases, by Russian security personnel."
He added, "We also found that Ukrainian individuals in unofficial detention facilities, or to a much lesser extent in official pre-trial detention facilities, were involved in torture or ill-treatment, including sexual violence, which mostly involves threats."
Turk found these findings shocking and called on the Russian Federation to take effective action to issue directives to soldiers and ensure their compliance with human rights and humanitarian law.
He noted that his office has also recorded some violations committed by Ukraine. In response to Turk's statements, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, said the findings "downplay the crimes of the Ukrainian side," pointing out that "the true scale of the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian authorities and army is being deliberately suppressed."
The report indicated that Ukraine granted UN investigators full access, except for one incident, while Russia allowed no access to detainees despite repeated requests.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented the arbitrary detention of more than 900 civilians between the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, and May 23 of this year, with 77 of them executed without trial.
The Human Rights Council is the only body where governments meet to protect human rights globally.
