War crimes claims mount as winter threatens Ukrainians
KYIV: Russians have murdered, tortured and kidnapped Ukrainians in a systematic patTERN THAT COULD IMPLICATE TOP OFfiCIALS IN WAR CRIMES, A SENIOR UNITED STATES OFfiCIAL SAID on Monday as Kyiv said it had discovered four Russian torture sites in newly liberated Kherson. Moscow, in turn, accused Ukrainian forces of summarily killing a number of prisoners of war (POWs) after a video of POW bodies surfaced.
These came as the World Health Organization (WHO) said Russia’s missile attacks on Ukraine’s power grid had left millions of lives at risk as winter descended with frigid temperatures.
The damage is having “knock-out effects” on Ukraine’s health system, Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told reporters.
“This winter will be about survival,” Kluge warned, saying it would be “life-threatening for millions of people in Ukraine.”
Up to three million Ukrainians could leave their homes in search of warmth and safety, according to him.
“They will face unique health challenges, including respiratory infections, such as Covid-19, pneumonia, influenza; and the serious risk of diphtheria and measles in (an) undervaccinated population,” he said.
Residents of Kherson were told they can evacuate to other regions, given the southern city’s heavily damaged infrastructure and services.
Power company Yasno warned of extended blackouts, saying they “should be prepared for different options, even the worst ones.”
“Stock up on warm clothes, blankets, think about options that will help you wait out a long shutdown,” it added.
Torture sites
Ukraine said it had discovered four Russian torture sites in Kherson.
The city was one of the first that Russian forces captured when they invaded Ukraine on February 24. It was retaken earlier this month after Russian forces retreated under threat from Kyiv’s troops.
“Together with police officers and experts, [prosecutors] conducted inspections of four premises where, during the capture of the city, the occupiers illegally detained people and brutally tortured them,” the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said in a statement.
Russian forces had also set up “pseudo-law enforcement agencies” at detention centers in Kherson, as well as in a police station, it said.
The remains of rubber truncheons, a wooden bat and “a device with which the occupiers tortured civilians with electricity” were found, it added.
Russian authorities also left behind paperwork documenting the administration of the detention sites, the prosecutor’s office said.
Last week Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said Russian forces were responsible for “horrific” torture in Kherson, saying dozens were abused in detention and more were killed.
One Kherson resident told Agence France-Presse (AFP) he spent weeks in detention where he was beaten and electrocuted by Russian and pro-Russian forces.
Systematic abuse
In Washington, US Ambassadorat-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack told reporters there was strong evidence that Russian abuses in Ukraine were not random or ad hoc.
There is mounting evidence that the invasion “has been accompanied by systemic war crimes committed in every region where Russian forces have been deployed,” she said.
Evidence from liberated areas indicates “deliberate, indiscriminate and disproportionate” attacks against civilian populations; custodial abuses of civilians and POWs; forceful removal, or filtration, of Ukrainian citizens — including children — to Russia; and execution-like murders and sexual violence, Van Schaack said.
“When we’re seeing such systemic acts, including the creation of a vast filtration network, it’s very hard to imagine how these crimes could be committed without responsibility going all the way up the chain of command,” she added.
Van Schaack also said the invasion had sparked an “unprecedented array of accountability initiatives,” involving numerous bodies along with the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The bodies are coordinating to develop priorities and approaches “under all available jurisdictional bases,” she added.
She called it a “new Nuremberg moment,” a reference to the war crimes trials held in the German city at the end of World War 2.
POW video
But the Kremlin has also come forward with allegations of Ukrainian abuses, vowing to track down and punish those behind the “brutal” murder of nearly a dozen Russian servicemen who had apparently been taken prisoner.
Russia’s Human Rights Council said the alleged executions took place in Makiivka, a village in the eastern Luhansk region, which the Ukrainian army said it had recaptured last week.
“Without a doubt, Russia will itself search for those who committed this crime. They must be found and punished,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Lubinets claimed that the prisoners had opened fire on Ukrainian forces after surrendering, leading to their being killed by return fire.