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The report says it found “credible evidence” suggesting violations of “even the most fundamental human rights (right to life, prohibition of torture and other inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment) have been committed, mostly in the areas under the effective control of Russia or entities under overall control of Russia.”
In a statement at the OSCE on Wednesday, US Ambassador Michael Carpenter said that “taken as a whole, the report documents the catalog of inhumanity perpetrated by Russia’s forces in Ukraine.”
“The report is powerful in documenting the sheer scope of the Russian government’s cruelty,” Carpenter said.
The 110-page report details reports of targeted killings, torture, rape and forced disappearances.
The OSCE fact-finding mission “received several reports, sometimes accompanied by photographic evidence, alleging the use by Russian troops of the red cross emblem to mark military non-medical vehicles, of Ukrainian flags, army or police uniforms or vehicles, white flags, civilian clothes, and OSCE symbols to facilitate their military operations,” it says.
It includes reports of a Ukrainian interpreter who was “held in captivity for nine days” by Russian forces. Left in an icy cellar, he was repeatedly beaten with an iron bar and rifle butts, tortured with electricity, deprived of food for 48 hours and subjected to a mock execution.
It includes the report of a woman who was raped multiple times, “in the presence of her small child,” by a “drunken Russian soldier” who killed her husband.
“There are allegations of rapes, including gang rapes, committed by Russian soldiers in many other regions in Ukraine,” the report states.
It cites the Human Rights Ombudsperson of the Ukrainian Parliament, who said that “500,000 civilians have been deported from Ukraine to Russia” and “that all of them had been forcibly displaced, first brought to some filtration camps in Russia near the Ukrainian border and that some of them were then brought as far as Sakhalin Island, but left there in freedom.”
For many of the incidents, the report says they would constitute war crimes, but does not fully declare them as such. On the attack on the maternity hospital in Mariupol, however, it states: “This attack therefore constitutes a clear violation of (international humanitarian law) and those responsible for it have committed a war crime.”
“While it may be that one hospital was used by the defender for military purposes or destroyed by mistake, it is hardly possible that this is the case when 50 hospitals are destroyed,” the report states.
It notes the “particularly insidious form of attack” known as “double tap attacks” that Russian forces allegedly carried out in Kharkiv in early March. A Russian cruise missile hit the Kharkiv regional administration — and a second strike hit the building after rescuers arrived several minutes later.
‘Not conceivable’
The report was the result of a three-week-long fact-finding mission by the three OSCE experts, and covers the time period from the start of the war on February 24 to April 1. That mission was…
Source: OSCE report finds ‘clear patterns’ of violations by Russian forces in Ukraine
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