UN Commission finds Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine

A UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has found that Russia committed numerous war crimes in Ukraine, including attacks on energy infrastructure, forcibly transporting children to Russia, and imprisoning, torturing, raping, and killing Ukrainians, according to a report published on March 16.

Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure have also resulted in damage to "thousands" of residential buildings, along with more than 3,000 educational institutions and 600 medical facilities, the report stated.

The Commission said that these attacks, which began in October, "may amount to" crimes against humanity but needed to be investigated further.

The Commission was also "struck by the extent of the destruction," according to the report.

According to the report, the Commission acknowledged that the Russian military's murdering of Ukrainian civilians is a war crime, and its attacks on populated areas were in violation of international law.

“They punished innocent people; now those who are guilty, if they are still alive, need to be punished to the fullest extent," the son of a man who was executed in formerly-occupied Izium in Kharkiv Oblast told investigators.

The investigators of the Commission visited a total of 56 locations and interviewed 348 women and 247 men. They evaluated the sites of graves, abandoned torture chambers and prisons, weapons fragments, destroyed buildings, and consulted "a large number of" documents and reports.

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The Kyiv Independent