Russia has detained more than 16,000 civilians in war with Ukraine – UN

According to the UN, Russia has detained more than 16,000 civilians in the war with Ukraine and they are still deprived of their liberty. Most of them are being held incommunicado and in violation of international law. This was reported by AP News.

Claudia Fuentes Julio, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Human Rights, noted that Russia continues to commit widespread and systematic torture, ill-treatment, including sexual violence, against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war.

She made this statement on August 10 at an informal meeting of the UN Security Council, convened at the initiative of Latvia and the United Kingdom. The meeting was dedicated to the plight of civilians and military personnel captured in the war that Russia started in February 2022. The council, of which Russia is a permanent member, heard the testimonies.

UN human rights officials have interviewed 910 Ukrainian prisoners of war and 403 civilians who have been released since the start of the war. The international organization has not been able to visit detention centers in Russia. The figures do not indicate how many are adults or children.

A UN official said more than 95 percent of Ukrainian prisoners of war and 85 percent of civilians held in captivity reported being tortured or ill-treated. They also spoke of sexual harassment and inhumane conditions, including being denied food and medical care.

The Geneva-based human rights office has documented that 129 Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed early in their captivity and that 48 died as a result of torture and lack of medical care.

Crimean Tatar human rights activist Leniye Umerova and Ukrainian soldier Juan Leyva Garcia addressed the Security Council. Umerova said she had been a political prisoner of the Russians for almost two years. Garcia was one of hundreds of soldiers who held out for months at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol before surrendering in May 2022.

Born in Mariupol to a Ukrainian mother and a Cuban father, Garcia spent 1,183 days as a prisoner of war. He said he weighed 55 kilograms when he was released and showed the council a photo of his emaciated body.

He said the Russians thought he was a foreign mercenary because of his Cuban origin and suspected him of being an American spy because he had studied in the United States, and beat him and humiliated him more severely than other prisoners.

“The Russians were angry that someone with Cuban connections was fighting against them,” said Garcia, who is still serving in the Ukrainian armed forces.

He said the Russians used cold weather, beatings, electric shocks and sexual abuse to psychologically break the prisoners and force them to confess to trumped-up crimes.

“Two of my friends were beaten to death in detention centers in the Donetsk region. Two more of my friends died in prison conditions and their bodies were returned to their homeland in plastic bags,” Garcia said.

**The UN says Russian prisoners have also reported abuse**

UN human rights experts have also interviewed 816 Russian prisoners of war and 57 third-country nationals from more than 45 countries who were held by the Russian armed forces.

Julio said half of them had been tortured and ill-treated by Ukrainians in the early stages of their captivity. But UN monitors said that once they were taken to Ukrainian detention centers, conditions were generally in line with international humanitarian law and had improved since 2022.

Russia's deputy UN ambassador, Maria Zabolotskaya, told the council that Russian forces were complying with international humanitarian law. She said Russian prisoners in Ukraine were being tortured and subjected to psychological and physical abuse. There have been previous reports of female prisoners of war being forced into sexual service in Russia.