The United Nations on Friday accused Ukrainian and Russian forces of carrying out dozens of summary executions of prisoners of war during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, AFP reports.

Russian prisoners of warPhoto: – / Sputnik / Profimedia

“We are deeply concerned about the summary execution of 25 Russian prisoners of war and non-combatants”, as well as “15 Ukrainian prisoners of war”, – said the head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine Matilda Bogner.

The latest abuses in Russia’s attack on Ukraine

The UN human rights office said on Friday that its investigators had confirmed thousands more civilian casualties during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including 21 people killed by Russian forces in executions or separate attacks, Reuters reported.

“One year after the Russian Federation launched a large-scale armed attack on Ukraine, military action continues to put serious pressure on children, women and men across the country,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a new statement. report.

It found that at least 5,987 civilians were killed or injured between August 1, 2022, and January 31, 2023, a number it said was likely to be a significant underestimate because it covered only those cases that investigators could verify.

Inaccurate explosive weapons caused high civilian casualties, the report said, with figures showing at least four times more civilian casualties occurred in Ukrainian-controlled territory than in Russian-controlled territory.

Most of the 133 cases of conflict-related sexual violence documented by OHCHR took place in Russian-occupied territory, including during “so-called filtering processes,” the report said.

Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations that its forces committed atrocities during the invasion, which it says is a “special military operation”.

The report documents the disappearance or “arbitrary detention” of 214 Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territory and 91 such cases in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. Most of those arrested in Ukraine are suspected of collaborationism, the report says.

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