According to experts, they had “reasonable grounds” to believe that crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed during that period. in 2014 Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula, and in 2022 launched a large-scale invasion in Ukraine in February.
In late February, 45 of the 57 OSCE members ordered a report on detained Ukrainian civilians, using OSCE procedures that allow such investigations to be conducted without the permission of the host country.
The experts – Veronika Bilkova from the Czech Republic, Cecilie Hellestveit from Norway and Elina Steinerte from Latvia – could not say exactly how many persons were detained in Ukraine during that period.
However, according to them, based on the collected documents and oral testimony of Ukrainian officials, victims and witnesses, there were thousands of them.
According to this information, the detainees were subjected to sexual abuse, starved and thirsty. The experts also mentioned the fact that detainees and prisoners were also killed – for example, in 2022. Bucha near Kyiv.
Arbitrarily detaining large numbers of Ukrainian civilians appears to be “a characteristic feature of the Russian Federation’s policy in the temporarily occupied territories,” the report said.
The detainees were accused of supporting the Ukrainian army or not recognizing the Russian operation in order to sow fear and force them to cooperate with the Russians, the experts said.
