In a statement to the OSCE on Wednesday, US Ambassador Michael Carpenter said: “As a whole, the report documents the list of inhumane acts committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.” “The report is strong in documenting the enormous extent of the Russian government’s brutality,” Carpenter said. The 110-page report details reports of targeted killings, torture, rape and enforced disappearances. The OSCE investigative mission “received numerous reports, sometimes accompanied by photographic evidence, alleging that Russian troops used the Red Cross emblem to mark non-medical military vehicles, Ukrainian flags, uniforms or army or police vehicles, white flags “, OSCE’s civilian clothes and symbols to facilitate their military operations,” he said. It includes reports of a Ukrainian interpreter being “held captive 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 false execution. It includes the report of a woman who was repeatedly raped, “in the presence of her young child”, by a “drunk Russian soldier” who killed her husband. “There are allegations of rape, including gang rape, committed by Russian soldiers in many other parts of Ukraine,” the report said. He referred to the Ukrainian Parliament’s Human Rights Ombudsman, who said that “500,000 civilians had been deported from Ukraine to Russia” and that “all of them had been forcibly displaced, first transferred to some Russian refugee camps near the Ukrainian border and they were then transferred to the island of Sakhalin, but were released there “. For many of the incidents, the report states that they would constitute war crimes, but does not fully state them as such. Regarding the attack on the maternity hospital in Mariupol, however, he states: “This attack is therefore a clear violation of (international humanitarian law) and those responsible for it have committed a war crime.” “While a hospital may have been used by the ombudsman for military purposes or may have been accidentally destroyed, it is difficult for that to happen when 50 hospitals are destroyed,” the report said. He noted the “insidious form of attack” known as the “double-tap attack” allegedly carried out by Russian forces in Kharkov in early March. A Russian cruise missile struck the Kharkiv regional administration – and a second blow hit the building after rescuers arrived several minutes later.
“It does not matter”
The report was the result of a three-week fact-finding mission by three OSCE experts and covers the period from the start of the war on 24 February to 1 April. The mission began after 45 countries activated the Moscow Mechanism, which is used to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. The report notes that experts have faced a number of limitations – time and resource constraints, lack of access to Ukraine – so “a detailed assessment of most allegations of violations of the ICC it became possible “. However, “it is not possible to kill and injure so many civilians and so many political objects as houses, hospitals, cultural property, schools, high-rise residential buildings, administrative buildings, penitentiaries, police stations, water stations and electrical systems would have “It would have been destroyed or destroyed if Russia had not complied with its obligations (international humanitarian law) regarding discrimination, proportionality and precautions in conducting hostilities in Ukraine.” The report did not cover the period during which developments such as the atrocities in Bouha came to light, which he said “require serious national and international investigations, on the ground, with medical examiners”. It states that “if confirmed, such killings would constitute gross violations of (international humanitarian law) and war crimes.” The report states that “violations were committed by both the Ukrainian and Russian sides”. “The violations committed by the Russian Federation, however, are much greater in nature and scale,” he added. Most of the reported violations by Ukraine are related to the treatment of Russian soldiers. The report also notes that Russia, which is a member of the OSCE, did not provide additional information to the mission and instead “referred the mission to the official statements and briefings of the Government of the Russian Federation, which made it impossible for the mission to take into account the Russian position in all relevant incidents, except for official open sources and websites “. “The Permanent Representation of the Russian Federation informed the Mission on request that it considered the Moscow Mechanism to be largely obsolete and unnecessary,” the report said.
“More detailed investigations required”
The OSCE report welcomed the work done by other organizations – the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – to investigate crimes committed in Ukraine. “More detailed investigations are needed, especially with regard to the determination of individual criminal responsibility for war crimes,” he said. Carpenter, the US ambassador to the OSCE, told reporters that “the information and evidence gathered by the investigative mission … will be communicated to other jurisdictions, such as the ICC and the ICC.” courts that can claim jurisdiction “. Carpenter did not rule out the possibility of activating the Moscow Mechanism to further investigate reports of atrocities committed in Ukraine. This story has been updated to include additional details.
