Top human rights experts investigating Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine said on Monday that the Russian authorities had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by attacking civilians and vital energy infrastructure, among other violations of international law.
In its latest report , the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine , noted that attacks on power plants have intensified "once again" across Ukraine, where temperatures plunged to -21°C last winter.
"The scariest thing was to fall asleep and not to wake up; it was like torture to be scared of dying from cold," said one 53-year-old man cited in the report, which reiterated the war's serious negative impact on older people, too.
"I lay cold and hungry, without medicine, without anything," said a 74-year-old woman from Kyiv, who like many senior citizens is unable to use stairs and too afraid to use lifts, making it impossible to reach a safe place during air raid alerts.
Cold and isolated
"This means that they must remain in unheated dwellings without electricity or water, with no access to life support devices or essential services," the report's authors insisted.
Russian commanders ordering the attacks knew full well that the heating facilities they were targeting "were indispensable to the civilian population, particularly during the winter", the report notes.
"Russian authorities have made official declarations concerning further attacks and referred to a plan to carry them out. The independent investigators concluded that they committed war crimes of intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects."
The Commission was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2022, shortly after Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory.
For its latest report, the three-person panel relied on the accounts of 255 persons who endured winter amid dire conditions in Dnipro, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr oblasts, as well as Ukrainian authorities, medical doctors and non-governmental organisations.
The Commission also examined attacks by Ukrainian armed forces on energy infrastructure in Russia and in occupied areas of Ukraine. But the panel's investigators - Erik Møse, Pablo de Greiff and Vrinda Grover - were unable to investigate the impact of these strikes in Russia as the authorities did not allow access or respond to requests for information.
Recruits trafficked
The Commission also cited "compelling evidence" that the Russian authorities recruited men trafficked from 29 countries into the armed forces, in violation of international human rights law.
The new recruits have been deployed on the front lines in Ukraine "and assigned dangerous tasks. Many have been killed or have gone missing, others have surrendered or were captured by the Ukrainian armed forces, thereby acquiring the status of prisoners of war," the report notes.
It highlights how the trafficking happened using "deception and coercion", in coordination with agents operating in different countries; and how soon after arrival, the men were forced to sign contracts in Russian with the Ministry of Defence.
Life signed away
The report recounts the testimony of a 35-year-old woman, the wife of a man who was recruited from the Caribbean, who said: "They took his passport and just told him to sign here, here and here on the contract. It was only in Russian. He was totally pressured and had no choice."
It calls for all the trafficked persons to be discharged from the Russian armed forces.
Investigative mandate
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine is an independent body mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate all alleged violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, and related crimes in the context of the aggression against Ukraine by the Russian Federation. The Commission's members are not UN staff nor are they paid for their work.
