Human Rights Watch[/B] announced today that it has documented more cases of "apparent war crimes" by Russian troops in two regions of Ukraine.
The human rights advocacy group said in a report that Russian forces controlling much of the Kiev and Chernihiv regions from late February to March subjected civilians to summary executions, torture and other serious abuses.
The report refers to what HRW says are 22 summary executions, nine other unlawful killings, six possible enforced disappearances and seven cases of torture. Twenty-one civilians told HRW that they were illegally detained in inhuman and degrading conditions. HRW called for the alleged abuses to be "impartially investigated and appropriate prosecutions made."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and the Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on the HRW report.
Russia denies targeting civilians or engaging in war crimes and accuses Ukraine of committing atrocities aimed at smearing Russian forces.
When asked more generally in relation to allegations against Russian forces of war crimes in Ukraine, Peskov told Reuters, "We consider it impossible and unacceptable to make such terms."
"Many of the cases Ukraine is talking about are obviously fake, and the most blatant ones are staged, as has been convincingly proven by our experts," he said.
HRW says it visited a total of 17 villages and small towns in the Kiev and Chernihiv regions and interviewed 65 people between 10 April and 10 May, including former prisoners, people who say they survived torture, families of victims and other witnesses. Reuters could not immediately verify the evidence cited by HRW.
The report went further than a statement released in April in which Human Rights Watch said it had documented "several cases of Russian military forces committing violations of the law of war" in Russian-controlled areas such as Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kiev.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation" aimed at weakening the military capabilities of its southern neighbor and capturing those it considers dangerous nationalists.
A Kiev district court today began hearings in the first war crimes trial of a Russian soldier who took part in the Russian invasion on February 24. The soldier, accused of killing a 62-year-old civilian, told the court he is guilty.
Ukraine says it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes in total.
Source: APM
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