War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets, including on hospitals, medical facilities and on the energy grid; indiscriminate attacks on densely-populated areas; the abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; and the killing and torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

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On 2 March 2023, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a full investigation into past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide committed in Ukraine by any person from 21 November 2013 onwards, set up an online method for people with evidence to initiate contact with investigators, and sent a team of investigators, lawyers, and other professionals to Ukraine to begin collecting evidence.
* Two other independent international agencies are also investigating violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law in the area: the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 4 March 2022, and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, deployed by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The latter started monitoring human rights violations by all parties in 2014 and employs nearly 60 UN human rights monitors. On 7 April 2022, the United Nations suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. By late October, the Ukrainian Prosecutor's office had documented 39,347 alleged Russian war crimes, identified more than 600 suspects, and initiated proceedings against approximately 80 of them.

On 17 March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova over allegations of involvement in the war crime of child abductions during the invasion of Ukraine.

Allegations against the Armed Forces of Ukraine included mistreatment and executions of Russian POWs.

Prohibited weapons

Russian forces used chemical weapons 465 times between 24 February 2022 and December 2023, according to Ukraine, including K-51 grenades, RGR grenades, Drofa-PM hand gas grenades, and RG-VO gas grenades, which contain an unknown chemical substance. Forbes and CNN reported that they likely used CS gas (tear gas). In May 2023, a television report on Russia's Channel One showed a Russian battalion commander talking about the effectiveness of chemicals used as weapons. The report also showed a drone dropping a tear gas grenade on a dugout. In December 2023, the Russian 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade wrote about its use of drones to drop K-51 grenades containing CS tear gas on Ukrainian positions. The use of tear gas is banned by international Chemical Weapons Convention and considered a chemical weapon if applied by military forces during warfare.

In May 2024, the United States Department of State imposed new sanctions against Russian entities and individuals due to Russian forces' use of chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops. In October 2024, the UK imposed sanctions on Russian troops it said were using chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine, accusing Moscow of ″cruel and inhumane tactics″. The Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops of the Russian Federation and its leader Igor Kirillov were among those sanctioned.

In 2025 OPCW conducted on-site investigation and confirmed presence of CS in grenade remains at three locations on the Ukrainian side of the front-line.

Abduction and deportation

The International Criminal Court recognizes abduction and deportation as a war crime and the forced resettlement of children as a form of genocide.

Abduction of Ukrainian children

According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian forces have kidnapped over 121,000 Ukrainian children and deported them to Russia's eastern provinces. Some of these children's parents had been killed by the Russian military. The Russian State Duma has initiated legislation to formalize the "adoption" of these children.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned this act as a "blatant threat of illegal adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian citizens without adhering to the necessary procedures established by Ukrainian law." The Ministry has called on United Nations bodies to intervene in order to facilitate the return of these children to Ukraine.

On 1 June 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of forcibly deporting more than 200,000 children from Ukraine, including orphans and children separated from their families. He described this action as a "heinous war crime" and a "criminal policy," aimed at not only stealing people but also making the deportees forget about Ukraine and hindering their ability to return.

According to Ukrainian officials and two witnesses, Russian forces forcibly deported thousands of residents from Ukraine to Russia during the Siege of Mariupol. On 24 March, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that the Russian army had forcibly deported about 6,000 Mariupol residents as "hostages" and put more pressure on Ukraine. According to the Russian ministry of defense, residents of Mariupol had a "voluntary choice" whether to evacuate to Ukrainian- or Russian-controlled territory and that by 20 March about 60,000 Mariupol residents were "evacuated to Russia". Human Rights Watch was not been able to verify these accounts.

The US embassy in Kyiv cited the Ukrainian foreign ministry saying that 2,389 Ukrainian children had been illegally removed from Donetsk and Luhansk and taken to Russia.

On 24 March, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman said that over 402,000 Ukrainians had been forcefully taken to Russia, including about 84,000 children. Russian authorities said that more than 384,000 people, including over 80,000 children, had been evacuated to Russia from Ukraine and from the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Deportation of protected peoples such as civilians during war is prohibited by Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. On 7 June, Human Rights Watch specialist Tanya Lokshina emphasized this, reiterating that forcible involuntary deportation was itself a war crime, and called for Russia to stop this practice. In addition, Human Rights Watch and Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reported cases where refugees were being intimidated and pressured to implicate Armed Forces of Ukraine personnel for war crimes in long interrogation sessions, including the Mariupol theatre airstrike.

In December 2023 Igor Salikov, a colonel of the Russian army and "Wagner" group commander, defected to the Netherlands to testify about "atrocities against civilians" and forced deportation of large groups of children from Ukraine to Belarus.

Arbitrary detention and forced disappearance

In March 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported 270 cases of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of civilians, eight of whom were later found dead. The OHCHR informed the Human Rights Council that arbitrary detention of civilians, including 21 journalists and civil society activists, had become "widespread" in territory controlled by Russian forces and affiliated armed groups. Nine of them had already reportedly been released. The Human Rights Monitoring Mission also verified the arrests and detention of 24 public officials and civil servants, including three mayors, by Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups of the self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

International humanitarian law allows the internment of civilians in armed conflict only when they individually pose a security threat, and all detained persons whose prisoners of war (PoW) status is in doubt must be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention until their status has been determined. Reports of missing civilians, most of them male, were rampant to the west of Kyiv as Russian troops withdrew. One woman in Makhariv told reporters she saw Russian soldiers take her son-in-law at gunpoint from their house, and that he had not been seen since. Another man disappeared in Shpytky, while attempting to deliver petrol to a friend. Only his burned out and bullet-ridden car was later found by Ukrainian troops.

On 5 July 2022, the Human Rights Council said that arbitrary detention of civilians had become "widespread" OHCHR also reported that since the beginning of the invasion the Security Service of Ukraine and National Police had arrested over one thousand pro-Russian supporters, and that 12 cases were likely to amount to enforced disappearance by Ukrainian law enforcement bodies.

As of 15 May 2022, 62 victims (44 men and 18 women) of enforced disappearance had been released by Russian and Russian-affiliated armed groups. Most often the victims were released in "exchanges of prisoners" between Russia and Ukraine. According to the OHCHR, such exchanges might constitute cases of hostage taking; if Russia's release of detained Ukrainian civilians was made conditional on Ukraine's release of Russian prisoners of war, this, in armed conflict, amounts to a war crime.

Filtration camps

Evacuees from Mariupol raised concerns about the treatment of fellow evacuees by Russian troops at a Russian filtration camp that reportedly housed civilians until they were evacuated. Ukrainian officials have called similar camps "modern-day concentration camps". Refugees reported torture and killings at filtration camps, especially in Mariupol. This included beatings, electrocution and suffocation with plastic bags over the heads.

The refugees were fingerprinted, photographed from all sides, and had their phones searched. Anyone believed to be a "Ukrainian Nazi" was taken to Donetsk for interrogation. Refugees told reporters the camps lacked basic necessities and most evacuations forced refugees into Russia.

On 5 July the OHCHR expressed concern about the whereabouts and treatment of those still in the filtration process who were possibly detained in unknown locations at high risk of torture and ill-treatment.

Attacks on civilians

The charter of the International Criminal Court, defines attacks against civilian infrastructure constitute crimes of war. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said Russia made indiscriminate attacks and strikes on civilian assets like houses, hospitals, schools and kindergartens. On 25 February, Amnesty International said Russian forces had "shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives by using ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely-populated areas". Russia falsely claimed it only used precision-guided weapons, Amnesty said, and attacks on Vuhledar, Kharkiv and Uman, were likely crimes of war.

A 3 March statement from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it recorded at least 1006 civilian casualties in the first week of the invasion, but believed the real figures were "considerably higher."

The World Health Organization said on 6 March that multiple health care centres had been attacked, and Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that "attacks on healthcare facilities or workers breach medical neutrality and violate international humanitarian law."

Amnesty reported that Russia repeatedly violated international humanitarian law with indiscriminate attacks and direct attacks on civilian targets. Amnesty verified reports and footage demonstrated numerous strikes on hospitals and schools and the use of inaccurate explosive weapons and banned weapons such as cluster bombs.

On 5 July, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet reported that most civilian casualties documented by her office were caused by the Russians' repeated use of explosive weapons in populated areas, and that the heavy civilian toll from indiscriminate weapons and tactics had become "indisputable".

Reports on the use of cluster munitions in populated areas of Ukraine raised concerns about civilian casualties.
Neither the Russian Federation nor Ukraine ratified the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions,
but principles of international humanitarian law prohibit indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said cluster munitions were used by both Russian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists, and to a lesser degree by Ukrainian armed forces.

''The New York Times'' reported on 19 June 2023 it had seen over 1000 photographs of cluster munitions in populated areas. It said most were unguided missiles with a propensity for collateral damage to civilians.

In November 2024, Amnesty International reported that 2024 had seen a significant increase in civilian casualties, particularly highlighting attacks, including war crimes, resulting in children killed and injured in Russian airstrikes. Amnesty said it had verified over 120 videos and images of attacks against children in 2024, data suggesting the summer being the deadliest period.

Kyiv and Chernihiv oblasts

Human Rights Watch said that in Staryi Bykiv Russian forces rounded up at least six men on 27 February and executed them. The soldiers left on 31 March after more executions. Most property in Staryi Bykiv and Novyi Bykiv was damaged or destroyed, including the school.

On 28 February, five civilians defending the post office in were reportedly summarily executed by Russians, who later blew up the post office.

On 7 March, a Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces drone near E40 highway outside Kyiv filmed Russian troops shooting a civilian with his hands up.
When Ukrainian forces recaptured the area four weeks later, a BBC news crew found the burned bodies of the man and his wife near their burned car. At least ten dead bodies lined the highway, some also burnt. Two wore recognisable Ukrainian military uniforms. The drone footage was submitted to Ukrainian authorities and London's Metropolitan Police.

Russian forces progressed 26 March 2022 towards Donbas. Borodianka's mayor said Russian soldiers fired through every open window as their convoy moved through town. Retreating Russians also mined the town. Its inhabitants later reported that Russian occupiers had deliberately targeted them and blocked rescue efforts.

Kyiv regional police reported on 15 April that 900 civilian bodies were found in the region after the Russians withdrew, with more than 350 in Bucha. They said almost 95% of them were "simply executed". Bodies continued to be found under rubble and in mass graves.
As of 15 May, over 1,200 civilian bodies had been recovered in Kyiv Oblast alone.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said another 132 were found in Makariv, and accused Russians of torturing and killing them.

On 5 July, the OHCHR said it was working on over 300 reports of deliberate Russian killings of civilians. with ''prima facie'' evidence, witness statements, and Ukrainian intercepts of Russian military conversations, and Russian contingency planning for mass graves.

Bucha massacre

Russian forces north of Kyiv withdrew in late March, Videos emerged of bodies in the streets, at least twenty in civilian clothing.
AFP saw at least twenty civilians corpses in the street, all shot in the back of the head. At least one had its hands tied, Another 270 to 280 were buried in mass graves. Police said on 15 April they had found 350 bodies in Bucha, most with gunshot wounds.

Drone video verified by ''The New York Times'' showed two Russian armoured vehicles firing at a civilian walking a bicycle. A later video showed the body lying next to a bicycle. ''The Economist'' reported a man trapped at a checkpoint who took artillery fire then was captured, beaten and tortured, then taken outside to be shot. He played dead until he could flee. BBC News reported tied bodies of civilians at a temple, run over by a tank.

Territorial Defense Forces released video of 18 mutilated bodies in Zabuchchia, Bucha Raion.
A Ukrainian soldier said some bodies had their ears cut off and the teeth of others had been pulled. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported a Russian "execution cellar" used by Russian forces. Russian soldiers killed a woman and her 14-year-old after they threw smoke grenades into a basement where they hid.

Russian tanks entered Bucha shooting randomly at house windows as they drove down the streets. ''The New York Times'' said snipers in high-rise buildings shot at anyone that moved.
A witness told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Russians "were killing people systematically. I personally heard how one sniper was boasting that he 'offed' two people he saw in apartment windows..." Troops fired at civilians seeking food and water, witnesses said, and ordered them back inside without basic necessities like water and heat. Russian troops shot indiscriminately at buildings and refused medical aid to injured civilians, HRW said.

Russian soldiers checked documents and killed anyone who had fought in Donbas or had tattoos of right-wing or Ukrainian symbols, said a witness. In the last days of occupation, Kadyrovite Chechen fighters shot at every civilian they met.

* A resident said Russians checked cell phones for evidence of "anti-Russian activity" before they took people away or shot them.

Associated Press saw charred bodies on a residential street near a playground in Bucha on 5 April. One had a bullet hole in its skull, another was the burned body of a child. They could not identify them or determine how they died. Ukrainian investigators found beheadings, mutilation and incinerated corpses, and the next day three more bodies in a glass factory, ''The Washington Post'' reported. At least one body was booby trapped, mined with tripwires. HRW reported "extensive evidence of summary executions... and torture" in Bucha and 16 apparently unlawful killings, nine summary executions and seven indiscriminate killings of civilians.

The ''New York Times'' on 19 May released video of Russian paratroopers leading a group of civilians, clearly in Russian custody minutes before their execution. The video confirms eyewitness accounts.

By 8 August 458 bodies were recovered, including 9 children; 419 were killed with weapons and 39 died of natural causes possibly related to the occupation.

On 7 December OHCHR reported that the Monitoring Mission in Ukraine had documented at least 73 unlawful killings of civilians in Bucha and were still confirming another 105.

Kharkiv Oblast

On 15 September 2022, after Russian forces were driven out of Izium hundreds of graves with simple wooden crosses, most of them marked only with numbers, were found in the woods near the city.
One of the larger graves bore a marker saying it contained the bodies of at least 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukrainian investigators said 447 bodies were found: 414 of them civilians (215 men, 194 women, 5 children), 22 soldiers, and 11 bodies whose gender had not yet been determined as of 23 September. While some casualties were caused by artillery fire and lack of healthcare, most showed signs of violent death and 30 of torture and summary execution, including ropes around their necks, bound hands, broken limbs and genital amputation.

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In Kupiansk, local law enforcement found the bodies of a family of three and their neighbour, shot at close range in mid-September and buried in a mass grave. The bodies had bullet wounds to the chest and head. Automatic weapon casings were found in a nearby cellar. On 6 October, police found two bodies of tortured men in a brick-making workshop, one with a gunshot wound.

On 5 October 2022, mass graves were also found in Lyman, Ukrainian troops and law enforcement found 110 trenches containing graves, some for children, at the Nova Masliakivka cemetery. Both civilians and soldiers, the 55 bodies showed "explosive and projectile injuries, as well as bullet injuries". Among the dead were a family and their 1-year-old child. 34 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers were also found, in total, 144 bodies were found in the city, 108 of which in mass graves, among the dead, 85 were civilians. Witnesses said Russian troops killed everyone who helped Ukrainian soldiers, and forced locals to bury the bodies. They said many bodies were left for days in the street.

On 30 August 2024, officials said that six people had died, including a 14-year old girl, and 55 people had been wounded following a Russian guided bomb attack on Kharkiv that struck a 12-story apartment block and playground. Following the attack, US ambassador Bridget A Brink called on Russia to be "held accountable for these war crimes" in Kharkiv.

Trostianets

After Trostianets in Sumy Oblast was retaken, the morgue reported that at least one person had been tortured and killed by Russians, and young people abducted. The hospital was also shelled; the locals accused the Russians.

Reporters from ''The Guardian'' visited the town after it was retaken and found evidence of executions, looting and torture. The mayor said Russians killed between 50 and 100 civilians during their occupation of the town. A witness said Russian soldiers fired into the air to frighten women delivering food to the elderly, shouting "Run bitches!".

Shooting at civilian vehicles

According to Ukrainian regional authorities, at least 25 civilians, including six children, were killed in attacks on cars trying to flee Chernihiv, or attacked in public places; one such incident involved the killing of a 15-year-old boy on 9 March, investigated by tne BBC and reported on 10 April. On 2 May a Human Rights Watch report documented three incidents in Kyiv and Chernihiv oblasts where Russians firing on passing cars, killing six civilians and wounding three. Witness accounts and onsite investigations revealed that the attacks were likely deliberate and suggested that the Russians also fired on other vehicles.

On 28 February, Russian forces shot at two vehicles that were trying to flee from Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv. On 3 March, in the same area, they opened fire on a vehicle with four men who were going to negotiate the delivery of humanitarian aid. In the village of Nova Basan, in Chernihiv Oblast, Russian soldiers shot at a civilian van carrying two men, injuring one; then pulled the second man from the van and summarily executed him, while the injured man escaped.

CCTV video also from 28 February shows that two civilians (a 72-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman) were killed when their car was blown apart by shots from a Russian BMP armoured infantry fighting vehicle at the intersection of Bogdan Khmelnytsky Street and Okruzhna Road, near the hospital in Makariv.

''The Kyiv Independent'' reported that on 4 March Russian forces killed three unarmed Ukrainian civilians who had just delivered dog food to a dog shelter in Bucha. As they were approaching their house, a Russian armored vehicle opened fire on the car. In another incident, on 5 March at around 7:15 AM in Bucha, a pair of cars carrying two families trying to leave the town were spotted by Russian soldiers as the vehicles turned onto Chkalova Street. Russian forces in an armored vehicle opened fire on the convoy, killing a man in the second vehicle. The front car was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire, instantly killing two children and their mother.

On 27 March the Russian army shot at a convoy of cars carrying civilians fleeing the village of Stepanki, near Kharkiv. An elderly woman and a 13-year-old girl were killed. The incident was investigated both by the team on war crimes of the prosecutor's office in the Kharkiv Oblast and by the Canadian news outlet ''Global News''. The prosecutor's office said that on 26 March a Russian commander had given the order to fire rockets at civilian areas in order to create a sense of panic among the population. ''Global News'' presented what it saw as flaws in the official investigation.

On 18 April, during the capture of Kreminna, Russian forces were accused of shooting four civilians fleeing in their cars.

Double tap strikes

Russia has been accused of carrying out "double tap" strikes during its invasion of Ukraine. On 28 September 2024, Ukrainian officials said that eight people had died following two consecutive Russian drone attacks on a medical centre in Sumy. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko and regional prosecutors said that the second attack took place as patients and staff were evacuating, and rescuers and police were providing assistance. The "double tap" method has been criticized as a war crime, as it is aimed at civilians rushing to help the wounded.

Deliberate targeting of civilians using drones

In October 2024, Forbes reported that Russians were using drones to deliberately target civilians in Kherson, and then ″proudly″ sharing the footage of the attacks on social media. Attacks being ″shared and celebrated″ included on commuters, people at bus stops, and on children playing in parks. This terror campaign has become known as the ″Human Safari″. Deliberate attacks on civilians are outlawed in the Geneva Conventions, and Forbes stated that the perpetrators posting evidence of their crimes online should make them easier to trace in war crimes investigations.

In May 2025, a UN report concluded that the regular drone attacks on civilians in Kherson, which had killed almost 150 people and injured hundreds more according to officials, of which videos are also shared on Russian Telegram channels, amount to the war crimes of intentionally directing attacks against civilians and outrages upon personal dignity. The report also described the Russian armed forces murdering of civilians with drones as crimes against humanity.

Kupiansk civilian convoy shooting

On 30 September, a convoy of six civilian cars and a van on the outskirts of the village of Kurylivka (at that time in the so-called "gray zone" between Kupiansk and Svatove) was discovered by Ukrainian forces, with around 24 people killed, including a pregnant woman and 13 children. Ukraine accused Russian forces of being the perpetrators. Investigations suggested that the civilians were killed around 25 September.

The bodies were apparently shot and burned out, according to 7 witnesses who managed to flee to the village of Kivsharivka, the convoy was ambushed by Russian forces on 25 September at around ~9:00 AM (UTC+3) while leaving for the village of Pishchane through the only available road at that time, after the attack, the Russian troops reportedly executed the remaining survivors. During the month, law enforcement officers identified all the victims of the convoy. 22 people managed to escape, 3 of those (including 2 children) injured. in the following days, 2 other bodies were found, with the final death toll being 26. Some of the physical evidence (the bodies of the victims and the car) was examined by French experts. They discovered signs of the use of 30 mm and 45 mm high-explosive shells, as well as VOG-17 and VOG-25 grenades.

Shooting of Andrii Bohomaz

In June 2022, Russian troops fired against Andrii Bohomaz and Valeria Ponomarova, a married couple in a car in the Izium area. The car was struck with a 30 millimetre round fired from the gun on a BMP-2 fighting vehicle. The couple fled from their damaged car after the attack, Bohomaz had been badly injured in the head, Russian troops later found him, and, incorrectly assuming he was dead, dropped him in a ditch, he woke up 30 hours later, with several injuries and shrapnels lodged in his body.

Bohomaz later managed to walk to a Ukrainian position, being rescued and given first aid by Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian forces later liberated the region, allowing them to start an investigation about the shooting, Ukrainian police have accused Russian commander Klim Kerzhaev of the 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division for being responsible for the shooting, based on interceptions of his phone calls to his wife after the shooting.

2025 Kryvyi Rih missile strike

On 4 April 2025, Russia struck a dense residential area in Kryvyi Rih with a missile, spraying shrapnel which also hit a playground. The attack killed 20 people, 11 adults and nine children, and dozens of people were injured. The United Nations called the strike Russia's deadliest attack on Ukrainian children in the three years since the invasion started. Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city's military administration, referred to the attack as a war crime.

13 April 2025 ballistic missile strike

On 13 April 2025, Russian missiles struck Sumy residents gathering for Sunday church services, killing at least 32 people, including two children, and wounding at least 99 people, including 11 children according to the Interior Ministry of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials said that the attack was carried out using two ballistic missiles and cluster munitions were used in order to kill as many civilians as possible. According to Ukraine's Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, the attack was carried out on one of the busiest church-going days of the year. CNN verified social media footage of the attack. The attack was the deadliest single attack on Ukrainian civilians since 2023, when 51 civilians were killed in strikes on Kupiansk. The attack was internationally condemned, with the Trump administration's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, commenting on the attack saying it ″crosses any line of decency″. The European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, also commented, calling the strike a ″horrific example of Russia intensifying attacks while Ukraine has accepted an unconditional ceasefire″, while French President Emmanuel Macron said ″strong measures″ are needed for a ceasefire. Military expert Joakim Paasikivi referred to the strikes as an ″obvious war crime″, noting the usage of ballistic missiles on the city center of Sumy and the amount of killed and wounded.

Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property

The Geneva Convention recognizes wanton destruction of property which may include targeting of hospitals, energy infrastructure, and nuclear powerplants.

Attacks on hospitals and medical facilities

As of 26 March 2022, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine verified 74 attacks on medical facilities, 61 of them in Government-controlled territory (e.g. air strikes on hospitals in Izium, Mariupol, Ovruch, Volnovakha and Vuhledar), nine occurring in territory controlled by Russian affiliated armed groups, and four in contested settlements. Six perinatal centres, maternity hospitals, and ten children's hospitals had been hit, resulting in the complete destruction of two children's hospitals and one perinatal hospital. On 26 March, AP journalists in Ukraine claimed they had gathered sufficient evidence to demonstrate that Russia was deliberately targeting Ukrainian hospitals across the country.

On 7 March 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces reportedly took positions at a care house in the village of Stara Krasnianka, near Kreminna, Luhansk Oblast, due to house's strategic location, with the evacuation reportedly impossible due to mining. On 11 March 2022, Russia-affiliated forces attacked the care house with heavy weapons while 71 patients with disabilities and 15 members of staff were still inside. A fire broke out and approximately fifty people died. Ukraine’s prosecutor general office announced war crimes charges against Russia for the attack. The area was under Russian control, and Ukrainian investigators had been unable to access the site. The OHCHR published a report which didn't find that Russia committed any war crimes. It didn't say that Ukraine used human shields but the report expressed concern about allegations of this occurring. The report found that Ukrainian forces occupied the building before the attack, thus care home patients were not the intendent target.

On 30 March 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that there had been 82 verified Russian attacks on medical care in Ukraine – including attacks on healthcare facilities, patients, and healthcare workers – since 24 February. WHO estimated at least 72 were killed and 43 injured in these attacks. By 8 April, WHO confirmed 91 attacks.

As of 30 May 2023, WHO has verified 1,004 attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion, resulting in at least 101 deaths among health workers and patients, and many injuries. The number of attacks verified by WHO is the highest it has ever recorded in a humanitarian emergency. By 21 December 2023, the number of attacks on health care had risen to 1,422, as reported by the WHO Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA) tool.

On 8 July 2024, a daytime Russian missile attack hit Okhmatdyt hospital, Ukraine's largest children's hospital. Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister, said five people had been confirmed dead in the attack and at least four more had been injured. A later report stated another child had died after being evacuated, and that ten children were injured in the attack.

Destruction of energy infrastructure

After October 2022, Russia increased the intensity of its attacks on power stations and other civilian infrastructure in a campaign intended to demoralize the Ukrainian people and threatening to leave millions of civilians without heating or water during winter. up to 40% of Ukraine's power grid has been attacked by Russia. The government has asked citizens to conserve energy, and introduced rolling blackouts.

The World Health Organization has warned of a potential humanitarian crisis, saying that "lack of access to fuel or electricity due to damaged infrastructure could become a matter of life or death if people are unable to heat their homes." Denise Brown, the United Nations Resident Coordinator for Ukraine, said that the attacks could result in "a high risk of mortality during the winter months."

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that "attacks targeting civilians and objects indispensable to the survival of civilians are prohibited under international humanitarian law" and "amount to a war crime." The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and 11 members of NATO's eastern flank also called the attacks a war crime.

In his comprehensive analysis, Charles J. Dunlap jr., executive director of Duke Law School's Centre on Law, Ethics and National Security and former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force, pointed to the view that " ectric power stations are generally recognized to be of sufficient importance to a State's capacity to meet its wartime needs of communication, transport, and industry so as usually to qualify as military objectives during armed conflicts", furthermore that they have been a favourite target for almost a century, and that Ukraine did resort to similar tactics in 2015.

Military structures, too, typically rely on the civilian electrical grid. Also, attacks on civilian enterprises may be justified due to the Ukraine's "sizeable domestic military-industrial complex" and due to energy exports (also in the form of electricity) being one of Ukraine's main revenue sources. The distinction between military and civilian targets is still relevant but does however not preclude attacks on dual-use (military and civilian) facilities if it is not "reasonably feasible to segregate ivilian portionsout from the overall strike" - as it may be the case with Ukraine's "thoroughly integrated" electrical grid. The blurring of citizen and combatant, e.g. by calling upon citizens to report enemy positions via government apps, further complicates the picture.

Destruction and theft of cultural heritage

According to the United Nations intentional attacks against building dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals not being used as military infrastructure is a War Crime.

The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects has raised concerns about the proximity of historic monuments, works of art, churches and other cultural properties. Russian forces damaged or destroyed the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, the Soviet-era Shchors cinema and a Gothic revival library in Chernihiv, the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial complex in Kyiv, the Soviet-era Slovo building and the regional state administration building in Kharkiv, a 19th-century wooden church in Viazivka, Zhytomyr Oblast, and the Historical and Local History Museum in Ivankiv. On 24 June, UNESCO stated that at least 150 Ukrainian historical sites, religious buildings, and museums were confirmed to have sustained damage during the Russian invasion.

Cultural property enjoys special protection under international humanitarian law. Protocol I of the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (both binding on Ukraine and Russia) prohibits state parties from targeting historic monuments in support of a military effort and from making them the objects of acts of hostility or reprisals. Protocol II of the Hague Convention allows attacks on a cultural property only in case of "imperative military necessity" provided that there is no feasible alternative. While Protocol II does not apply as such, as only Ukraine is a party and it applies only between parties, the provision on imperative military necessity may be applicable if it is interpreted as informing the convention, rather than adding to it. Attacks against cultural heritage amount to war crimes and can be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court.

Torture of civilians

The International Criminal Court, based on the Geneva Convention, defines murder, cruel or degrading treatment and torture as a war crime. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture said in September 2023 that Russia's use of torture "is not random, aberrant behavior," but "orchestrated as part of state policy to intimidate, instill fear or punish to extract information and confessions".

On 22 March the non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders reported that Russian forces had captured a Ukrainian fixer and interpreter for ''Radio France'' on 5 March as he headed home to a village in Central Ukraine. He was held captive for nine days and subjected to electric shocks, beatings with an iron bar and a mock execution. On 25 March Reporters Without Borders stated that Russian forces had threatened, kidnapped, detained and tortured several Ukrainian journalists in the occupied territories. Torture is prohibited by both Article 32 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 2 of the United Nations Convention against Torture.

In April Human Rights Watch visited 17 villages in Kyiv Oblast and Chernihiv Oblast that had been under Russian occupation from late February through March 2022. The human rights organisation investigated 22 summary executions, 9 unlawful killings, 6 enforced disappearances, and 7 cases of torture. Witnesses reported that Russian soldiers beat detainees, used electric shocks, and carried out mock executions to coerce them to provide information. Twenty-one civilians described unlawful confinement in inhuman and degrading conditions.

On 4 April, Dementiy Bilyi, head of the Kherson regional department of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, said that the Russian security forces were "beating, torturing, and kidnapping" civilians in the Kherson Oblast of Ukraine. He added that eyewitnesses had described "dozens" of arbitrary searches and detentions, resulting in an unknown amount of abducted persons. At least 400 residents had gone missing by 16 March, with the mayor and deputy mayor of the town of Skadovsk being abducted by armed men. A leaked letter described Russian plans to unleash a "great terror" to suppress protests occurring in Kherson, stating that people would "have to be taken from their homes in the middle of the night".

Russian soldiers were also accused of murders, tortures, and beatings of civilians in Borodianka during the withdrawal.

Ukrainians who escaped from occupied Kherson into Ukrainian-controlled territory provided testimonies of torture, abuse and kidnapping by Russian forces in the region. One person from Bilozerka in Kherson Oblast provided physical evidence of having been tortured by Russians and described beatings, electrocutions, mock executions, strangulations, threats to kill family members and other forms of torture.

An investigation by the BBC gathered evidence of torture, which in addition to beatings also included electrocution and burns on people's hands and feet. A doctor who treated victims of torture in the region reported: "Some of the worst were burn marks on genitals, a gunshot wound to the head of a girl who was raped, and burns from iron on a patient's back and stomach. The patient told me two wires from a car battery were attached to his groin and he was told to stand on a wet rag". In addition to the BBC, the Human Rights Watch UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has reported on torture and "disappearances" carried out by Russian occupation forces in the region. One resident stated: "In Kherson, now people go missing all the time (...) there is a war going on, only this part is without bombs."

Kherson's elected Ukrainian mayor has compiled a list of more than 300 people who had been kidnapped by Russian forces as of 15 May 2022. According to ''The Times'', in the building housing the Russian occupation authorities, the screams of the tortured could be frequently heard throughout the corridors.

On 22 July Human Rights Watch published a report documenting 42 cases of torture, unlawful detention and enforced disappearance of civilians in the Russian-occupied areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Witnesses described torture through prolonged beatings and electric shocks causing injuries including broken bones, broken teeth, severe burns, concussions, cuts and bruises. They also described being kept blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire duration of the detention, and being released only after having signed statements or recorded videos in which they pledge to cooperate or urge others to cooperate with the Russian forces. Ukrainian officials estimated that at least 600 people had been forcibly disappeared in the Kherson Oblast since the Russian invasion.

Teachers in Russian-occupied areas were forced by the military to teach in the Russian language and were tortured for using Ukrainian.

Russian torture chambers

Kyiv Oblast

On 4 April, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine stated police in the Kyiv Oblast found a "torture chamber" in the basement of a children's sanatorium in Bucha. The basement contained the bodies of five men with hands tied behind their backs. The announcement was accompanied by several photos posted on Facebook.

Sumy Oblast

In mid-April 2022 ''The Independent'' obtained two testimonies of survivors of a Russian torture chamber in Trostianets, Sumy Oblast. According to the witnesses, at least eight civilians were held in a basement of a train station, where they were tortured, starved, subject to mock executions, forced to sit in their own excrement, electrocuted, stripped, and threatened with rape and genital mutilation. At least one prisoner was beaten to death by Russian guards who told the prisoners "All Ukrainians must die". Two were still missing at the time of the report. One prisoner was given electric shocks to his head until he begged the Russian soldiers to kill him. Numerous bodies, mutilated to the point where they were unrecognizable, were discovered by investigators in the area around the town.

Kharkiv Oblast

After the successful Kharkiv counteroffensive by Ukraine which liberated a number of settlements and villages in the Kharkiv Oblast from Russian occupation, authorities discovered torture chambers which had been used by Russian troops during their time in control of the area.

In the town of Balakliia, which the Russians occupied for six months, forensics specialists, human rights activists, criminal law experts, and Ukrainian investigators found extensive evidence of war crimes and torture. During the Russian occupation, the troops used a two-story building named "BalDruk" (after a former publishing company which had an office there before the war) as a prison and a torture center. The Russians also used the police station building across the street for torture. Ukrainian officials say that around 40 people were held in the torture chambers during the occupation and subject to various forms of violence, including electrocution, beatings and mutilation. Two torture chambers specifically for children were also found in the city, one of the kids who had been held there described being cut with a knife, burnt with heated metal and subjected to mock executions.

Another Russian torture chamber was found in the liberated village of Kozacha Lopan, located at the local railway station. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that more than ten torture chambers, along with mass graves, had been discovered in the Kharkiv areas liberated by Ukrainian troops. Zelenskyy also said: "As the occupiers fled they also dropped the torture devices". Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office stated that "Representatives of the Russian Federation created a pseudo-law enforcement agency, in the basement of which a torture chamber was set up, where civilians were subjected to inhumane torture." Ukrainian prosecutors have opened investigations into Russia's use of torture chambers.

In Izium, journalists for the Associated Press found ten torture sites. An investigation found that both Ukrainian civilians and POWs were "routinely" subject to torture. At least eight men were killed while under torture.

Between late September and early October, Human Rights Watch interviewed over 100 residents of Izium. Almost all of them reported having family members or friends who had been tortured, and fifteen people said they had been tortured themselves; survivors described torture by administration of electric shocks, waterboarding, severe beatings, threats with firearms and being forced to hold stress positions for long periods. Residents stated that the Russians targeted specific individuals and that they already had lists of those locals who were in the military, the families of military people, or the people who were veterans of the war in Donbas. They also said that in selecting victims they would terrorize the townspeople by publicly strip searching them.

By October, no less than 10 torture sites had been identified in the town of approximately 46,000 inhabitants.

Zaporizhzhia Oblast

In July 2022, ''The Guardian'' reported on torture chambers in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast based on the testimony of a 16-year-old boy who was held in one of them, beginning in April. The boy was arrested by Russian soldiers while trying to leave the occupied city of Melitopol because he had a video on his phone from social media, which featured Russian soldiers expressing defeatist attitudes towards Russia's invasion. He was held in a make shift prison in Vasylivka. According to his testimony, he saw rooms where torture took place, as well as bloodstains and soaked bandages, and heard the screams of the people being tortured. The torture involved electric shocks and beatings and could last for several hours.

Kherson Oblast

After the liberation of Kherson by Ukrainian forces from Russian occupation, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said that investigators had discovered Russian torture chambers established especially for children. According to local testimony revealed by Lubinets, the children were denied food and given water only every other day, were told their parents had abandoned them and forced to clean up the blood resulting from torture in adjacent torture cells for adults. Lubinets reported that a total of ten torture chambers were discovered by Ukrainian investigators in Kherson Oblast, four of them in the city itself.

A Russian makeshift prison that functioned as an FSB torture chamber was discovered in the city, Ukrainian authorities estimated the number of people who had been imprisoned there at some point to be in the thousands. Among other instruments of torture, FSB officials used electric shocks against the victims.

Use of human shields

The International Criminal Court classifies using civilians as a human shield as a grave violation of the Geneva Convention and thus a war crime. On 29 June, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern about Russian armed forces and pro-Russian armed groups as well as Ukrainian forces taking up positions close to civilian objects without taking measures for protecting the civilians. The human rights agency received reports of the use of human shields, which involves the deliberate use of civilians to render certain military objectives immune from attack.

Russia

ABC News and ''The Economist'' reported Russian soldiers using over 300 Ukrainian civilians as human shields in Yahidne from 3 to 31 March. Russian forces were using the village as a base to attack the nearby city of Chernihiv and had established a major military camp in the local school. For 28 days, 360 Ukrainian civilians, including 74 children and 5 persons with disabilities, were held captive in inhumane conditions in the basement of the school while the nearby areas were under attack by the Ukrainian forces. The basement was overcrowded, with no toilet facilities, water and ventilation. Ten elderly people died as a consequence of the poor detention conditions. Witness accounts report cases of torture and killings. According to the OHCHR what happened in the school of Yahidne suggests that the Russian armed forces were using civilians to render their base immune from military attacks while also subjecting them to inhuman and degrading treatment.

The ''BBC'' and ''The Guardian'' found "clear evidence" of the use of Ukrainian civilians as human shields by Russian troops in the area near Kyiv after the Russian withdrawal on 1 April, citing eyewitness accounts from inhabitants of Bucha and the nearby village of Ivankiv, and of residents of the village of Obukhovychi, near the Belarusian border, Russian troops were accused of using civilians as human shields as they came under attack by Ukrainian soldiers. Multiple witnesses reported that, on 14 March, the Russian soldiers went door-to-door, rounded about 150 civilians and locked them up in the local school, where they were used as protection for the Russian forces.

United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities stated that it had received reports of disabled people being used as "human shields" by Russian armed forces.

Ukraine

Since the beginning of the invasion, Russia has repeatedly accused Ukraine of using human shields, a claim which has been rejected by scholars Michael N. Schmitt, Neve Gordon, and Nicola Perugini as an attempt to shift blame for civilian deaths to Ukraine.

Sexual violence

According to experts and Ukrainian officials, there are indications that sexual violence was tolerated by the Russian command and used in a systematic way as a weapon of war. After the Russian withdrawal from areas north of Kyiv, there was "a mounting body of evidence" of rape, torture and summary killings by Russian forces inflicted upon Ukrainian civilians, including gang rapes committed at gunpoint and rapes committed in front of children.

In March 2022, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine stressed the heightened risks of sexual violence and the risk of under-reporting by victims in the country. At the beginning of June, the Monitoring Mission received reports of 124 episodes of conflict-related sexual violence committed against women, girls, men and boys in various Ukrainian cities and regions. The alleged perpetrators were from the ranks of Russian and pro-Russian separatist armed forces in 89 cases and from civilians or unidentified individuals in territory controlled by Russian armed forces in 2 cases.

In late March, Ukraine's Prosecutor General opened an investigation into a case of a Russian soldier who was accused of killing an unarmed civilian and then repeatedly raping the dead man's wife. The incident allegedly took place on 9 March in Shevchenkove, a village outside of Kyiv. The wife related that two Russian soldiers raped her repeatedly after killing her husband and the family's dog while her four-year-old son hid in the house's boiler room. The account was first published by ''The Times'' of London. Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov

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