March 24, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

The United Nations says it has documented dozens of cases of summary executions of prisoners of war (POWs) carried out by both Russian and Ukrainian forces since February 2022, but admits it is far harder to get information from Russia, or territories under Russian control than it is from Ukrainian authorities.

In a new report, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says it has documented the summary execution of 15 Ukrainian POWs by Russian forces, in addition to the use of Ukrainian POWs as human shields, the death of two wounded POWs due to lack of medical care, as well as torture. 

Among the cases documented in the report is that of an officer of the Ukrainian National Guard tortured and then executed after refusing to hand over a password for entry to a radio station in Mariupol in April 2022. In another case, in September, a wounded Ukrainian serviceman was shot three times in the chest and once in the head after being captured by fighters from the Wagner mercenary group in a village south of Bakhmut. 

The report also highlights the lack of cooperation UN investigators have received from Russian and Russian-occupying authorities, saying it has been unable to gain any access to POWs interned by the Russian Federation, despite repeated such requests. It mentions one occasion only, in August, when a UN team was allowed to meet, but not interview, 13 Ukrainian POWs held in Russian-occupied Luhansk.

On the other side, the report says it has documented – through open-source information, in situ visits and witness interviews – the summary execution of at least 25 Russian POWs being held by Ukrainian forces. 

In one incident in March 2022 in the Luhansk region, the UN report suggests some members of Russian-affiliated armed groups were killed by Ukrainian servicemen after refusing to pronounce their intent to surrender. The UN report says the Russian fighters, some possibly injured or dead, were lying on the ground in the wake of an artillery attack.

In contrast to the lack of cooperation from Russian authorities, the report says UN teams have been given “full and confidential access” to Russian POWs held in official places of internment by Ukraine, “which OHCHR acknowledges with great appreciation.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has catalogued thousands of cases of civilian casualties along with cases of torture, rape and arbitrary detention in the Ukraine conflict over six months — August to January.

OHCHR reported the following numbers it has recorded since August:

Among those subsequently released, OCHCR had been able to interview 89 people, the vast majority of whom reported torture and ill-treatment while in detention. It said this was aimed at forcing them “to confess to providing assistance to Ukrainian armed forces, to compel them to cooperate with the occupying authorities or to intimidate those with pro-Ukrainian views.”

The abuse included beatings with batons and rifle butts, threats to shoot their hands and legs, mutilate or execute them; sleep deprivation and exposure to freezing temperatures, sometimes after pouring water on them, according to the victims. Some were threatened with being raped.

The OHCHR highlighted the case of a woman subjected to repeated rape while being held by members of the Russian armed forces and the Security Service of Russia (FSB). According to her testimony, she and her husband had been blindfolded and taken to the men’s base. “A man who introduced himself as the commander told her: 'Tell me how you love Ukraine now. We’ll beat Ukraine out of you',” the report said.

Russian missile attacks killed three in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostantynivka overnight, and shelling killed another two people in the northern Sumy region, officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have claimed that Wagner mercenaries are deporting residents of occupied areas of the city of Bakhmut to Russia. CNN cannot independently verify this claim.

Here are the latest headlines:

Ukraine says it has received the bodies of 83 of its fallen soldiers from the Russian side. Separately it has handed over an undisclosed number of seriously wounded Russian soldiers.

Ukraine had handed over to Russia “all the seriously wounded occupants, whose conditions made it possible to transport them and who were captured since the beginning of the large-scale invasion,” said the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday it is “critically important” to identify an object that was discovered next to the Nord Stream pipelines explosion site. 

"It is critically important to determine what kind of object it is, whether it is related to this terrorist act — apparently it is — and to continue this investigation,” Peskov said during a daily call with reporters. “The investigation must be transparent and inclusive.”

Earlier, the Danish Energy Agency invited the operator of Nord Stream, Nord Stream 2 AG, to take part in an operation to retrieve an object found near the gas pipeline. Peskov said that the Kremlin viewed it as positive news.

Some background: The incident, in which underwater explosions occurred before the pipelines burst in several places last September, remains a major point of contention between Russia and the West.

No decision has been taken yet on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in August, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"No decision has been made on this yet," Peskov told CNN.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are collectively known as the fast-growing BRICS economies.

Earlier this month, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges. The warrant relates to an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

South Africa is a party to the convention that requires the arrest of anyone for whom a warrant has been issued by the court.

Estonia has ordered the expulsion of a diplomat working for the Russian Embassy for “undermining Estonia’s security,” the Estonian foreign ministry announced in a statement on Friday. 

“The diplomat in question has been engaged in directly and actively undermining Estonia’s security and constitutional order, spreading propaganda that justifies Russia’s military action and causing divisions in Estonian society,” the statement from the ministry read.

The person in question was declared persona non grata after their activities were found to have violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. They were ordered to leave Estonia by March 29, the ministry said. 

Wagner mercenaries have begun deporting residents of the Bakhmut suburbs they control, the Ukrainian National Resistance Center (NRC) – an official body – said on Thursday.

“Militants forcefully take local residents to captured areas of Luhansk region, where they are filtered. After that, they are deported to Perm (Russia) and other remote regions of the Russian Federation,” the center said.

CNN cannot independently verify this claim.

“Locals are deported under the intention of evacuation. After that, they are assimilated in remote areas of the empire, because they are now dependent on the occupiers,” the NRC said.

Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces, addressed these claims on Ukrainian television Friday.

“This is one of the regular crimes of the Russian Federation. There is nothing to be surprised at, because the entire military structure of the Russian Federation is a criminal ... All of this will be recorded, documented and handed over to the relevant national and international jurisdictions,” he said.

Russian airborne troops are playing a greater role in the fighting around Bakhmut because of the growing losses of the Wagner private military company, the Ukrainian military says.

“It is not that [Wagner] are withdrawing, but that due to heavy losses they have to be reinforced by units of the regular army of the Russian Federation, primarily by airborne troops,” Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Armed Forces, told Ukrainian television Friday.

Russian forces in the area are “making several dozen attacks every day. There were 32 firefights over the last day” in and around Bakhmut, Cherevatyi said, adding that there were also air strikes launched by both fixed-wing planes and attack helicopters.

“Artillery is a much bigger factor of influence on military operations there than aviation,” he noted.