5th month of war in the digest from EUCCI experts

16/08/2022 20:08

Russian military personnel continue to violate the norms of international law in the territory of Ukraine. In particular, in July, experts of the Eastern Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives recorded the following types of offenses:

Premeditated murder and torture of the civilian population. Search and exhumation of the bodies of those killed during the occupation continues in the de-occupied regions. As of July 31, 1,348 bodies of local residents were found in the Kyiv region, 300 people are considered missing, 216 bodies remain unidentified.
Violation of the Third Geneva Convention concerning prisoners of war. Shelling of the former Volnovakha Penitentiary Institution No 120 in the village of Olenivka received a lot of attention. As a result of it, at least 53 captured Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 75 were injured.
Rape of the civilian population. According to Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary-General's special representative on sexual violence in conflict, since February 24, the organization has received more than 150 charges of sexual violence committed against women, children and men.
Shelling of populated areas. In the Donetsk region alone, 135 residents were killed and 308 were injured in various degrees of severity in July. This is 22.1% and, accordingly, 18.2% more than in June.
Ignoring Article 56 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Threat to high-risk structures and installations. There were about 500 armed Russian military personnel and heavy equipment in the territory of Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in June.
The war continues to cause damage to the natural environment and infrastructure assets. In July, during the fighting in the Luhansk region, 28 thousand hectares of forests were damaged. During the war, at least 70% of the forest stands of the Starokrasnyanskyi Forestry Department and at least 60% of the forest stands of the Borovenkivskyi Forestry Department were damaged. The flora of the National Park "Kreminna Forests" was also significantly damaged. Also, due to months of shelling, the water supply system that provided drinking water to 4 million residents has stopped functioning.

The Eastern Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives documents human rights violations committed during the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine since 2014. The purpose of documentation is to present the collected materials to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Office of the General Prosecutor (Ukraine), international commissions of investigation and other international organizations. The EUCCI provides free legal and other forms of assistance to certain categories of victims. For more details about the EUCCI, please visit the website of the organization: https://totalaction.org.ua/.