On 22 April the
report “Russian War Crimes in Eastern Ukraine” was conveyed to the
International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Malgorzata Gosiewska, Polish
MP and deputy chief of parliamentary Foreign Affairs Commission, informed about
it on her Facebook. She was the initiator of creating the report which she has
now conveyed to the ICC.
“The proof of Russian war
crimes in Ukraine has been conveyed,” she wrote.
The 156-page document is based
on 60 interviews with former detainees who managed to
escape captivity of soldiers and officials of the Russian Federation as
well as Russian-backed militants in southern and eastern Ukraine.
The report contains a short
overview and references to the description of the venues where the crimes were
being committed. Each action described in the report is a confirmed by a direct
quote from victims’ testimonies.
Among the war crimes mentioned
in the report are deprivation of freedom, physical and psychological tortures,
robbery and killings. Some detainees were packed wall-to-wall, sometimes 100
prisoners to a room, with holes dug into the ground for toilets.
Małgorzata
Gosiewska presented the report about the Russian war crimes in the
Donbas region in March. On 5 April it was presented in the European
Parliament and later in Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada.
“War crimes have no expiration
period, and we’d like that the people involved remember about it. We would like
them to remember that punishment will be inevitable. I hope that realizing this
will help to stop the potential criminals and murderers… Hopefully this will
relieve the suffering of those who are still in captivity, or prevent
from more harm,” Gosiewska explained while presenting the report in
Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada on 19 April.
The Polish politician
emphasizes that these materials must prove Russia’s accountability for the war
in Ukraine and crimes committed in Donbas and Crimea. In her opinion, European
politicians should reconsider how they deal with Russia after familiarizing
themselves with the contents of the report.
Earlier last
year another report about crimes against humanity committed by Russian-backed
militants was published by the Coalition For Peace and Justice in the
Donbas. Titled “Those that lived through hell,” it was based
on interviews with witnesses and victims of kidnappings and torture.
According to this report, 16% of the imprisoned by the
Russian-backed militants in Donbas were forced to witness executions.
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