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Over 95% of Ukrainian POWs Face Sexual Violence or Torture in Russian Custody, UN Reports
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Former Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) and officials have accused Russia of systematically torturing prisoners of war and civilian captives through beatings, electric shocks, and sexual abuse during an informal UN Security Council meeting, Reuters reported on August 11.
Organized by Latvia, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine, the informal Arria-formula session was convened to address Russia’s systematic violations of international humanitarian law, including the abuse of POWs, unlawful civilian detentions, and the coercive recruitment of foreign nationals into Russian forces.
Addressing the meeting, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Claudia Fuentes Julio stated that monitoring reveals “widespread and systematic” abuse by Russian authorities. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented the execution of 129 Ukrainian POWs shortly after capture and the deaths of 48 others in custody due to torture or denial of medical care.
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Furthermore, UN data shows that over 95% of interviewed Ukrainian prisoners experienced torture or ill-treatment, Reuters wrote.
Fuentes added that more than half also reported sexual violence, including “rape, gang rape, beating while nude, beatings to the genitals, electric shocks to the genitals and nipples, and degrading treatment of a sexualized nature.”
Active Ukrainian soldier Khuan Alberto Levya Garsiya, who survived 1,183 days in captivity, described daily beatings, electrocution, extreme cold exposure, and sexual abuse designed to mentally break detainees. Held in “overcrowded barracks without adequate conditions” in the Donetsk region, where “almost all POWs were ill with dysentery,” and many were starving, Garsiya testified that two of his friends were beaten to death by captors.
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Crimean Tatar activist Leniie Umerova similarly recounted being cycled through seven separate detention facilities in what she described as “a carousel of repression,” according to the agency.
Oleg Gushin, representing Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, stated that Kyiv has identified more than 300 detention sites in Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories. While over 9,000 Ukrainians have been returned in prisoner exchanges, thousands remain held incommunicado. Moscow rejected the allegations during the meeting, with Russian Deputy UN Representative Maria Zabolotskaya dismissing the claims as a “disinformation campaign” and alleging that Russian prisoners in Ukraine faced physical and moral abuse, Reuters reported.
While UN monitors also documented instances of ill-treatment against Russian and third-country prisoners held by Ukraine, Fuentes Julio emphasized that those cases occurred on a “fundamentally different scale,” primarily limited to the initial stages of captivity.
In response to the findings, Ukrainian Chargé d’Affaires Volodymyr Pavlichenko urged the international community to increase pressure on Moscow to ensure accountability and secure the release of remaining captives, according to the publication.
These documented abuses extend beyond Ukrainian nationals to foreign captives as well, highlighted by the critical condition of former US Marine Robert Gilman. Imprisoned in Russia since 2022, the 32-year-old was reportedly subjected to torture and injected with mind-altering drugs before being transferred to a civilian psychiatric unit in a “dissociative stupor,” where he now relies on tube feeding.
With Russian authorities barring both US consular officials and Gilman’s mother from visiting him in the hospital, the White House and US State Department have urgently demanded his immediate release for emergency medical treatment in the United States.
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