On October 5, 2023, Russia attacked the village of Hroza near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, killing at least 51 people, including a child, and making it one of the deadliest attacks in Putin’s war on Ukraine. The strike wiped out around one-fifth of the entire village. The attack comes only a day after the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine published its report into the very cost of Putin’s war. According to the U.N. nearly 10,000 have been killed and tens of thousands injured since the war began in February 2022. The deadly attack and the new report come only a week before the United Nations is to vote on Russia rejoining the United Nations’ top human rights body, the U.N. Human Rights Council, on October 10, 2023.
A body bag with the inscription “49 unidentified” with a body from a destroyed cafe after a Russian ... [+]
According to reports, the missile struck a cafe where Hroza's residents were attending a memorial service for another villager, a fallen soldier. The village was home to around 330 people. The attack is yet another example of Russian missile attacks against residential areas.
The newly published report commenting on the developments between February and July 2023, identified severe and widespread harm to civilians, including death, life-changing injuries, loss of homes and livelihoods, displacement, infrastructure destruction, deprival of access to basic services, and trauma. Within the reporting period, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 4,621 civilian casualties, with 1,028 persons killed and 3,593 injured (1,883 men, 1,294 women, 139 boys, 94 girls, and 1,195 adults and 16 children whose sex is not yet known). However, actual casualty numbers are likely much higher. 64% of civilian casualties are said to be caused by shelling and multiple launch rocket system attacks in communities on or near the frontline, mainly in Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions.
Between February and July 2023, OHCHR documented that members of the Russian armed forces and Russian penitentiary services committed acts of conflict-related sexual violence against four men and one woman. As the report indicated, “these cases are consistent with previously documented patterns of sexual violence by members of Russian armed forces, law enforcement officials and penitentiary staff. Sexual violence was often reported in the context of deprivation of liberty. In residential areas where they were stationed, members of Russian armed forces also committed sexual violence against civilian women and one girl.”
The new report further commented on the issue of the transfer of children. According to it, “since February 24, 2022, OHCHR has documented several cases of children and groups of children from Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Kyiv regions being transferred to other regions in Russian-occupied territory, or deported to the Russian Federation or Belarus. Many of these children were in institutionalized care, for instance in institutions for children with physical or intellectual disabilities. Some children who had been sent to summer camps in the Russian Federation in the summer and autumn of 2022, with the purported consent of their parents, did not return to their parents at the end of the agreed period.” The report further added that “among the children who reunited with their family after their parents or relatives traveled to the Russian Federation to retrieve them, some described experiencing or witnessing psychological or physical violence by educational staff there.” To date, Russia has failed to identify the children and reunite them with their families. The report urges the return of all deported and transferred individuals, including children and persons with disabilities.
The report further commented on the issue of Ukrainian men being pressured to serve in the Russian armed forces, the policy of mass conferral of Russian citizenship to residents of occupied areas of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions, and the treatment of prisoners of war.
The new report adds to the growing body of evidence of international crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide, perpetrated in Putin’s war on Ukraine. Nonetheless, Russia is seeking to regain its seat at the U.N. Human Rights Council, 18 months after the U.N. General Assembly voted to suspend it in April 2022. At the time, two months into Putin’s war, 93 members of the U.N. General Assembly voted in favor, 24 against (including China, Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria) and 58 abstained. However, over 18 months, these numbers may have changed. If Russia is allowed back onto the U.N. Human Rights Council, it will embolden all dictators out there they get can away with anything.
