Civilians are the great victims of the conflict in Ukraine: death, exodus and war crimes

A year of war in Ukraine has had an impact on the civilian population that Europe has not known for decades: from eight million refugees distributed to the rest of the continent to the more than 8,000 fallen in Russian attacks, in actions which in many cases amounted to war crimes.

“Every day human rights violations continue, it becomes more difficult to find a solution to this growing suffering and destruction,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk as the anniversary of the conflict approaches .

At least 8,006 civilians have been killed (487 of them children) and 13,287 injured since the start of the war.

Although nearly half of these deaths occurred in March 2022, civilians have continued to fall victim to Russian attacks since then, numbering in the hundreds each month (200 in January).

The worst exodus in Europe since World War II

Another heavy price to pay for Ukraine in 12 months of war has been demographic: some 14 million people, about a third of its pre-war population, have left their homes, six million as internally displaced and eight million as refugees in the rest of Europe.

Since the beginning of the war, Poland has been the great place of asylum for this Ukrainian exodus, and remains so, with 1.5 million refugees.

Other countries bordering Ukraine such as Romania, Moldova or Slovakia also host large communities (about 100,000 each), but as of 2022, a large proportion of Ukrainian refugees settled further west: Germany hosts 889,000, the Czech Republic 489,000 , and Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom 160,000 each.

“Europe has demonstrated its ability to mobilize political will and help these refugees,” Louise Donovan, spokeswoman for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) told EFE.

The official source stressed that, despite the generosity in the welcome, many challenges remain, due to the fact that many of these refugees are women with their children: “There are barriers to their social inclusion, for example due to the lack of classrooms for these children, which makes it difficult for their mothers to access the labor market,” she explained.

Russian War Crimes: From Chechnya to Ukraine

Another major open wound in the conflict is that of the War crimes against civilians attributed to the Russian militaryboth in the form of summary executions in the areas it came to occupy, and indiscriminate attacks on non-military targets, from residential buildings to schools, hospitals and other infrastructure.

Some practices that seem copied from past conflicts launched by Moscow, as very similar to the crimes that Russia would have committed in the two wars in Chechnya (1994-2000), or even earlier, during the Soviet Union’s intervention in Afghanistan (1979 -1989).

UN investigation document for now at least 441 civilian killings by the Russian army in Ukraine (including 72 women and 28 children), both in makeshift places of detention and in the homes of the victims, in front of their portals or at ground security posts.

One place, Yablunska de Bucha street on the outskirts of Kiev, has become a bitter symbol of Russian atrocities: there, in March 2022, according to UN reports. at least 54 men, 16 women and three children were murderedalthough these are the documented offenses and many more could have been perpetrated.

In parallel, another report by the United Nations Independent Mission described horrific crimes committed by the Russian invaders ranging from sexual violence against children and the elderly to the torture of detainees with methods including beatings, electric shocks and forced nudity.

Put Putin on the bench?

With the war still raging and with no sign of its end any time soon, the United Nations, non-governmental organizations and institutions such as the Council of Europe or the International Criminal Court (ICC) are working tirelessly to gather the testimonies of women victims of these war crimes, with view fixed on a hypothetical future judgment.

A process which for now could not be opened by the CPI, since neither Russia nor Ukraine are signatories of the Rome Statute which created it, while the increasingly popular option to create a special international tribunal collides with the difficulty that the Russian government can veto his creation in the United Nations Security Council.

“Accountability is vital and we hope our results help the perpetrators of the violations are brought to justice(…) which must be dictated by an independent and impartial tribunal”, the representative of the United Nations Office for Human Rights in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, stressed to EFE.

Source: EFE