Russian forces have held Ukrainian prisoners of war in terrible conditions, beating them and denying them food to the point that many are severely malnourished, a senior Ukrainian government official said yesterday. Thursday.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s parliamentary commissioner for human rights, said captors held so-called meetings in which prisoners were forced to run a cloak through blows from high batons. su.
“These batons were even broken, and then they used wooden sticks,” he told journalists.
According to Andriy Yusov, a representative of the intelligence service of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, about 800 prisoners of war have been returned to Ukraine in about 20 exchanges since the Russian invasion began in February. His father to journalists gave no details of the swap mechanism and did not say how many Russians were exchanged.
The treatment of prisoners of war is an emotional affair for Ukraine, which has always valued its fighters in defending the country. Evidence of Russian abuse of detainees, in addition to the obvious violation of the Geneva Conventions, has sparked outrage and added to numerous reports of Russian war crimes.
Reports include massacres of civilians in communities outside the capital Kyiv at the outset of the conflict, bombings of the maternity ward and theater where civilians were sheltering south of Mariupol, and attacks missile strikes on civilian targets including apartment buildings, shopping malls, train stations and busy public squares.
In addition, Ukraine is gathering evidence of an explosion in July that killed at least 50 prisoners of war in Russia. prison in Donetsk province, eastern Ukraine. Russia says Ukrainian forces shelled the camp, but Ukraine considers it a war crime committed by Russian forces. Some of the dead fought to protect the steel mill during the siege of the port city of Mariupol, which has become a symbol of the country’s suffering.
President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled the national importance of the prisoners in a speech late Wednesday. “We remember all our people and try to free each of them from captivity, not a single Ukrainian is forgotten,” he said.
Mr Lubinets said that the prisoners he spoke to were held in “bad conditions”, were given little food or water, had no toilet paper, soap or toothbrushes and were also forced to sleeping on a concrete floor without a blanket or mattress. All the prisoners, he said, lost weight.
Ukrainian officials have avoided giving details about the prisoner trade or saying how many prisoners the country holds, citing security reasons. But on Thursday, a senior official in the presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said that six people, including four Marines who fought at Mariupol and two civilians, had been returned.
Military experts say that Ukraine has taken many new Russian prisoners in a recent counterattack in the northeast.
