A team of international lawyers has begun identifying Russian forces who allegedly committed torture and various forms of sexual violence on Ukrainians in the city of Kherson, CNBC reported.
Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city to fall after Russia began its unprovoked invasion in February 2022, was liberated in November. That reopened the southeastern city to international humanitarian and investigation teams.
At least 36 victims told investigators about the use of electrocution during interrogations, with nearly half of those cases involving electrocution of genitals.
Other Ukrainians detailed incidents where genital mutilation was threatened and at least one person said they were forced to watch the rape of another detainee by a foreign object, CNBC reported.
Suffocation, waterboarding, severe beatings, and threats of rape also were used against detainees in the more than 35 torture chambers in Kherson, which once was home to more than 280,000 people.
Ukrainians held prisoner at the Kherson torture center included military, former military, law enforcement, volunteers, activists, community leaders, medical workers, and teachers.
"What we are witnessing in Kherson is just the tip of the iceberg in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's barbaric plan to obliterate an entire population," said Anna Mykytenko, a senior legal adviser for Global Rights Compliance.
Wayne Jordash, who heads Mobile Justice Team, a group of international lawyers and investigators supporting Ukraine's prosecutor general's office, also commented on the situation.
"It is important that we are assisting the Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General not only with bringing the perpetrators of these severe sexual crimes to justice but also with building successful cases against those who gave the orders," Jordash, managing partner of the law firm Global Rights Compliance, told CNBC.
"The pattern that we are observing is consistent with a cynical and calculated plan to humiliate and terrorize millions of Ukrainian citizens in order to subjugate them to the diktat of the Kremlin."
The Mobile Justice Team in March reported that at least 20 torture sites in Kherson were directly financed by Moscow. Those sites were managed by various Russian security agencies, including Russia's Federal Security Services (FSB), successor to the KGB.
"The true scale of Russia's war crimes remains unknown, but what we can say for certain is that the psychological consequences of these cruel crimes on Ukrainian people will be engrained in their minds for years to come," Mykytenko added.
Russian authorities have denied that their forces committed war crimes or deliberately targeted civilians, CNBC reported.
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