section_path: War crimes and human rights violations
section_name: War crimes and human rights violations
paragraph_text: War crimes and human rights violations
  
  Violations of human rights and atrocity crimes have occurred during the war. From 2014 to 2021, there were more than 3,000 civilian casualties, with most occurring in 2014 and 2015. The right of movement was impeded for the inhabitants of the conflict zone. Arbitrary detention was practiced by both sides in the first years of the conflict. It decreased after 2016 in government-held areas, while in the separatist-held ones it continued. Investigations into the abuses committed by both sides made little progress.
  
  Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian authorities and armed forces have committed multiple war crimes in the form of deliberate attacks against civilian targets, massacres of civilians, torture and rape of women and children, and many indiscriminate attacks in densely populated areas. After the Russian withdrawal from areas north of Kyiv, overwhelming evidence of war crimes by Russian forces was discovered. In particular, in the city of Bucha, evidence emerged of a massacre of civilians perpetrated by Russian troops, including torture, mutilation, rape, looting and deliberate killings of civilians. the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (OHCHR) has documented the murder of at least 73 civilians—mostly men, but also women and children—in Bucha. More than 1,200 bodies of civilians were found in the Kyiv region after Russian forces withdrew, some of them summarily executed. There were reports of forced deportations of thousands of civilians, including children, to Russia, mainly from Russian-occupied Mariupol, as well as sexual violence, including cases of rape, sexual assault and gang rape, and deliberate killing of Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces. Russia has also systematically attacked Ukrainian medical infrastructure, with the World Health Organization reporting 1,422 attacks as of 21 December 2023. Many Russian soldiers confessed of raping, looting and torturing Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in intercepted phone calls which were regularly published online and showcased in a 2024 documentary film Intercepted.
  
  Ukrainian forces have also been accused of committing various war crimes, including mistreatment of detainees.
  
  In 2024, the UN Human Rights Office reported that Russia is committing severe human rights violations in occupied Ukraine, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, crackdown on protests and freedom of speech, enforced Russification, indoctrination of children, and suppression of Ukrainian language and culture. Ukrainians have been coerced into taking Russian passports and becoming Russian citizens. Those who refuse are denied healthcare and other rights, and can be imprisoned as a "foreign citizen". Ukrainian men who take Russian citizenship can be drafted to fight against the Ukrainian army. According to Artem Lysohor, Ukraine's head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, starting from May 2024, mothers who give birth in Russian-occupied Luhansk must prove that one of the newborn's parents have Russian citizenship, otherwise they will not be allowed to leave the hospital with their child. In addition, Russian occupation officials attempt to militarize and indoctrinate Ukrainian youth by developing a new textbook in accordance with Russian educational standards, and children participation in Russian ″military-patriotic games″.
  
  In August 2024, UN official Danielle Bell claimed that 95% of Ukrainian prisoners of war had suffered from Russian torture (e.g. beating, electric shock, or being stripped naked).