Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24 2022 and the ensuing war had a disastrous impact on civilians, civilian property and energy infrastructure, and overshadowed all other human rights concerns in the country.
Russian forces committed a litany of violations of international humanitarian law, including indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing and shelling of civilian areas that hit homes and healthcare and educational facilities.
In areas they occupied, Russian or Russian-affiliated forces committed apparent war crimes, including torture, summary executions, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances.
Those who attempted to flee areas of fighting faced terrifying ordeals and numerous obstacles; in some cases, Russian forces forcibly transferred significant numbers of Ukrainians to Russia or Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and subjected many to abusive security screenings.
As of early January 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) had verified at least 6,919 civilian deaths and more than 11,000 wounded since the start of the conflict and believed the actual figures were higher.
As of this writing over 14 million civilians had been displaced by the war: according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there were 6.5 million internally displaced in Ukraine, 5 million had fled to European countries, and another 2.8 million went to Russia and Belarus.
From
Human Rights Watch
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