OSCE report says Russia committed ‘war crimes’ in attacks on Mariupol, Ukraine
The Vienna-based security body accused Russia of broadly targeting hospitals, schools, residential buildings and water facilities in its military operations, leading to civilian deaths and injuries.
“Taken as a whole, the report documents the catalogue of inhumanity perpetrated by Russia’s forces in Ukraine,” Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, said in a speech Wednesday. “This includes evidence of direct targeting of civilians, attacks on medical facilities, rape, executions, looting, and forced deportation of civilians to Russia.”
The report concluded that the airstrike that tore through a maternity hospital in Mariupol was a Russian attack. “Based upon Russian explanations, the attack must have been deliberate,” the report said of the March 9 assault on the Mariupol Maternity House and Children’s Hospital. “No effective warning was given and no time-limit set. This attack therefore constitutes a clear violation of International Humanitarian Law and those responsible for it have committed a war crime.”
While the Russian government alleged that the hospital was used for military purposes, Carpenter said, “the mission categorically dismissed these claims.” The OSCE experts did not travel to Ukraine but sorted through evidence from numerous sources, including open-source material and accounts from human rights and nonprofit groups.
The OSCE report also found that the attack on the Mariupol Drama Theater, where hundreds of civilians were sheltering as the building was reduced to rubble, “was most likely an egregious violation of international humanitarian law and those who ordered or executed it committed a war crime.”
Overall, the investigation found “clear patterns of international humanitarian law violations by the Russian forces in their conduct of hostilities,” the report said.
However, it added that while the report “was able to contribute to a first collection and analysis of facts, more detailed investigations are necessary, in particular with regard to establish individual criminal responsibility for war crimes.”
The report tracked alleged abuses from Feb. 24, the day Russia invaded, to April 1. It did not include a missile strike last week on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk that killed over 50 people, including children, or atrocities recently reported in Bucha, a suburb of the capital, Kyiv.
The 110-page report also found “credible evidence suggesting that such violations concerning even the most fundamental human rights … have been committed, mostly in the areas under the effective control of Russia.”
The OSCE began its investigation last month after a vote by most of its member states, including Ukraine, to pursue a fact-finding mission. The United States is part of the 57-member body — as are Russia and its ally, Belarus. Russia and Belarus were among a dozen countries that did not vote for the review and have yet to publicly comment on the report.
The OSCE investigation was triggered through a vote on the “Moscow Mechanism,” named for a 1991 conference held in the Russian capital, that allows member states to send independent experts on missions to another member state to resolve issues of “human rights and democracy,” according to the OSCE.
Carpenter said the OSCE would share its findings with the International Criminal Court, national courts and others that have jurisdiction over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ukrainian officials have said that hundreds of civilians were summarily executed in Bucha and that they had evidence of torture, dismemberment and the shooting of people at close range. The alleged events in Bucha — found as Ukraine recaptured more territory and Russia’s forces began pivoting from areas near Kyiv to the east and south of the country — led to Russia’s suspension from the U.N. Human Rights Council. Russia has claimed that such killings were “staged” or “fake.”
The OSCE report found that the events in Bucha deserve “a serious international enquiry, on the spot, with forensic experts,” and said “evidence points to a major war crime and a crime against humanity committed by the Russian forces” in the town northwest of Kyiv.
Carpenter said that since the crimes were likely carried out before the OSCE team’s mandate ended on April 1 — though the evidence came to light afterward — the OSCE should still have jurisdiction and “there will need to be…
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