On March 15, the Report of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine A/HRC/55/66 was made public. The document confirmed the facts of massive indiscriminate attacks by the Russian armed forces, which led to civilian casualties, as well as destruction and damage to civilian objects, including those under protection. The report revealed new evidence of the aggressor’s widespread and systematic practice of tortures, as well as further evidence of the illegal movement of children to Russian-controlled territories. Using the example of the movement by the occupiers of a group of children from the Kherson Regional Orphanage to the Crimea, the UN Commission came to the conclusion that it was not temporary, and therefore amounts to a war crime. The report found that the seizure by the Russian “authorities” of cultural property in occupied Kherson and its movement, including cultural property from the Kherson Regional Art Museum and archival documents from the State Archives of the Kherson Region to the occupied Crimea with further appropriation, constituted a violation of international humanitarian law regarding cultural property and, accordingly, a war crime. The UN Commission also expressed concern about the aggressor committing genocide in Ukraine and the rhetoric broadcast by Russian state and other media in the context of “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”. The commission cites “numerous public statements that use dehumanizing language and calls for hatred, violence and destruction” and corresponding statements by individuals supporting a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and calling for the murder of many people.
