Since the withdrawal of Kremlin troops from the city of Kherson, Kyiv has repeatedly denounced Russian war crimes and atrocities in the region. According to Ukrainian sources, investigators are now discovering a room in which children were tortured.
According to Ukrainian sources, children were also abused under Russian occupation in the recently liberated city of Cherson. "We found ten torture chambers in the Kherson region, four of them in the city of Kherson," reports Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament's human rights commissioner. "In one of the torture chambers we found a separate room, a cell in which children were kept, even the occupiers called it that, a children's cell."
The only difference between the cell and the adjoining rooms is that the occupiers laid thin mats on the floor. "We documented that the children were not given water, they were only given water every other day. They were given practically nothing to eat." Psychological pressure was put on the children. "They told them their parents had left them and weren't coming back." Lubinets initially provided no evidence to support his claims. His statements could not immediately be verified independently.
At the end of November, Ukrainian investigators reported the discovery of four torture sites used by the Russian occupiers. They identified a total of four buildings in which the "Russian occupiers illegally detained and brutally tortured people," the general public prosecutor's office in Kyiv said.
During their eight-month occupation of Cherson, Russian forces set up "pseudo-law enforcement agencies" in previous detention centers and police stations. There, "parts of rubber truncheons, a wooden bat, a device for generating electric shocks as well as a light bulb and bullets were seized".
Since the liberation of the city of Kherson by Ukrainian forces on November 11, Kyiv has repeatedly denounced Russian war crimes and atrocities in the region. Russia denies ill-treatment of civilians.
