Probably the most senior Russian officer but to disclose the horrors of the Ukraine warfare has described brutal torture, rape and executions carried out by Kremlin forces.
Konstantin Yefremov, an ex-military officer who has since fled the warfare and Russia, mentioned he witnessed Moscow’s sadistic techniques towards the defending forces twice a day throughout Vladimir Putin‘s murderous marketing campaign.
The previous senior lieutenant, who tried to resign from the military a number of instances earlier than being dismissed for refusing to return to Ukraine, is now thought of a traitor and a defector by Moscow after serving his nation in the Zaporizhzhia area.
He instructed the BBC how prisoners had been shot of their limbs, stripped bare and humiliated as a part of Putin’s dehumanising campaign towards Kyiv‘s troops.
Konstantin Yefremov, an ex-military officer who has since fled the warfare and Russia, mentioned he witnessed Moscow’s sadistic techniques
Yefremov arrived in Crimea for ‘navy workout routines’ on February 10 final 12 months, earlier than the warfare broke out, as the pinnacle of a de-mining unit of the forty second Motorised Rifle Division.
After witnessing the ‘Z’ tanks rolling in, the officer wished no a part of the barbaric invasion and tried to resign, however was instructed he would face 10 years in jail for desertion.
He was positioned in non permanent cost of a rifle platoon and ordered to maneuver north to Melitopol from Crimea on February 27.
The officer described how his comrades looted all the pieces they may discover from Ukrainian properties, together with bicycles, axes and even a lawnmower.
They then moved to protect a ‘logistics headquarters’ in Bilmak, north-east of Melitopol, the place Ukrainian prisoners had been being held.
He recalled: ‘One in every of them admitted to being a sniper. On listening to this, the Russian colonel misplaced his thoughts. He hit him, he pulled the Ukrainian’s trousers down and requested if he was married.
”Sure,’ the prisoner replied. ‘Then somebody deliver me a mop,’ mentioned the colonel. ‘We’ll flip you into a woman and ship your spouse the video.”
Ukrainian servicemen make a trench close to Bakhmut yesterday amid Russia’s invasion
Ukrainian rescuers work on website following an in a single day missile strike on a residential district in Kramatorsk
A police officer guards close to a website of a residential constructing destroyed by a Russian missile strike
On one other event, the colonel requested a prisoner handy over the names of each Ukrainian nationalist in his unit, however he didn’t perceive the query.
When he failed to provide the reply they wished, Russian captors knocked out his enamel.
They instructed him to place a blindfold on and warned they’d shoot him within the head on the depend of three.
The twisted troopers then shot in conjunction with his head subsequent to his ears, deafening the begging Ukrainian.
In a single interrogation, a colonel shot a prisoner within the arm and within the leg proper underneath his knee, hitting a bone.
After serving to bandage him up, Yefremov realised the Ukrainian would die of blood loss until he was handled instantly.
However to keep away from his ‘loopy’ colonel, they dressed up the enemy fighter in Russian uniform and despatched him to hospital.
Yefremov mentioned: ‘We instructed him: ‘Do not say you are a Ukrainian prisoner of warfare, as a result of both the medical doctors will refuse to deal with you, or the injured Russian troopers will hear and shoot you and we cannot be capable of cease them.”
Russians got orders to provide captured Ukrainians solely water and crackers to outlive and sleep on the naked floor, Yefremov mentioned.
However he tried to sneak them tea and cigarettes, and toss them hay at night time to sleep on when nobody may see.
The UN’s Human Rights Workplace says it has discovered situations of torture carried out by each Russia and Ukraine through the warfare.
Yefremov arrived in Crimea for ‘navy workout routines’ on February 10 final 12 months, earlier than the warfare broke out, as the pinnacle of a de-mining unit of the forty second Motorised Rifle Division
Ukrainian servicemen hearth a mortar in direction of Russian positions close to the city of Soledar
Matilda Bogner, head of the UN’s Ukraine-based monitoring group, mentioned: ‘If we examine the violations, the torture or ill-treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of warfare tends to occur at virtually each stage of confinement.
‘And, for probably the most half, the situations of internment are worse in lots of areas of Russia or occupied Ukraine.’
She mentioned Ukrainians have been subjected to electrocution, hanging and harsh beatings throughout interrogation.
Ukraine is investigating greater than 58,000 potential Russian warfare crimes – killings, kidnappings, indiscriminate bombings and sexual assaults allegedly carried out within the invasion.
Reporting by The Related Press and Frontline, recorded in a public database, has independently verified greater than 600 incidents that seem to violate the legal guidelines of warfare.
A few of these assaults had been massacres that killed dozens or tons of of civilians and as a totality it may account for hundreds of particular person warfare crimes.
As Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the Worldwide Prison Courtroom in The Hague, mentioned: ‘Ukraine is a criminal offense scene.’
However Ukrainian authorities face severe challenges in gathering air-tight proof in a warfare zone and the overwhelming majority of alleged warfare criminals have evaded seize and are safely behind Russian strains.
All through the warfare Russian leaders have denied accusations of brutality.
Rescuers take away particles in a seek for survivors at a destroyed condo constructing hit by a rocket in downtown Kramatorsk on February 1
Moscow’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, mentioned no civilians had been tortured and killed within the Kyiv suburb of Bucha regardless of the mountain of proof of the atrocities.
‘Not a single native individual has suffered from any violent motion,’ he mentioned, calling the photographs and video of our bodies within the streets ‘a crude forgery’ staged by the Ukrainians.
Consultants say Russia underneath President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly ignored the principles of legislation established by the Geneva Conventions, a sequence of treaties that dictate how warring international locations ought to deal with one another’s residents, and the Rome Statute, which established the Worldwide Prison Courtroom and outlined particular warfare crimes and crimes towards humanity.
‘These abuses should not the acts of rogue models; reasonably, they’re a part of a deeply disturbing sample of abuse according to what we now have seen from Russia’s prior navy engagements – in Chechnya, Syria, and Georgia,’ mentioned Beth Van Schaack, the U.S. Ambassador at Massive for International Prison Justice.
In need of a regime-toppling revolution in Moscow, nonetheless, it’s unlikely Putin and different high-ranking Russians find yourself in courtroom, whether or not in Ukraine or the Hague, consultants say.
