Russia has detained hundreds of civilians since Ukraine war began: UN

No such executions were documented on the Ukrainian side. Of the 864 civilians held by Russia, the U.N. human rights office was able to document 178 cases in detail, it said.

A United Nations monitoring mission in Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russia has detained more than 800 civilians since the conflict began in February of last year, and has executed 77 of them.

The 36-page report based on 70 visits to detention centres and more than 1,000 interviews showed that Ukraine had also violated international law by arbitrarily detaining civilians but on a considerably smaller scale. "We documented over 900 cases of arbitrary detention of civilians, including children, and elderly people," Matilda Bogner, Head of the U.N. rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, told a press conference by video link from Uzhhorod, Ukraine.

"The vast majority of these cases were perpetrated by the Russian Federation." The executions by Russia amounted to a war crime, Bogner added. No such executions were documented on the Ukrainian side.

Of the 864 civilians held by Russia, the U.N. human rights office was able to document 178 cases in detail, it said. Of those, more than 90% were tortured, the report said, citing incidents of waterboarding, electrocution and the use of a "hot box" where detainees are held in solitary confinement in a box in high temperatures. The detentions took place in both Ukraine and Russia, it said.

The U.N. documented 75 cases of detention of civilians by Ukrainian forces, saying changes to Ukraine's criminal codes had given Kyiv greater discretion to carry out such practices. It said that more than half of them had also been subjected to torture or ill-treatment. Ukraine gave U.N. investigators full access with the exception of one incident, the report said, while Russia did not provide any access to detainees despite repeated requests.