Natalia Yepifanova is graduate in law from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, she is a lawyer and the head of the NGO Voyatskyi Vyzvil (Warriors’ Liberation).
How many prisoners of war (POWs) are currently in the hands of the Russians? How many of them are defenders of Azovstal?
Information on the number of POWs is kept secret. However, we, as an NGO, keep our own calculations. According to our data, there are over 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen in captivity. It should be remembered that Russia also holds civilian captives as well. According to the official data, these number about 27,000. The ministry of internal affairs notes that currently about 24,000 Ukrainians are considered missing under special circumstances and about half of this number may be in captivity.
About 4,500 captured soldiers who defended Mariupol are now in captivity. Approximately 2,000 of these soldiers were ordered to leave the Azovstal plant; 1,500 were captured from the Ilyich plant; and 1,000 were captured at other defensive points in the city of Mariupol.
There are many photographs of exhausted prisoners in terrible conditions. What is the situation of Ukrainian prisoners? Does Russia respect the Geneva Conventions?
Russia grossly disrespects and violates international humanitarian law both in terms of waging war and keeping POWs. Violation of the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of POWs has been a common practice by this state since 2014. According to the Geneva Conventions, during an international armed conflict, each state must create a National Information Bureau (NIB) to keep records of POWs and to exchange information between these structures about the place of detention and the state of health of the POW, and to establish communication with families of the POWs. However, the NIB created by Russia does not perform the functions assigned to it. Russia hides prisoners, does not confirm the fact of the capture of most of the soldiers whom it has deprived of their freedom, and the Russian state structures refuse to confirm the facts of capture, whether at the request of the prisoners’ relatives, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), or the UN working group on enforced disappearances.
Representatives of the Russian state at the UN refuse to attend sessions dedicated to the search for the Ukrainian prisoners. One may only wonder why the UN has not deprived Russia of the right to be present and represent their country in the organization, the essence of which was to ensure world security and human rights. Why is one of the four UN headquarters located in Geneva still headed by Russian official Tatiana Valovaya? The committee for the protection of human rights, the UN working group on enforced disappearances, and others are located at the headquarters headed by her. These UN bodies, which I have named, are simply paralyzed in the matter of the Ukrainian prisoners, protection of their rights, their search, their confirmation, and resistance to torture. Is it because of the deliberate actions or inaction of the director general of the UN headquarters in Geneva?
We know of murders in captivity, the terrorist attack in Olenivka as a result of which about 80 people died. But Ukraine still has not officially received the exact number of the dead and the wounded or their names. We constantly receive news about deaths in captivity, because in Russian prisons they are tortured, mocked, and deprived of medical care. Warriors return exhausted and their health deteriorates permanently.
If even the Russian army does not comply with the Geneva Conventions, then what happens when Ukrainian military personnel fall into the hands of Wagner Group?
In our opinion, the methods of handling the Ukrainian POWs between the non-state armed formation Wagner Group and the Russian army should not be distinguished. The soldiers of both the Wagner illegal armed group and the soldiers of the Russian army are equally cruel, equally violent, and disrespectful of international humanitarian law. These formations or units should not be separated, since they all act on the orders of the Russian commander-in-chief, consist of Russian citizens, are ideologically biased towards Ukraine, and also, according to international experts, the Wagner illegal armed group was created at the initiative and with the support of high-ranking officials from the ministry of defense of the Russian Federation and, according to Western experts, is simply a disguised unit within the structure of the ministry of defense of the Russian Federation. Both the Russian army and the Wagner illegal armed group are instruments in the hands of the Russian authorities for the destruction of the Ukrainians. It is the government of the Russian Federation that hides Ukrainian prisoners, does not confirm the facts relating to the capture of most Ukrainian prisoners, refuses to connect prisoners with their relatives; it is with the support of the government of the Russian Federation that abuse, torture, and murders take place in the prisons of the Russian Federation.
I understand that your associations have collected numerous testimonies of torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Similar reports were previously submitted by the vice-speaker of the Polish Sejm, Malgorzata Gosiewska, and MEP Anna Fotyga, to the Hague Tribunal. What role do international structures like the UN and the Red Cross play in such cases, and is it true that they have reneged on their obligations to the defenders of Azovstal?
A UN monitoring mission operates in Ukraine, whose activity consists in monitoring human rights violations. They partially interview Ukrainian servicemen released from captivity and submit such testimonies to the UN high commissioner for human rights for an annual report. The ICRC, however, cannot collect evidence of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in accordance with its mandate.
In our opinion, the UN has removed itself from solving the problem of the prisoners at all.
Today, both the UN and the ICRC insist that they guaranteed precisely the safe exit of the defenders of Azovstal to captivity but did not guarantee their repatriation. Russia is waging this war of annihilation with no rules and no arrangements about working with it; it is an insidious and vile adversary that only reacts to force or economic sanctions. That is why we Ukrainians always ask the international community, the governments of European countries, and the USA to find levers of influence and pressure on Russia, because Russia is still not isolated from the civilized world either politically or economically. How many more Ukrainians must die for the world to understand that partnership with Russia is condoning its worst crimes?
And what about Olenivka, was there any international response?
The terrorist act in Olenivka, which took place on July 29, 2022, is not being investigated by international organizations. The UN secretary general has dissolved the mission to investigate the shelling of Olenivska prison by Russia. In the UN’s annual report on human rights and the treatment of POWs, the UN did not mention the murder of the Ukrainian soldiers by Russia in the Olenivka prison.
Where, it seems, there was a reaction, was the case of the abduction of the Ukrainian children to Russia. How is this case progressing?
As of March 30, 2023, the commissioner of the president of Ukraine for children’s rights, Darya Gerasimchuk, speaks of about 19,500 Ukrainian children who have been deported to Russia by the occupiers, but this figure is not final. To date, several hundred children have been returned. It was the deportation of the Ukrainian children by Russia that became the reason for the International Criminal Court in the Hague to issue lifetime arrest warrants for Putin and Russia’s children’s ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova, who not only facilitated the deportation of children, but also adopted a child from Mariupol.
There are also 4,400 orphans and children deprived of parental care in Russia. Data collection about such children is ongoing.
