Ukrainian human rights defenders document 18,900 episodes of Russian war crimes

This is reported by Espreso TV. 

"Human rights defenders of the Tribunal for Putin initiative (in February 2022, the global initiative To break the circle of impunity for war crimes of Russia was launched (abbreviated as Tribunal for Putin)), the participants of which document events that have the characteristics of crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court  (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes) in all regions of the country that were attacked - ed.) document war crimes. Our database currently contains 18,900 episodes of crimes, of which more than 5,000 are in Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region. But I want to draw attention to another category of crime, which is less talked about, namely, the abduction by the occupiers of those people who resisted the policies of the Russian invaders. Among such people were former combatants at the previous stage of the war, policemen, border guards, deputies of local councils, entrepreneurs, journalists, teachers, and there were even priests, that is, there are a lot of such people. We have documented 2,422 people who were abducted, about 1,100 of them in the Kharkiv region, which is almost half. The Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Luhansk regions follow in numbers. These four regions actually cover 99% of all abducted people," he noted. 

Yevhen Zakharov noted that there were only dozens of people found who managed to free themselves or who were freed, while hundreds were abducted. And where are these people now - this is a question that the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies must answer.

"The thing is that they were kept in unofficial places of deprivation of liberty. For example, it is known that in Vovchansk it was the Vovchansk Aggregate Plant, where there was a real torture chamber. We know something because those who released themselves gave us information about this. Such the same situation was in Kupiansk," Zakharov added.