Ukrainian Prisoners of War During Russian-Ukrainian War (2014-2024): Numbers, Convictions and Torture (Violations of the Geneva Convention)

Abstract

The article attempts to investigate and summarize the following based on open sources and official information collected by the authors from various official and unofficial Ukrainian information and analytical sites and foreign media: data on the dead and wounded civilians, and combat losses of Ukrainian combatants compared to Russian losses. Using statistical methods, an analysis of the progressive but volatile dynamics of the number and scale of data on the Ukrainian prisoners of war exchanges from 2014 to the end of 2024 was carried out. Taking into account the recorded statistical and search results of monitoring by the most responsible human rights groups (for example, the Kharkiv Human Rights Group) and public organizations (for example, ‘Peace Shore’), etc., official statements during briefings by representatives of state, government (law enforcement) bodies of Ukraine, calculations and a general record of missing, tortured and executed citizens of Ukraine in the temporarily occupied territories, in Russian camps, prisons, etc. were made.

The goal and, accordingly, the result was the opportunity to present real facts of violation of the basic principles, norms, and decisions of the Geneva Diplomatic Conference of 1929 and subsequent international legal documents adopted on the eve and after the Second World War, moreover, signed by both the Ukrainian and Russian sides of the current military confrontation, which has clear signs of a symbiosis of a hybrid, terrorist, full-scale war, with the passive participation of other interested parties.

It was concluded that the Russian Federation, which unleashed a war against the Ukrainian people, completely ignored the norms of treatment of thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war, subjecting them to executions and torture, illegally convicting and holding them for years in prisons and camps. International law defines such actions as another war crime of Russia, committed using armed aggression both against the territorial integrity of Ukraine and against humanity, and personal dignity, as a violation of the laws and customs of war.