RUSSIA
IS A
TERRORIST
STATE.

Russian forces took full control of Bucha by 5 March 2022 and held it until 30 March, according to OHCHR. When Ukrainian forces and journalists entered on 2 April, they found dozens of bodies on the streets and then in yards, apartments, basements, cars, woods and makeshift graves. Many bore signs of summary execution: bound hands, bullet wounds, bruises, cuts and burns. Two collective graves near the town church held more than 100 bodies. OHCHR found that at least 14 civilians were shot dead and left where they fell along a 150-metre stretch of Yablunska Street, where residents risked being shot simply for appearing outside.

Soldiers went door to door in what intercepted Russian radio traffic called "zachistka" (cleansing), according to an Associated Press and FRONTLINE investigation. Men in particular were questioned about alleged ties to the Ukrainian forces or "spying". According to OHCHR, some were killed on the spot and others were detained and executed later. At 144 Yablunska Street, a compound Russian troops used as a headquarters, at least nine men were taken in on 4 March 2022 and killed, the AP reported. Police recovered nearly 40 bodies along Yablunska Street alone. The head of a local funeral home told Human Rights Watch he saw eight bodies at No. 144, six with their hands tied. In the basement of a children's camp used as a Russian base, Human Rights Watch saw the bodies of five men in civilian clothes, four with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

By 31 October 2022, OHCHR had individually documented 73 killings of civilians in Bucha and was corroborating 105 more. It said the summary executions it examined in the region "may amount to the war crime of wilful killing". The UN Commission of Inquiry found a pattern of summary executions in areas occupied by Russian forces, which it described as violations of the right to life and war crimes, and named Bucha as the place where many of them occurred. Ukrainian prosecutors attribute the killings at 144 Yablunska Street to soldiers of the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, according to the AP.

By 2 March 2022 the whole city had lost electricity and water, and gas and heating soon stopped, according to Human Rights Watch. People spent weeks in cold basements and, according to the UN Commission of Inquiry, had to cook and fetch water outside, exposed to shelling. The UN monitoring mission reported that residents had to endure long periods without clean water, food, sanitation or medicine. HRW, working with Truth Hounds and SITU Research, found that 93 per cent of the 477 multi-storey apartment buildings in central Mariupol had been damaged by mid-May, along with all 19 hospital campuses and 86 of 89 educational facilities. The UN said every hospital able to receive wounded civilians was damaged or destroyed.

Bodies lay in streets, rubble and flats for days, weeks or months. Residents buried the dead in courtyards, playgrounds and along streets – HRW documented 11 people buried in a single courtyard and about 20 graves in another. The UN reported bodies found in improvised individual and collective graves in yards, streets and parks. An Associated Press analysis of satellite imagery counted at least 10,300 new graves in and around the city by December 2022, many marked only with numbers. HRW counted more than 10,000 burials between March 2022 and February 2023.

An estimated 350,000 people were forced to leave the city, according to the UN, which also raised concern about "filtration" of civilians involving arbitrary determinations, intimidation and humiliation. The OSCE Moscow Mechanism mission of experts and the UN found that the destruction raised serious concerns about compliance with international humanitarian law. HRW concluded that Russian and affiliated forces committed apparent violations including unlawful attacks, blocking evacuations and aid, and forced transfers. The UN Commission of Inquiry, which interviewed more than 30 civilians from the city, concluded that Russian forces carried out indiscriminate attacks in Mariupol and said it was investigating whether the attacks and siege may also amount to a crime against humanity. After taking the city, the occupation authorities demolished many damaged buildings, which HRW said erased evidence at potential crime scenes.

In the days before the attack, tens of thousands of people passed through Kramatorsk station in an evacuation encouraged by local authorities, according to Human Rights Watch. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 500 people – many of them women, children and older people with their belongings – were on the platforms and in front of the station when the missile's 9N123K warhead burst overhead at 10:28 a.m. and scattered 50 submunitions, each breaking into hundreds of fragments, across the area. HRW documented 32 submunition impact sites. Survivors described a woman whose leg was torn away, an ambulance driver described children's limbs on the ground, and bystanders used nappies to try to stop bleeding before help arrived.

Russia denied the attack and said its forces no longer used the Tochka-U. HRW and SITU Research found Tochka launch vehicles and missiles near Kunie, north-west of Kramatorsk in an area then held by Russian forces and within range of the station, around the time of the attack, and Bellingcat documented Russian forces operating Tochka-U launchers in 2022. The UN Commission of Inquiry noted that a train with Ukrainian military vehicles had left the station about an hour earlier, but found that the cluster munitions struck a large crowd of civilians, and concluded that Russian armed forces likely launched an indiscriminate, disproportionate attack in violation of international humanitarian law. About ten minutes after the explosions, according to Bellingcat, a pro-Kremlin war correspondent posted a video claiming the strike had hit Ukrainian soldiers, then deleted it. Russian officials later blamed Ukraine.

Exhumation began on 16 September 2022 and ended on 23 September. The head of the National Police said 447 bodies had been recovered: 215 women, 194 men, five children and 22 soldiers, plus the remains of 11 people whose sex could not yet be determined. Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said several bodies had their hands tied behind their backs, one man was buried with a rope around his neck, and others had broken limbs, gunshot wounds and, in several cases, amputated genitals. "obviously, these people were tortured and executed," he said.

Human Rights Watch, which interviewed more than 100 people who lived through the six-month occupation, documented that Russian forces routinely tortured detainees in Izium with electric shocks, waterboarding, beatings and stress positions at no fewer than seven sites, including two schools and the central police station, and said some bodies at the burial site showed possible signs of torture and execution.

Not every death at the site was a killing. In a later review, the UN Human Rights Office reported that the Kharkiv regional prosecutor had exhumed 451 bodies, that some people had died from hostilities or natural causes, and that at least 17 bodies showed indications of potential homicide, with forensic work still under way.

When the air-raid sirens sounded, staff moved the children to shelter, which the head of the UN monitoring mission said kept the toll from being far higher. About 670 child patients and more than 1,000 staff were in the hospital, which treats children with serious conditions such as cancer and kidney disease. The strike destroyed the building of the toxicology department and damaged the intensive care, surgical and oncology wards and the national children's cardiac surgery centre on the same campus. A doctor was among the two people killed. About 600 children had to be transferred to other hospitals.

OHCHR based its assessment on an in-depth examination of the impact site, witness accounts and video showing the missile hitting the hospital. The head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission called it "one of the most egregious attacks" since the full-scale invasion began, and UN High Commissioner Volker Türk called the blasts at two Kyiv hospitals treating children and women "abominable". Ukraine's Security Service said it recovered Kh-101 fragments bearing serial numbers at the site, and the open-source group Bellingcat matched the missile in the footage to a Kh-101, rejecting Russian claims that a Ukrainian air-defence missile fell on the hospital.

The same attack hit a medical centre in Kyiv's Dniprovskyi district, where nine people were killed, and a residential building in Shevchenkivskyi district, where 13 died. According to OHCHR, July 2024 became the deadliest month for civilians in Ukraine since October 2022, mainly because of this attack.

About 63 villagers had gathered at the café to remember a Ukrainian soldier whose remains had just been reburied in Hroza. Around 20 to 25 minutes later, the missile hit. The blast completely destroyed the café and a small shop next door. HRMMU staff visited twice, inspected the site and interviewed 35 people, including two survivors, medical staff and morgue workers.

The dead were 36 women, 22 men and an eight-year-old boy. Fifteen families lost two or more members. Many bodies were so badly destroyed that they could only be identified by DNA. In some cases, rescuers identified a person by a distinctive feature, such as a manicure on a recovered hand. Ukraine's Prosecutor General said nearly one in six of the village's residents was killed.

Russia did not explicitly accept responsibility. Its representative at the UN Security Council described the gathering as a legitimate military target, which HRMMU's findings contradict. According to Ukraine's Security Service, two former local residents who had joined the Russian occupation authorities passed the time and place of the wake to Russian forces. In July 2026, Ukraine's Prosecutor General announced suspicions against five Russian officers, including the commander of the 119th Missile Brigade's launch crew, for violating the laws of war combined with premeditated murder.

The first missile reportedly hit the Sumy State University Congress Center. About two minutes later a second missile exploded above ground, propelling shrapnel across a wide public area, according to HRMMU. Many of those killed were passengers on a city bus destroyed by the blast. "Each of them was simply going about their Sunday morning when the missiles struck," said Danielle Bell, head of the UN mission.

Images from the scene, reported by AP, showed rows of body bags along a road and bodies wrapped in foil blankets among the debris while firefighters worked on burned-out cars and damaged buildings. Ukrainian officials and local media reported damage to 51 buildings, 34 cars, a bus and a university building. Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported 15 children among the injured.

Russia's Defence Ministry said the two Iskander-M missiles targeted a meeting of Ukrainian commanders and claimed more than 60 soldiers were killed. This claim has not been independently verified. Ukrainian officials said preliminary information indicated the missiles carried cluster munitions. AP said it could not verify that claim.

Drone operators tracked people on foot, on bicycles and in cars, and dropped explosives on them. The Commission said all means of transport were targeted, as were emergency and rescue services. In one case it documented, a drone dropped two explosives on an ambulance while a man who had already been hit was receiving first aid. Human Rights Watch documented at least 45 deliberate drone attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Antonivka and Dniprovskyi district between June and December 2024, and said the evidence left "little doubt that the intent is to kill, maim, and terrify civilians".

Videos from the drones' cameras were posted on Russian Telegram channels, some with thousands of subscribers, alongside threats such as "Get out of the city before the leaves fall, you who are destined to die." The Commission based its findings on more than 300 videos, over 600 Telegram posts and 91 interviews, found that the attacks were "widespread, systematic and conducted as part of a coordinated state policy", and that their primary purpose was to spread terror. It classed the posting of footage of civilians being killed and injured as a separate war crime.

Nearly 150 civilians had been killed and hundreds more injured in Kherson city and 16 surrounding localities by May 2025, according to official figures cited by the Commission. Kherson officials told Human Rights Watch that Antonivka's population fell by close to half between May and December 2024. In its October 2025 report, based on 226 interviews, the Commission concluded that the attacks were part of a coordinated policy to drive civilians out of a roughly 300-kilometre stretch of Ukrainian-held territory.