Free Republic

A report commissioned by the United Nations this month found Russian forces in Ukraine committed an array of war crimes, including summary executions, torture, rape and other acts of sexual violence against Ukrainian civilians. The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine details violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in four regions occupied by Russian armed forces. The commission focused its investigations largely in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy. In preparing the report, the commission conducted 191 interviews and traveled to 27 cities over five separate visits. In some cases, the commission...

March 31, 2022 went down in history as the point of no return in the war. It was on this day that the city of Bucha, in Kyiv region, was liberated from the Russian invaders. At the same time, the world was shaken by the terrible footage of Russian crimes: hundreds of bodies of civilians brutally killed and tortured by the Russian occupiers, known as the Bucha Massacre. It was a shock that the next day, April 1, 2022, Russian invaders captured the city of Izyum, which is in Kharkiv region. The city used to be unremarkable and unknown to...

Vladimir Putin...named a notoriously brutal replacement...Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, is the infamous “Butcher of Mariupol” who ordered some of the Ukraine invasion’s worst atrocities — including an airstrike on a maternity hospital and an attack on a theater that was sheltering hundreds of children.

It was supposed to be the bright spot in a grim day. Of a dozen unclaimed bodies set for burial recently at Bucha City Cemetery, one had just been identified. The dead man’s family was present and would be able to bury him with full ceremony. His grave would be marked with his name instead of just a number. But there was a hitch. No one could find the body. (snip)When Russian troops retreated at the end of March from the region around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, they left behind a trail of more than 1,200 bodies. At least 458 dead...

The Battle of Mariupol is over and Russia is busy proclaiming the liberation of the city. In reality, Mariupol has been murdered. This formerly bustling metropolis of almost half a million people now lies on the brink of extinction, pummeled into submission by a vicious campaign of Russian annihilation. The estimated 100,000 remaining residents of Mariupol find themselves reduced to living among the rubble without medicines, running water or electricity. With Russia in control of the city, there is no way of knowing the final death toll or assessing the true scale of the catastrophe that has befallen Mariupol. During...