The United Nations Human Rights Office Calls Russian Troops Eliminated 441 Civilians At The Beginning Of Invasion Into Ukraine

Civilian bodies were evacuated from mass graves in Bucha. (Wikimedia Commons/npu.gov.ua/National Police of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - Russian troops killed at least 441 civilians in the early days of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, the UN human rights office said on Wednesday, documenting attacks in dozens of cities and a summary of executions that it said may be war crimes.

The actual number of victims in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy areas is likely much higher, the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a report that saw the start of the invasion from February 24 to early April, as Russian troops withdrew from the three regions.

"The action was carried out by the Russian armed forces who controlled the areas and caused the deaths of 441 civilians (341 men, 72 women, 20 boys and 8 girls)," the report said.

"There are strong indications that the documented summary of the executions in the report constitutes a deliberate murder war crime," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker T\"uk explained in a statement.

Through the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), OHCHR collects evidence from 102 cities and villages.

Overall in the war through December 4, OHCHR said it had calculated 6,702 civilian deaths, and its monitoring included violations by all parties.

The scope of the new report was limited to Russian-controlled territory during the first days of fighting due to the "prevalence of the alleged killing of civilians in these three regions", and OHCHR's ability to verify and document deaths there after Russian troops withdrew.

Earlier, a UN commission concluded in October that Russian troops were responsible for most of the human rights violations in the early days of war.

Many documented bodies in the new report show signs that the victims may have been deliberately killed, according to the report.

Until the end of October, OHCHR was still trying to strengthen an additional 198 suspected killings of civilians in three areas at the time.

The report found that several areas were affected by the killings, such as the city of Bucha near the capital Kyiv, which is under the control of Russian troops from March 5 to March 30.

OHCHR said it had documented the killing of 73 civilians in Bucha and was in the process of strengthening 105 other cases.

The purpose stated in this report is to assist the victims by documenting the victims and trying to bring the perpetrators to justice. It analyzes 100 killings in detail.

It classified 57 of them as summary executions, 30 of whom were detained, while 27 were executed on-site.

In another 43 cases, civilians were killed while moving inside or between settlements on foot or on bicycles, cars, or vans.

"Most of the victims were targeted when leaving for work, delivering food to other people, visiting neighbors or relatives, or trying to escape hostilities," the report said.

Separately, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the report.

Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in what it calls a "special military operation", to strip its neighbors' weapons and remove dangerous nationalists from power. Meanwhile, Ukraine and its Western allies called the attack an baseless seizure of land.