OREANDA-NEWS. The UN International Criminal Court (ICC) published a preliminary investigation report for 2019. A separate article in the report is devoted to the situation in Ukraine and the Crimea.

The document describes the work carried out by the ICC investigators in 2019 and plans for further action. Russia does not participate in this process, calling it contrary to national interests and “reality”.

The report on the situation in the Donbass says that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from April 2014 to August 2019 registered 3,339 deaths of civilians in eastern Ukraine due to hostilities. 147 children, 1,053 women and 1,804 men are among them. More than 7 thousand people were injured, most of them as a result of shelling, which affected territories occupied by militants and the Ukrainian army. The report notes that both sides of the conflict use heavy artillery.

The ICC recorded more than 1.2 thousand cases of alleged war crimes in the Donbass. Representatives of both parties are suspected of their commission, but most of the serious crimes, as the ISS believes, were committed by representatives of the self-proclaimed republics. These crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the Court.

In early December, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine submitted materials to the ICC on extrajudicial killings of nine Ukrainian servicemen during the battles in 2014–2015. According to Kiev, they were made by fighters of the pro-Russian group “Cossack Union ”Region of the Don Army”. The head of this organization said that he would not recognize the charges.

In Crimea, according to the ICC, from February 26, 2014 and thereafter crimes were committed, including murders, torture, illegal deprivation of liberty, coercion to serve in the army, expulsion of part of the population, as well as “seizing the enemy’s property that is not imperatively demanded by the necessities of war, with regard to private and cultural property.”