UN Spreads Blame for Torture, Indiscriminate Killings in Eastern Ukraine

iStock/Thinkstock(UNITED NATIONS) — A blistering United Nations human rights report on the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine alleges both sides have indiscriminately killed civilians and used torture.

The U.N. puts the death toll at over 4,630 but believes the actually number of casualties is much higher. More than 10,230 people have also been wounded in the fighting between government forces and rebel factions backed by Russia.

Adding to the misery, the report says, are more than 5.2 million residents in the east caught in the midst of violence with much of the local infrastructure devastated and Ukraine’s brutal winter having arrived.

The U.N. report contends the most vulnerable are “older persons, children and people in institutional care, many of whom are on the brink of survival.”

Meanwhile, the human rights group spares no punches assigning blame for the crisis, first accusing the government in Kiev for allowing “arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances of people suspected of ‘separatism and terrorism.'”

The U.N. then blasts separatist groups for “creating a criminal state in parts of the industrial regions of Lugansk and Donetsk they control with the help of ‘foreign fighters,'” which is taken to mean Russian forces.

Neither side responded to the U.N. report.

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