DISINFO: The Russian war prisoners in Ukraine were tortured with electricity, according to the UN
SUMMARY
The Russian war prisoners in Ukraine were tortured with electricity, according to the head of the UN human rights monitoring mission to Ukraine Matilda Bogner. She said that the mission interviewed 175 war prisoners captured by Ukraine. It documented cases of torture and mistreatment, mostly when people were captured, interrogated or moved to transit camps and internment places.
RESPONSE
The claim is a distortion, misrepresentation and selective manipulative use of the findings of the Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine sent by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Although some claims are technically true, the OHCHR described abuses against Russian POWs by Ukrainian forces as “sporadic cases of torture and ill-treatment”. By contrast, this disinformation story frames these abuses as the dominant norm or policy rather than the exception -as highlighted by the use of the formula “the Russian war prisoners”, where the article “the” seems to suggest that all POWs were tortured-, when it is clearly not the case in the report.
At the same time, this disinformation story completely ignores the OHCHR denunciations about abuses against Ukrainian POWs held by Russian forces expressed in the same document. The UN mission affirmed that “the vast majority” of Ukrainian prisoners it interviewed said they were tortured and ill-treated, and explained that while Ukrainian authorities freely allowed these interviews to take place, Russian authorities totally prevented the OHCHR from talking to Ukrainian prisoners.
These distortions are an attempt to portray Ukraine in a negative light in order to justify Russia's unprovoked aggression against its neighbour.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Bucha is a cover-up for Ukrainian fascists torturing Russian prisoners of war, that Ukraine is using anti-retreat troops to shoot in the back those soldiers who try to surrender, or that Ukrainians deported children from Donbas and probably sold their organs.