Russia has created a “climate of fear” in the areas of Ukraine it has seized, where its forces carry out “arbitrary detentions”, “torture” and try to erase the Ukrainian identity, especially of children, the UN said in a report issued published today.

“Russia has created a suffocating climate of fear in the occupied territories of Ukraine, committing large-scale violations of international humanitarian law…”, underlines the report released by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The report is based on 2,300 interviews with victims and witnesses.

Russia “imposes the Russian language, citizenship, laws, judicial system and Russian educational programs (…) while suppressing expressions of Ukrainian culture and identity,” according to the report.

Children are primarily targeted by this policy, particularly by replacing the Ukrainian school curriculum with the Russian one, introducing textbooks that justify the invasion, and recruiting minors into youth organizations “to instill in them the Russian expression of patriotism,” it added. .

Since the start of the invasion two years ago, Russian forces have carried out “arbitrary detention of civilians, often accompanied by torture and ill-treatment” as well as “forced disappearances”, the UN said.

Initially targeting individuals deemed a security threat, these crackdowns were later expanded to target “any person deemed to oppose the occupation.”

The occupation authorities shut down Ukrainian television, radio, internet and mobile phone networks and rerouted traffic through Russian networks, “allowing control over information accessible on the internet,” the report said.

Residents of the occupied territories are “encouraged” to denounce each other, “which makes them fear even their own friends and neighbors.”

On the Ukrainian side, the report expresses concern about excessive prosecutions for cooperation with people of the occupying forces, especially against people working in sectors of “essential services in the territories recaptured by Kiev in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“These persecutions have resulted in some people being victimized twice – first under Russian occupation and then again when they were being prosecuted for complicity,” the UN said.

Since annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia controls 18 percent of Ukrainian territory, more than half of which was seized in the past two years.