24/03/2022 16:57

The Commissioner calls on the ICRC to influence Russia to remove the bodies of the dead Russian servicemen from the territory of Ukraine

Since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the losses of the invaders amount to more than 15 thousand soldiers.  For the most part, the aggressor country does not remove or dispose of their bodies properly, which threatens Ukraine with an environmental catastrophe.

In the Sumy region, the aggressor state does not take away the bodies of its killed soldiers who died on the territory of Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale war.  Corpses decompose, emit poison and pose a great threat to the region's ecology.

Russia refuses to take away the killed soldiers and does not admit its losses.  The bodies of Russian soldiers without documents and identification marks remain on Ukrainian soil and pose a very great environmental threat.

To store the corpses, the Sumy military administration ordered 10 refrigerators, but due to the blockade of the railway they could not deliver them.  Therefore, the found bodies of russian soldiers are now packed in plastic bags and stored.

In the village of Sednev, Chernihiv region, where there is also a huge number of bodies of dead Russians, the occupiers decided to use the equipment of a starch factory to destroy corpses.

This poses a toxic danger to the village, as temperatures of about 130 degrees Celsius and below are used to make starch.  These are very low temperatures to destroy the human body, and incomplete combustion releases a lot of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia and other harmful substances.

In Trostyanets, Sumy region, the racists set up a checkpoint in the cemetery.  No one is allowed to be buried.

Such actions of the aggressor state grossly violate the rights of Ukrainian citizens to a safe environment for life and health, as defined in Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949 on the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflict.

I call on the International Committee of the Red Cross to use all possible levers of influence on the Russian Federation to remove the bodies of fallen Russian servicemen from Ukraine and to prevent inhumane and environmentally harmful methods of disposing of corpses.