During the Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present) starting with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military and authorities have committed war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets, including on hospitals, medical facilities and on the energy grid; indiscriminate attacks on densely populated areas; the abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; and the killing and torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
On 2 March 2023, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a full investigation into past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide committed in Ukraine by any person from 21 November 2013 onwards, set up an online method for people with evidence to initiate contact with investigators, and sent a team of investigators, lawyers, and other professionals to Ukraine to begin collecting evidence. Two other independent international agencies are also investigating violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law in the area: the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 4 March 2022, and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, deployed by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The latter started monitoring human rights violations by all parties in 2014 and employs nearly 60 UN human rights monitors. On 7 April 2022, the United Nations suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. By late October, the Ukrainian Prosecutor's office had documented 39,347 alleged Russian war crimes, identified more than 600 suspects, and initiated proceedings against approximately 80 of them.
On 17 March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova over allegations of involvement in the war crime of child abductions during the invasion of Ukraine. In 2024, ICC issued arrest warrants for top Russian military officers Sergei Shoigu, Valery Gerasimov, Sergey Kobylash, and Viktor Sokolov for alleged war crimes of directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects in Ukraine.
Allegations against the Armed Forces of Ukraine include mistreatment and executions of Russian prisoners of war.
Prohibited weapons
Russian forces used chemical weapons 465 times between 24 February 2022 and December 2023, according to Ukraine, including K-51 grenades, RGR grenades, Drofa-PM hand gas grenades, and RG-VO gas grenades, which contain an unknown chemical substance. Forbes and CNN reported that they likely used CS gas (tear gas). In May 2023, a television report on Russia's Channel One showed a Russian battalion commander talking about the effectiveness of chemicals used as weapons. The report also showed a drone dropping a tear gas grenade on a dugout. In December 2023, the Russian 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade wrote about its use of drones to drop K-51 grenades containing CS tear gas on Ukrainian positions. The use of tear gas is banned by international Chemical Weapons Convention and considered a chemical weapon if applied by military forces during warfare.
In May 2024, the United States Department of State imposed new sanctions against Russian entities and individuals due to Russian forces' use of chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops. In October 2024, the UK imposed sanctions on Russian troops it said were using chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine, accusing Moscow of ″cruel and inhumane tactics″. The Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops of the Russian Federation and its leader Igor Kirillov were among those sanctioned.
In February 2025 OPCW conducted on-site investigation and confirmed presence of CS in grenade remains at three locations on the Ukrainian side of the front-line. In July 2025, Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said that at least three Ukrainian deaths had been linked to the use of chemical weapons, and 2,500 people had reported symptoms related to chemical weapons to Ukrainian health authorities. Dutch and German intelligence agencies gathered evidence of widespread Russian use of chemical weapons in the war, including using drones to drop a choking agent to force soldiers out of trenches. Brekelmans said that Russia is intensifying its use of chemical weapons by expanding production, research capabilities and recruiting scientists, creating a wider threat to Ukraine and other countries.
Abduction and deportation
The International Criminal Court recognizes abduction and deportation as a war crime and the forced resettlement of children as a form of genocide.
Abduction of Ukrainian children
According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian forces have kidnapped over 121,000 Ukrainian children and deported them to Russia's eastern provinces. Some of these children's parents had been killed by the Russian military. The Russian State Duma has initiated legislation to formalize the "adoption" of these children.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned this act as a "blatant threat of illegal adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian citizens without adhering to the necessary procedures established by Ukrainian law." The Ministry has called on United Nations bodies to intervene in order to facilitate the return of these children to Ukraine.
On 1 June 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of forcibly deporting more than 200,000 children from Ukraine, including orphans and children separated from their families. He described this action as a "heinous war crime" and a "criminal policy," aimed at not only stealing people but also making the deportees forget about Ukraine and hindering their ability to return.
According to Ukrainian officials and two witnesses, Russian forces forcibly deported thousands of residents from Ukraine to Russia during the Siege of Mariupol. On 24 March, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that the Russian army had forcibly deported about 6,000 Mariupol residents as "hostages" and put more pressure on Ukraine. According to the Russian ministry of defense, residents of Mariupol had a "voluntary choice" whether to evacuate to Ukrainian- or Russian-controlled territory and that by 20 March about 60,000 Mariupol residents were "evacuated to Russia". Human Rights Watch was not been able to verify these accounts.
The US embassy in Kyiv cited the Ukrainian foreign ministry saying that 2,389 Ukrainian children had been illegally removed from Donetsk and Luhansk and taken to Russia.
On 24 March, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman said that over 402,000 Ukrainians had been forcefully taken to Russia, including about 84,000 children. Russian authorities said that more than 384,000 people, including over 80,000 children, had been evacuated to Russia from Ukraine and from the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Deportation of protected peoples such as civilians during war is prohibited by Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. On 7 June, Human Rights Watch specialist Tanya Lokshina emphasized this, reiterating that forcible involuntary deportation was itself a war crime, and called for Russia to stop this practice. In addition, Human Rights Watch and Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reported cases where refugees were being intimidated and pressured to implicate Armed Forces of Ukraine personnel for war crimes, including the Mariupol theatre airstrike, in long interrogation sessions.
In December 2023, Igor Salikov, a colonel of the Russian army and Wagner Group commander, defected to the Netherlands to testify about "atrocities against civilians" and forced deportation of large groups of children from Ukraine to Belarus.
Arbitrary detention and forced disappearance
In March 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported 270 cases of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of civilians, eight of whom were later found dead. The OHCHR informed the Human Rights Council that arbitrary detention of civilians, including 21 journalists and civil society activists, had become "widespread" in territory controlled by Russian forces and affiliated armed groups. Nine of them had already reportedly been released. The Human Rights Monitoring Mission also verified the arrests and detention of 24 public officials and civil servants, including three mayors, by Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups of the self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.
International humanitarian law allows the internment of civilians in armed conflict only when they individually pose a security threat, and all detained persons whose prisoners of war (PoW) status is in doubt must be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention until their status has been determined. Reports of missing civilians, most of them male, were rampant to the west of Kyiv as Russian troops withdrew. One woman in Makhariv told reporters she saw Russian soldiers take her son-in-law at gunpoint from their house, and that he had not been seen since. Another man disappeared in Shpytky, while attempting to deliver petrol to a friend. Only his burned out and bullet-ridden car was later found by Ukrainian troops.
On 5 July 2022, the Human Rights Council said that arbitrary detention of civilians had become "widespread" OHCHR also reported that since the beginning of the invasion the Security Service of Ukraine and National Police had arrested over one thousand pro-Russian supporters, and that 12 cases were likely to amount to enforced disappearance by Ukrainian law enforcement bodies.
As of 15 May 2022, 62 victims (44 men and 18 women) of enforced disappearance had been released by Russian and Russian-affiliated armed groups. Most often the victims were released in "exchanges of prisoners" between Russia and Ukraine. According to the OHCHR, such exchanges might constitute cases of hostage taking; if Russia's release of detained Ukrainian civilians was made conditional on Ukraine's release of Russian prisoners of war, this, in armed conflict, amounts to a war crime.
Filtration camps
Evacuees from Mariupol raised concerns about the treatment of fellow evacuees by Russian troops at a Russian filtration camp that reportedly housed civilians until they were evacuated. Ukrainian officials have called similar camps "modern-day concentration camps". Refugees reported torture and killings at filtration camps, especially in Mariupol. This included beatings, electrocution and suffocation with plastic bags over the heads.
The refugees were fingerprinted, photographed from all sides, and had their phones searched. Anyone believed to be a "Ukrainian Nazi" was taken to Donetsk for interrogation. Refugees told reporters the camps lacked basic necessities and most evacuations forced refugees into Russia.
On 5 July the OHCHR expressed concern about the whereabouts and treatment of those still in the filtration process who were possibly detained in unknown locations at high risk of torture and ill-treatment.
Attacks on civilians
The charter of the International Criminal Court, defines attacks against civilian infrastructure constitute crimes of war. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said Russia made indiscriminate attacks and strikes on civilian assets like houses, hospitals, schools and kindergartens. On 25 February, Amnesty International said Russian forces had "shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives by using ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely-populated areas". Russia falsely claimed it only used precision-guided weapons, Amnesty said, and attacks on Vuhledar, Kharkiv and Uman, were likely crimes of war.
A 3 March statement from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it recorded at least 1006 civilian casualties in the first week of the invasion, but believed the real figures were "considerably higher."
The World Health Organization said on 6 March that multiple health care centres had been attacked, and Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that "attacks on healthcare facilities or workers breach medical neutrality and violate international humanitarian law."
Amnesty reported that Russia repeatedly violated international humanitarian law with indiscriminate attacks and direct attacks on civilian targets. Amnesty verified reports and footage demonstrated numerous strikes on hospitals and schools and the use of inaccurate explosive weapons and banned weapons such as cluster bombs.
On 5 July, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet reported that most civilian casualties documented by her office were caused by the Russians' repeated use of explosive weapons in populated areas, and that the heavy civilian toll from indiscriminate weapons and tactics had become "indisputable".
Reports on the use of cluster munitions in populated areas of Ukraine raised concerns about civilian casualties. Neither the Russian Federation nor Ukraine ratified the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, but principles of international humanitarian law prohibit indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said cluster munitions were used by both Russian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists, and to a lesser degree by Ukrainian armed forces.
The New York Times reported on 19 June 2023 it had seen over 1000 photographs of cluster munitions in populated areas. It said most were unguided missiles with a propensity for collateral damage to civilians.
In November 2024, Amnesty International reported that 2024 had seen a significant increase in civilian casualties, particularly highlighting attacks, including war crimes, resulting in children killed and injured in Russian airstrikes. Amnesty said it had verified over 120 videos and images of attacks against children in 2024, data suggesting the summer being the deadliest period.