Caitlin Howarth, the Director of Operations for the Conflict Observatory team at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, speaks about how Russia is torturing and killing Ukrainians in custody.
What we found out
Our reporting was predominately drawn up to the date that the report was issued. Most of our material was drawn prior to the liberation of Kherson. So prior – so a lot of our material – we were drawing on reports immediately prior to the release of the report. However, given that fact, it’s important to understand that these are likely significantly undercounting other new facts that are likely now going to be present on the ground. So, you should be on the lookout for some upcoming reports from us that will significantly update these numbers and will give new details into what has become of people who, as of now, we can only document up to the point of their disappearance or detention.
On to our methodology, how we actually were able to identify individuals, identify detention locations, and the challenges and limitations of doing all of this. When it came to individuals, it’s important to understand that the individual accounts recorded are gathered from a variety of different locations. Social media posts – these are user-generated documents that are posted by the individuals themselves and in many cases by families or eyewitnesses to their detention or abduction, other instances related to how they were detained or just – or potentially disappeared. In some cases, we also were able to document individual accounts based on the statements of governments of either Ukraine or Russia itself. In other instances, we were able to document individual cases based off of news media reports that were generated on their behalf. Some of these were generated by human rights organizations. I should note that in the case of Crimean Tatars, human rights organizations played a particularly helpful role, and publications of the governments of Ukraine and Russia were also specifically important in these cases.
It’s important to keep in mind that the individual account of a single person on its own does not meet a high confidence standard. We have to work according to the Berkeley standards and those protocols are very specific in terms of building credibility over a number of sources and from multiple angles. So, any single source cannot by itself reach high confidence alone; or, if it does, it usually has to include multiple things that can then go on to be independently verified.
In order to build that level of high confidence, we had to be able to combine additional allegations into the aggregate. So, it’s important to kind of keep in mind that as we’re building additional accounts we have to look at whether we can build credible allegations in the aggregate in order to achieve a high confidence standard.
On detention locations, these were also built from both primary and secondary open sources, and in all of these cases we were able to achieve a primary geolocation verification through satellite imagery, and we were only able to achieve that high confidence standard once we had found five high quality and independent sources which, in this case, could have included also three additional individual narratives identifying that site as a location connected to the detention of persons.
Some of the challenges related to this, as I mentioned before, we had some specific challenges related to individual accounts and how many independent points of verification we could find based off of a single account and getting to a comprehensive level. We definitely did not have a – either a comprehensive or a random sample. When working on instances of detention and disappearance, this is something where one is not going to necessarily achieve a random sample. We have an ethical obligation to document every case that we can find, but that by definition also means that we are not achieving a random sampling of an entire population.
When reporting – when gathering reporting, there is also certain biases that are introduced in terms of who is reported on, which cases are considered to be relevant which are reported on in this kind of context versus cases that might be deemed missing but not necessarily related to an occupation. There are cases that are considered also to have certain survivorship and release biases. Not everybody’s individual case is necessarily reported on or discussed over social media or discussed with a reporter or a human rights organization, and that may be based off of the understanding that a family or bystanders have in terms of the sensitivities related to that specific case.
And satellite imagery, of course, also this is imagery that cannot view incidents or activity that are taking place inside specific buildings, so there are limitations to what we are able to confirm using satellite imagery alone. That is why we make sure to augment this with additional open source images, photographs, video, other things that are taken from different vantage points. That is also why we expect that we’ll be able to augment this particular report with new reporting that will come based off of additional research in the coming months.
Interesting trends
Some interesting trends that we found when trying to get a better understanding of who has been detained over the last several months. First, you already heard a bit of our concerns about the Crimean Tatar population. In Tatar-majority towns, we have seen that these have appeared to have received some more attention, and those who have been accused of membership in a Tatar voluntary organization were disproportionately likely to be detained. They were also disproportionately likely to be charged with a crime.
Now, this is important because there are actually – the clear majority of those who were detained or who seem to have been – who seem to have suffered an enforced disappearance do not appear to have been charged with any specific legal crime or to have entered into the criminal justice system in any way according to our data so far. However, in the case of Crimean Tatars, we do see that they have actually been charged with crimes.
And so, this is an important distinction. We do, I want to note, see that there are more details related to these cases, and in part that is due to the fact that they have been documented somewhat more comprehensively due to some of the excellent reporting and follow-up that’s happened from Crimean Tatar human rights organizations. So there may be some discrepancy introduced from that, but we want to emphasize as well that there are some other instances here where maybe some of the – some of the details may also just be some discrepancies. So, it’s something that we continue to watch.
Of those who are detained, the vast majority are male; and of those, the clear majority were of military age. A very significant number were government officials. Another significant number were civil society or volunteer, and volunteer has a very specific meaning in this context so I would urge you all to look at the report and see some of the definitions that are used in this context. Teachers also appear to have been an important target group on this list, as were journalists. Among those who were detained, there were a half dozen instances of family members than subsequently being detained.
And when it came to electronic surveillance and monitoring, we saw that about 24 individuals had personal electronics taken, accessed, or monitored. And when it came to monitoring, we do see that there were clear instances of monitoring being reported by family members or others associated with those detainees.
So these would be instances where, for example, a detainee having been taken and known to be in detention, a family member or somebody else who they knew would attempt to contact them over their digital device, would see that their message had been read, had been accessed, and in some cases would then get a response to a message or would have some form of outreach, but that the response would be in a manner inconsistent with their loved one. And this was significantly higher rate among Crimean Tatars where the rate of electronics taken, accessed, or monitored was all the way up to 19 percent. And again, I want to stress that those are confirmed instances, and the actual rates may have been higher.
Russia’s military formed by far the clearest group. FSB were also among this group, and you’ll also see a note here for election workers. These are people who were accompanied by armed forces going door to door during the recent referendum.
There is an important discrepancy here in that, as opposed to Donetsk, there was very little observed involvement of any sort of proxy forces. So instead of seeing proxies for Russia’s military or other sort of non-official or associated forces with Russia’s armed forces, in these cases we saw clearly that these were Russia’s military or FSB in the vast majority of cases. There were some unknowns that were also documented, but in this case truly a clear majority. And these were also not cases where somebody would simply say, yes, it was Russia’s military and then move on. These were documented instances where emblems were observed, uniforms were observed, there’s additional documentation to demonstrate that in fact these are correctly identified as military.
