Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine welcomes the report of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine.

In the third year of its work, the Commission has documented further gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and has provided irrefutable evidence of the heinous crimes that Russia has systematically committed in the course of its armed aggression against our country.

The Russian Federation continues to torture civilians and prisoners of war, to hold hostages in inhumane conditions and to use sexual violence as a method of torture, particularly against male detainees. The report contains blatant evidence of numerous executions of prisoners of war and the implementation of a ‘take no prisoners’ policy by the Russian command, in direct and cynical violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The Commission explicitly states that massive and systematic torture and enforced disappearances are not only war crimes, but elements of a deliberate Russian state policy operating with absolute impunity. The Commission classifies such actions as crimes against humanity, which entail the highest level of international responsibility.

The Commission's conclusions once again underline the urgent need to continue the international investigation of all Russian crimes, to bring the perpetrators to justice, to establish a special tribunal for the crime of aggression and to increase sanctions pressure. We are confident that the evidence collected by the Commission should become the basis for cases in international courts, including the International Criminal Court.

Once again, the world can see that the Russian authorities continue to deliberately and systematically violate international law, despite numerous calls from the international community, resolutions by the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council, and regular appeals by the Commission and other international human rights mechanisms. To cover up its shameful crimes, Russia has blatantly ignored their requests for information on missing persons, unlawfully detained civilians and deported children.

We call on the international community to continue to exert systematic pressure on the aggressor state to stop crimes against humanity and war crimes, demand access for international monitoring mechanisms and humanitarian missions to places where Ukrainian POWs and illegally detained civilians are held, ensure prisoner exchanges and return abducted children.

There is no statute of limitations for Russia's crimes. Ukraine and the world must work together to prove that there will be no impunity.