In the first eight months of 2026, an average of more than 400 civilians were killed or injured each week in Ukraine, a 55 percent increase compared to the same period in 2025. This was stated by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, as reported by the Kyiv Independent.
Turk's office documented 15,280 civilians killed or injured in the first eight months of the year, following intensified Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure . On the front lines, the office found that nearly 2,500 civilians were killed or injured by Russian air strikes in the same period, a 62 percent increase over the previous year.
“The war in Ukraine is a human rights catastrophe that grows and intensifies by the week , causing unimaginable suffering to civilians and threatening even greater disaster across the region,” Türk said.
Russian attacks on schools, medical centers, apartment buildings, railways and shops are causing a growing number of civilian casualties, while the Ukrainian population lives in a "constant state of fear," he said.
The United Nations office found "shocking" levels of sexual violence against civilians and prisoners of war . Turk accused the Russian Federation of using such "abhorrent acts to torture, intimidate, and coerce individuals and communities."
According to the report, of the 1,004 confirmed cases of conflict-related sexual violence committed between February 2022 and July 2026 against civilians and prisoners of war, 89% were attributed to Russian forces . Eleven% of the total confirmed cases were attributed to Ukrainian forces, with threats of sexual violence accounting for nearly half of these violations.
(Unioneonline)
