The study was published on Friday, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
The HRW said it had spoken with 71 people from Kherson, Melitopol, Berdyansk, Skadovsk and 10 other cities and towns in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Torture, disappearances, deaths
They “described 42 cases in which Russian occupation forces either forcibly disappeared civilians or otherwise held them arbitrarily, in some cases incommunicado, and tortured many of them,” according to the report.
The international human rights organisation said it had “documented the torture of three members of the Territorial Defense Forces who were POWs. Two of them died.”
According to the HRW, some of the detainees are being unlawfully transferred to Russia or the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.
The wife of one of the Ukrainians said her husband had been forcibly transferred to Crimea and forced to carry out “corrective labour,” the HRW said.
'Russia seeks to assert sovereignty'
“The purpose of the abuse seems to be to obtain information and to instil fear so that people will accept the occupation, as Russia seeks to assert sovereignty over occupied territory in violation of international law,” the HRW added.
Kherson City was one of the first Ukrainian cities to fall to Russian forces after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24.
US officials have warned that Russia will seek to annex several regions of Ukraine, just as it did with Crimea in 2014.
Friday is day 149 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, hrw.org