Chapter 1
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, the UN's human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has verified at least 16,874 civilians killed, 820 of them children, and 51,273 injured, on its count to July 2026. Those are the deaths it could check one by one, not an estimate of the total. By that count 2026 has been far deadlier than the two years before it. July was the deadliest month since May 2022, and the worst for children since April of that year. By the end of August more civilians had been killed in 2026 than in the whole of 2025: 2,222, a figure 55 per cent above the same eight months of the previous year and more than double 2024's. Every month of the year has brought more civilians killed and injured than the same month in any of the three years before it, and September was the deadliest September of the war.
Chapter 2
Two kinds of weapon do most of the killing
Two kinds of weapon do most of the killing. Far from the front line, Russian missiles and long-range drones hit cities: they caused 47 per cent of civilian casualties in August and just over half in September, when Kyiv was hit more often than in any earlier month. Near the front line, short-range drones do it. In July they killed 111 civilians and injured 710, the most from that weapon since the invasion began and 27 per cent of every casualty the mission verified that month. In Kherson the attacks have a pattern and a name, the "human safari": a drone stalked a vegetable seller through a market on 4 August, another killed four people in a minibus on 19 August, and on 22 August a Russian army's own channel posted, then deleted, footage of its drone killing a man on a bicycle near Kramatorsk. A 2025 UN report found Russian forces had repeatedly killed and injured civilians in Kherson with drones, and the Institute for the Study of War assesses that the Russian military has institutionalised harm to civilians as a tool of war. Russia denies targeting civilians. In October 2026 the UN’s Commission of Inquiry went further on the long-range attacks: it found that Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s energy system were war crimes and a crime against humanity, carried out under a state policy to deprive civilians of power and cause suffering. Glide bombs add a third weapon in towns within reach of the line: on 8 October one hit two buses in Kramatorsk. The war also kills civilians in Russia and in occupied Ukraine. Russian authorities report hundreds killed there; the UN mission says it cannot check those claims without independent access.
Chapter 3
Detention is the harm that is hardest to count
Detention is the harm that is hardest to count. The UN says more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians remain in Russian custody, many held incommunicado. It has documented the execution of 129 Ukrainian prisoners of war at capture and the deaths of 48 more in custody. More than 95 per cent of the released Ukrainian prisoners of war it interviewed reported torture or ill-treatment, as did 85 per cent of released civilian detainees. Russia has never let the mission into a place of detention, so every account was taken after release. Two former detainees testified at the Security Council in August 2026: Leniie Umerova, a Crimean Tatar activist moved through seven facilities after a court ordered her release, and Khuan Leyva Garsiya, an Azovstal defender who spent 1,183 days as a prisoner. The mission applies the same method to Ukraine, where it does have access. About half the Russian prisoners of war it interviewed reported ill-treatment, mostly at capture and first interrogation, while official Ukrainian facilities were judged generally compliant with humanitarian law. A UN assistant secretary-general called the two records comparable in kind and of "a fundamentally different scale". Russia keeps moving detainees from occupied land into its own prisons, which ISW assesses likely breaches the Fourth Geneva Convention, and keeps handing down long treason and espionage sentences to those who remain.
Chapter 4
Ukraine says more than 20,000 of its children have been deported or…
Ukraine says more than 20,000 of its children have been deported or abducted to Russia and 2,495 have come back. Both are Kyiv's own figures, and the deportation count is an allegation. A UN inquiry found in September that children in occupied areas are schooled on the Russian curriculum under coercion, with weapons training compulsory from the age of fourteen. A conference in Toronto on 28–29 September produced a pledge, backed by more than fifty states and organisations, to support the tracing and return of children, detained civilians and prisoners of war. It sets no number, fund or deadline. For detained civilians, it concedes, no predictable mechanism for release and return has yet emerged.
Chapter 5
In some places occupation itself is the harm
In some places occupation itself is the harm. About 2,000 people remain in Russian-held Oleshky without running water, power or gas. Residents say no food has come in by road since June, and the routes out are mined. A local truce began there on 27 October 2026 to let aid in and people out. What is unresolved is whether anyone can get them out, whether the count of returned children grows past the 2,495 Kyiv reports, and whether the rise that has made 2026 deadlier than the two years before it begins to turn.
And now
A UN inquiry has found that Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s power system is a crime against humanity, and the people of occupied Oleshky have their first truce, though not yet a way out.
On October 26 the UN’s Commission of Inquiry told the General Assembly that Russian authorities committed war crimes and the crime against humanity of “other inhumane acts” by attacking Ukraine’s energy system. It found the attacks followed a state policy to deprive civilians of power and cause suffering, on the evidence of 255 witnesses who lived through last winter at minus 21°C.
A local truce took effect in and around Oleshky on October 27 and runs to November 1, Ukraine says. The White House credits Melania Trump with brokering it. Ukraine’s and Russia’s human-rights commissioners said on October 29 that it was holding, with aid due the next day. No one had been evacuated, estimates of who remains run from 1,700 to 6,000, and reported plans route evacuees through Crimea or Russia.
The killing went on elsewhere. On October 29 a drone hit a crowded platform at Dnipro’s station, killing 14, and strikes on Chernihiv and Kremenchuk killed five more, officials said.
Where it stands today →