GENEVA (AP) — Russian attacks against civilians in Ukraine, including systematic torture and killing in occupied regions, amount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, according to a report from a U.N.-backed inquiry released Thursday.
The sweeping human rights report, released a year to the day after a Russian airstrike on a theater in Mariupol killed hundreds sheltering inside, marked a highly unusual condemnation of a member of the U.N. Security Council.
Among potential crimes against humanity, the report cited repeated attacks targeting Ukrainian infrastructure since the fall that left hundreds of thousands without heat and electricity during the coldest months, as well as the "systematic and widespread" use of torture across multiple regions under Russian occupation.
A commission of inquiry is the most powerful tool used by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council to scrutinize abuses and violations around the world. The investigation released Thursday was set up during an urgent debate shortly after Russia's invasion last year.
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The commission's three members are independent human rights experts, and its staff gets support and funding from the council and the U.N. human rights office.
The report's authors noted a "small number" of apparent violations by Ukrainian forces, including one they said was under criminal investigation by Ukrainian authorities, but reserved the vast majority of their report for allegations against Russia.
Russia did not respond to the inquiry's appeals for information.
Most of the abuses highlighted by the investigation were already well known, but the findings come with the imprimatur of the international community: The experts work under a mandate overwhelmingly created last year by the Human Rights Council, which brings together the governments of 47 U.N. member countries.
Ultimately, the report may add to efforts to boost accountability for crimes committed in the war — whether by the International Criminal Court or by some individual countries that have taken on the right to apply "universal jurisdiction" to prosecute atrocities, wherever they may take place.
NOTE: The following photo gallery contains graphic images
Photos: In Ukraine, searing images capture a year of war
Natali Sevriukova is overcome with emotion as she stands outside her destroyed apartment building following a rocket attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Ukrainians crowd under a destroyed bridge as they try to flee by crossing the Irpin River on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, March 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Stanislav says goodbye to his 2-year-old son, David, and wife, Anna, after they boarded a train that will take them to Lviv, from the station in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 3. 2022. Stanislav stayed to fight as his family sought refuge in a neighboring country. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
A child in a stroller is lifted across an improvised path as people flee Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Ukrainian emergency personnel and police officers evacuate injured pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. "Kill me now!" she screamed, as they struggled to save her life at another hospital even closer to the frontline. The baby was born dead, and a half-hour later, Iryna died too. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A man runs after recovering items from a burning shop following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
An elderly woman is assisted while crossing the Irpin River on an improvised path under a bridge that was destroyed by Ukrainian troops designed to slow any Russian military advance, while fleeing the town of Irpin, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A woman reacts as she waits for a train trying to leave Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Cadets practice with gas masks during a lesson in a bomb shelter on the first day of school at a cadet lyceum in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Armored vehicles destroyed during the fighting between Ukrainian and Russian armed forces lie on a bank of the frozen Siverskiy Donets River in the recently-liberated village of Bogorodychne, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. On the seventh floor of the building, two elderly women Lydya and Nataliya were stuck in their apartment because they couldn't make it down to the shelter, and were killed in the explosion. The two heavily burned bodies were buried by neighbors in front of the building. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Destroyed Russian tanks sit on a main road after battles near Brovary, north of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Ira Gavriluk holds her cat as she stands near the bodies of her husband and brother who were killed in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Ludmila, left, says goodbye to her granddaughter, Kristina, who, with her son, Yaric, departs by train from Odesa, southern Ukraine, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
The body of a man with his hands tied behind his back lies on the ground in Bucha, Ukraine, Sunday, April 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
A man and child ride a bicycle as bodies of civilians lie in the street in the formerly Russian-occupied Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine, Saturday, April 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Children look out of the window of an unheated Lviv-bound train, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
A civilian wears a Vladimir Putin mask as a spoof, while a Ukrainian soldier stands atop a destroyed Russian tank in Bucha, Ukraine, outside of Kyiv, on April 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Nina Shevchenko mourns over the body of her 15-year-old son, Artem Shevchenko, who was killed in a Russian attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday, April 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
The body of an elderly woman lies inside a house in Bucha, outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Elderly men lie in beds at a hospice in Chasiv Yar city, Donetsk district, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. At least 35 men and women, some in wheelchairs and most of them with mobility issues, were helped by volunteers to flee from the region that has been under attack in the last few weeks. They are being transported to Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Ukrainian soldiers carry the coffin of Volodymyr Losev, 38, during his funeral in Zorya Truda in the Odesa region of Ukraine, Monday, May 16, 2022. The 38-year-old Ukrainian volunteer soldier was killed on May 7 when the military vehicle he was driving ran over a mine in eastern Ukraine. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Nila Zelinska holds her granddaughter's doll found in her destroyed house in Potashnya on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Zelinska had just returned to her hometown after escaping war to find out she is homeless. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Volodymyr, 66, injured from a strike, sits on a chair in his damaged apartment in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
Relatives and friends pay their last respects to Liza, a 4-year-old girl killed in a Russian attack, during a mourning ceremony in an Orthodox church in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Sunday, July 17, 2022. Wearing a blue denim jacket with flowers, Liza was among 23 people killed, including two boys aged 7 and 8, in a missile strike three days earlier in Vinnytsia. Her mother, Iryna Dmytrieva, was among the scores injured. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Anastasia Ohrimenko, 26, is comforted by relatives as she cries next to the coffin of her husband, Yury Styglyuk, a Ukrainian serviceman who died in combat on Aug. 24, in Maryinka, Donetsk, during his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery towards Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/LIBKOS)
A woman warms her dog in her coat in Kivsharivka, Ukraine, Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022. Residents in Kivsharivka have been living without gas, electricity or running water for around three weeks. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Ukrainian family members reunite for the first time since Russian troops withdrew from the Kherson region in the village of Tsentralne, southern Ukraine, on Nov. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
A resident wounded after a Russian attack lies inside an ambulance before being taken to a hospital in Kherson, southern Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
A woman transporting the coffin holding the body of her son, a soldier who was killed in fighting with Russians, sits in a boat crossing the Siverskyi Donets River near Staryi Saltiv, Kharkiv region on Wednesday Jan. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Erik Marmor)
A woman walks with a flashlight during a power outage in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Ukrainian military doctors treat an injured comrade who was evacuated from the battlefield at the hospital in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. The serviceman did not survive. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
The body of a woman lies under rubble after a Russian rocket hit a multistory building leaving many people under debris in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Emergency workers clear the rubble after a Russian rocket hit a multistory building leaving many people under debris in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Relatives mourn over the body of Oleksiy Zavadskyi, a Ukrainian serviceman who died in combat on Jan. 15 in Bakhmut, during his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine, on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
Ambulance paramedic Oleksandr Konovalov performs CPR on a girl injured by shelling in a residential area, next to her father, left, after arriving at the city hospital in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. The girl did not survive. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Residents prepare tea in a basement being used as a bomb shelter in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
A woman takes shelter in a basement with no electricity in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
