KIEV:

The United Nations on Monday released a damning report accusing Ukranian forces and Russian-backed rebels of torturing and indiscriminately shelling civilians in the bloody conflict in the separatist east.

The UN estimates the eight-month conflict has killed at least 4,634 and wounded 10,234 people — although Monday’s survey said “the actual numbers of casualties is likely to be considerably higher.”

And it said the lives of 5.2 million residents living in the devastated region was deteriorating further with the onset of winter and a complete breakdown of local infrastructure that left homes without water or heat.

The “situation is becoming extremely dire for the population, particularly older persons, children and people in institutional care, many of whom are on the brink of survival,” the United Nations’ human rights office said.

But the 27-page UN study was careful to assign blame for the humanitarian crisis on both the pro-Western government in Kiev and the mostly Russian-speaking insurgents who rose up in April against its rule.

“The efforts of the government to safeguard the territorial integrity of Ukraine and restore law and order in the conflict zone have been accompanied by arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances of people suspected of ‘separatism and terrorism’,” the report said.

“Most of such human rights violations appear to have been perpetrated by certain voluntary battalions or by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).”

The United Nations said the guerrillas in turn were guilty of creating a criminal state in parts of the industrial regions of Lugansk and Donetsk they control with the help of “foreign fighters” — a reference to Russian crack troops whose presence Moscow denies.

“As law and order increasingly broke down, so more human rights abuses, such as killings, torture, abduction for ransom and forced labour, started to be committed by members of armed groups, supported by increasing numbers of foreign fighters,” said the report.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko — elected in a snap May ballot that followed the downfall after months of street protests of a Moscow-backed leadership - has promised to examine allegations of abuses by his troops.

But rights groups believe that some of the gravest crimes are being committed by Ukrainian ultra-nationalist volunteers who joined the fighting after taking an active part in last winter’s popular uprising in Kiev.

Moscow also accuses the SBU — Ukraine’s chief successor to the Soviet-era KGB — of abducting rebel sympathisers and detaining without charges Russian reporters covering the war.

The UN report also pointed to “limited progress” by Kiev in investigating more than 300 cases of indiscriminate shelling of residential areas identified by foreign monitors since the start of the year.

While violence has abated in recent days, shelling has repeatedly punctured the truce agreed between Ukrainian government forces and separatists, worsening a humanitarian crisis that has left many civilians without adequate social support.

“The conflict is in its ninth month and the situation is becoming increasingly dire for the population still living in the east,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zaid Ra’ad Al Hussain said in a statement.

The central government in Kiev has severed financial ties with the separatist territories, cutting off pensions and welfare payments due to fears that the funds would end up financing rebel military operations.

This decision is likely to worsen the economic and social vulnerabilities of people in the east, the United Nations said, as, despite desiring total autonomy, rebel authorities have yet to sort out their finances, creating an institutional vacuum.

“The situation of many people, including those held against their will, in areas under the control of the armed groups may well be life-threatening,” Zaid said.

The report also highlighted systematic human rights violations on the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in March.

UN monitors have repeatedly expressed concern over the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities such as Crimea’s sizeable Tatar population, since Moscow seized the territory, which has long been home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

The report said those who have voiced opposition to the annexation have had property seized and faced issues over their citizenship.