As US Secretary of State John Kerry met Monday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva for talks aiming to end the fighting in Ukraine, the United Nations released a report announcing that the death toll in the country surpassed 6,000 since April 2014.
The casualties escalated rapidly between Jan. 13 and Feb. 15 of this year, when 842 were killed, among them 359 civilians. Another 3,410 were wounded, 916 of them civilians. Many more are held in “illegal and arbitrary” detention on both sides. There are also multiple cases of kidnappings and torture.
The ceasefire signed on Feb. 12 remains very fragile, though the Ukrainian government reported a significant drop in attacks from the rebels over the weekend.
“It is imperative that all sides comply with the provisions of the Minsk Agreements and halt the indiscriminate shelling and other hostilities that have created a dreadful situation for civilians—in stark disregard of international humanitarian law and human rights law,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein in a statement.
The UN report lists other, indirect effects of the war. According to government numbers, over one million people are registered as internally displaced persons. “Heavy and indiscriminate shelling,” especially since January of this year, destroyed buildings and infrastructure and forced people to leave their homes.
As of Feb. 15, the report says 202,000 people remained without electricity and nearly 550,000 were cut off from safe drinking water. There are food and medicine shortages, welfare programs are suspended and state institutions such as nursing homes and prisons stopped receiving funding. Many schools are closed, limiting access to education.
Here’s a breakdown of the casualties. The numbers reported in Donetsk and Luhansk include civilians and some of the Kremlin-backed rebels.
