headlines: ‘An abyss of fear’: A report accuses Russia of further abuses against civilians.
articles: Russian forces have tortured and beaten civilians in the areas of southern Ukraine that they control, part of a series of abuses that may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said this weekend in a report that further undermined the public case repeatedly made by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for the invasion.
  
  Atrocities committed by Russian forces north of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, have already drawn global outrage and have been the subject of war crimes trials by Ukrainian prosecutors, but the report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, casts a spotlight on the south of the country, where the Russian occupation forces tightly control access and information.
  
  Starting in February, Russian forces pushed north from Crimea, a region of Ukraine that Moscow seized in 2014, and took control of territory along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts including in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Provinces.