Ukraine 5 AM Coalition devoted to documenting war crimes is launched in Ukraine

Ukraine 5 AM Coalition devoted to documenting war crimes is launched in Ukraine. Our purpose is to protect the victims of Russian armed aggression in Ukraine and to bring to justice the top leadership of the Russian Federation, as well as the direct perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, human rights activists have been recording war crimes, crimes against humanity, and grave human rights violations. These include (but not limited to) killing and wounding civilians, destroying civilian buildings, cultural sites, looting, using civilians as a human shield, conscripting persons from Crimea and Donbas into the occupier’s army, obstructing peaceful assemblies, and abducting pro-Ukrainian activists.

Ukraine 5 AM Coalition has already started collecting and organizing such information and providing legal protection to victims. The members of the coalition have relevant professional experience and expertise, as they have already been documenting grave crimes since the beginning of the Russian aggression in the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014, followed by hundreds submissions to international courts.

The coalition is formed by 16 Ukrainian human rights organizations:

• Human Rights Centre ZMINA

• Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union

• Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group

• Regional Centre for Human Rights

• Media Initiative for Human Rights

• The Institute for Peace and Common Ground (IPCG) 

• Centre of Civil Education “Almenda”

• Crimea SOS

• Crimean Human Rights Group

• Vostok SOS

• Social Action Centre

• Advocacy Advisory Panel

• Kharkiv Institute for Social Research

• DEJURE Foundation

• Truth Hounds

• Educational Human Rights House Chernihiv

We focus our work on several areas:

• Documentation of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine;
• Informing the public in Ukraine and abroad about grave crimes in the context of the Russian aggression in Ukraine;
• Training of journalists and volunteers on working with witnesses of war crimes and its documentation;
• Protection of victims of the Russian-Ukrainian war via domestic and international justice mechanisms;
• Ensuring effective and coordinated cooperation of national and international non-governmental organizations on justice processes;
• Promoting the inevitability of punishment for grave crimes and creating special mechanisms to prosecute the ruling elite of the Russian Federation for committing the crime of aggression against Ukraine.

Human rights activists have also begun training volunteers and journalists to document eyewitness testimony. We urge witnesses to crimes to report this to the email: warcrimesos.ua@gmail.com.