Denial of the right to a fair trial as an international crime during Russia’s war against Ukraine: context, practice, law and prospects
Since the beginning of Russia’s armed aggression and occupation of the Crimean peninsula and certain parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the occupation authorities have introduced systematic practices of persecuting Ukrainian citizens, including mostly civilians, who resist the occupation, disagree with the occupation or are perceived as such by the Russian Federation. One of the tools of such persecution was the hundreds of criminal cases initiated by the occupation authorities against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war on trumped-up charges.
The results of monitoring and reports by Ukrainian human rights organisations and data from international organisations indicate systemic problems with violations of the right to a fair trial in such criminal cases. At the same time, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in a significant increase in such cases and the expansion of this practice not only to civilians but also to Ukrainian prisoners of war. Likely, such measures to deploy Russia’s policy of judicial persecution against Ukrainian citizens were dictated by the need to suppress resistance to the occupation and justify the goals of the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine, as stated by the authorities. Currently, human rights organisations report at least 1,800 civilians and more than 6,000 prisoners3 of war held by Russia and subject to prosecution in courts under its control.
The research analyses aspects of Russia’s intentions and implementation of its policy of judicial persecution of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war. The available and analysed materials prove that such a policy of judicial persecution has signs of war crimes (denial of the right to a fair trial) and persecution as a crime against humanity (in terms of the persecution of civilians). The results of the research can be useful for Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and international criminal justice bodies, human rights defenders, academics, the media community, as well as international partners who monitor the situation with Russia’s crimes as a result of its aggression against Ukraine.
The research was initiated and prepared by the human rights organisations the Human Rights Centre ZMINA and the Media Initiative for Human Rights in cooperation with the online publication Graty and the NGO Crimean Process.
It was made possible with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
The report is available in English and Ukrainian.
