News

YouTube increasingly blocked in occupied Crimea as Russia intensifies censorship over its war against Ukraine
25.09.2023
Occupied Crimea may, it is suggested, be Russia’s testing ground because of the large number of Crimeans opposing its invasion and annexation of the peninsula

68-year-old Crimean Halyna Dovhopola imprisoned in Russia for 12 years on ‘treason’ charges for supporting Ukraine
25.09.2023
The charges against Halyna Dovhopola remain as secret as the ‘court hearings’ behind closed doors, without an independent lawyer, but she was almost certainly targeted because of her pro-Ukrainian views

Russia claims tortured POW who defended Ukraine in Kherson committed ‘international terrorism’
22.09.2023
Pavlo Zaporozhets is facing a 20-year sentence or life imprisonment under Russian legislation although he is accused only of actions, carried out by a Ukrainian defender, against the Russians who had invaded and seized Kherson

Prominent Crimean Tatar journalist 'sentenced' by Russian court to 6 years for Facebook post about saving Oleh Sentsov's life
22.09.2023
The ‘trial’ and sentence against Aider Muzhdabaev over strong words on Facebook would be easier to take seriously if state-employed propagandists did not call to murder Ukrainian children and destroy Ukrainian cities on television

Russian FSB get ‘good terrorism statistics’ by imprisoning Crimean Tatar pensioners
20.09.2023
Russia has already killed two political prisoners and is clearly willing to cause the death of 68-year-old Khalil Mambetov; Azamat Eyupov (60) and others as part of its terrorization by quota ‘trials’

Russians abduct and murder a young Ukrainian couple in occupied Kherson oblast
20.09.2023
Relatives believe that Anastasia and Valery Saksahansky were abducted and killed because they had refused to take Russian citizenship

Moscow claims it invaded 'in self-defence’ at UN Court heaing into Ukraine’s first Genocide Case against Russia
19.09.2023
Russia seems to have had difficulty finding international lawyers to represent it in this case, in which its arguments concentrate on the same lies about a ‘neo-Nazi regime’ committing ‘genocide against Russian-speakers’ peddled since 2014

Russia admits holding Kherson Mayor prisoner 15 months after abducting him for refusing to collaborate
18.09.2023
Moscow is still refusing to say where it is imprisoning Ihor Kolykhaev and is illegally refusing to let the Red Cross see him, very likely because of the torture he reportedly endured

'Nationalized' Ukrainian property sold in occupied Crimea to finance Russia's war against Ukraine
18.09.2023
Russia’s plundering of Ukrainian territory, by whatever name, has no legal standing and any such sales are legally void

Mariupol residents whose apartments Russia bombed left homeless as new buildings sold to Russians
15.09.2023
Mariupol residents are desperately trying to stop Russia from demolishing what remains of their bombed apartment blocks, as what the Russians ‘rebuild’, they then ‘sell’ for profit, with such apartments “not envisaged” for their real owners.
Publications

‘We believed the Russians would not destroy our houses’
19.09.2023
Viktoriia was born and lived all her life in Kharkiv. A full-scale war found her and her small child on the city's eastern outskirts, coming under attack in the first hours of the invasion. Viktoriia's father believed that the fighting would not affect the civilian population. After two weeks of living in a basement, they drove to the station through deserted Kharkiv to evacuate to Lviv.

‘I’m not used to having four coffins with soldiers in the temple’, — priest Viktor Marynchak
18.09.2023
After the invasion began, Viktor Marynchak continued to serve in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, although he blessed everyone who decided to leave Kharkiv to evacuate. Military funerals are often held in the church now, forcing Father Viktor to ask himself difficult questions.

Playing Bach’s music accompanied by explosions. Accordionist Ihor Zavadskyi
15.09.2023
Every day since the beginning of the war, a Ukrainian accordionist plays songs and publishes them on his channel to keep the spirits up. His work during the war became the basis of a new record-breaking album.

‘I dream that my work will become unnecessary’
14.09.2023
Viktoriia Nesterenko is a co-founder of the Wings of Victory Foundation, which helps civilians and military personnel. In particular, to Ukrainian Muslims who left to defend their homeland. Can religious rituals become a hindrance in war? How do people of different faiths get along at the front lines? Our interview is about the work and future of the fund.

‘It was clear that the city was simply being destroyed’ — Pavlo Ponomarenko, Mariupol
12.09.2023
Pavlo Ponomarenko is an engineer by profession and an artist by vocation. The Russian occupiers destroyed his district, went over with a tractor, and leveled it to the ground to hide the traces of their crimes. About life in besieged Mariupol in an interview with Pavlo Ponomarenko.

‘I realized that I could easily be turned in’
11.09.2023
Ihor Ivanovych served in Murmansk in a special forces detachment and later as a border guard. He returned to Mariupol because he wanted to live in Ukraine: he was born in the Lviv Region and always considered himself a Ukrainian. After spending 35 days in the basement, the 70-year-old man ran away, fearing that he would be handed over to the occupiers for his pro-Ukrainian views.

Officers don’t work
08.09.2023
A military medic from Mariupol showed phenomenal courage in Russian captivity, surpassing the plot of a famous feature film.

Yevhen Zakharov shortlisted for the Václav Havel Prize 2023
07.09.2023
The prize is awarded annually by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for outstanding achievements in human rights protection.

How volunteer doctors work with victims of Russian aggression
07.09.2023
Since the beginning of the war, volunteer doctors of the FRIDA organization have been working free of charge in the frontline territories. For a year and a half, they managed to assist thousands of civilians. In this interview, doctors talk about their work in Bakhmut and other hot spots, the people they saved, and rethinking their inner values.

The Tribunal for Putin has published the first legal assessment of genocide in Ukraine
06.09.2023
On 28 August, the human rights initiative T4P launched its submission to the International Criminal Court, detailing the acts of genocide committed by Russia in and around the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

‘If we don’t invest in art, we can fail’, Matvii Vaisberg says
05.09.2023
Paintings by the artist Matvii Vaisberg became illustrations for the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group’s new book about Mariupol. He says that the war was the most productive period for him, complains about the uglification of urban space, and believes we should do more to promote contemporary Ukrainian art worldwide.

‘After the de-occupation, he collected the bodies of dead Russian soldiers’
04.09.2023
Yurii Serohin is a resident of Dmytrivka in the Kyev Region. The beginning of the war found him at work in Kyiv. It took him two days to return to his native village on foot, and when he arrived, it was occupied. An artillery shell destroyed his house and all his property.