News
Torture, isolation, murder, and gloom of Russian prisons. In Vienna, Ukrainian human rights activists told the world about the fate of thousands of civilians who have become hostages of the occupation regime. The focus was on the stories of illegally detained journalists, mayors, activists, and new proposals for their release.
7 May 2025
Monitoring of unlawful court cases against Ukrainian prisoners of war, conducted by the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), shows that courts in the occupied territories mostly convict POWs for "murders," while courts in Russia hand down verdicts based on "terrorism" charges.
23 April 2025
Around 1,300 Ukrainian marines remain in Russian captivity. For the past three years, their families have been fighting to bring them home. But alongside this uphill battle is another, quieter war – the fight to preserve their health. Families describe their experience as a form of dual torture: while the marines endure physical and psychological abuse in Russian prisons, the pain and suffering reverberate back home.
16 April 2025
Reparations represent a state’s commitment to compensate for harm or loss inflicted by its breach of international law. They are a vital component of restoring justice for victims of armed conflicts and serve as a safeguard against the recurrence of crimes in the future. These issues were the focus of the expert discussion in The Hague, which addressed legal and institutional responses to securing reparations for missing persons in Ukraine.
10 April 2025
Hundreds of Ukrainian civilians taken from areas briefly occupied by Russian forces in 2022 remain imprisoned without trial. Not a single one of them has been brought before a court. The charges against them are not even stipulated in the Russian criminal code. They receive no letters or care packages, and they have no access to legal representation. Their families often learn of their whereabouts only from prisoners of war released during exchanges.
4 April 2025
In the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian law enforcement has documented over 150,000 war crimes. These crimes occurred wherever the Russian military has set foot. The staggering scale suggests Russia’s coordinated intent and policy aimed at the destruction of Ukraine as a nation. Yet the national justice system paints a different picture. Ukrainian courts have not been able to reflect the true scope of Russia’s crimes against the Ukrainian people. Anna Rassamakhina, MIHR’s expert in international humanitarian law, explains what needs to be done to straighten things out.
3 April 2025