Articles

As a result of the airstrike, Iryna’s husband and a two-year-old son were injured. Their apartment was destroyed. But she wants to live in Borodianka and hopes to earn money for new housing.

Despite the persuasions of the children, a couple of pensioners from Borodianka refused to evacuate. They survived the air raids and saw the helicopters flying low overhead. Then, one day, Russians broke into their yard and began an interrogation.

Russia is violating the basic principles that defend children in wartime. Not only have the occupying forces taken no measures to return Ukrainian children to their families: they are deporting little Ukrainians to Russia and making them part of Russian society.

“I couldn’t leave my dog,” says Nataliia from Borodianka. One day, eight Russian soldiers entered their house and began looking for the “Nazis”. According to Nataliia, they did not understand that no one was expecting such “liberators”.

Genocide is primarily associated with mass murder but from the outset the 1948 Convention listed the transfer of children from one human group to another as an act of genocide.

In just a month of occupation, the Russians destroyed the center of Trostianets, bringing death and injury to hundreds of families. The military shot Serhii's mother on the way to the hospital.

Olena’s father died on the seventh day of the war, defending his house in the village of Yahidne. He was a pensioner, but when the Russian invaders entered the village, he picked up a hunting rifle and went against the enemy.

Unfortunately, not everyone came out of the basement when the Ukrainian army liberated the village. The Russians allowed women to go outside only once on 8 March, this was the way to congratulate them on International Women’s Day.

A vast number of animals have suffered since the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression. The well-known cynologist Serhii Neboha helps his colleagues save dogs and talks about the problems of evacuation, cases of cruelty to animals, and the destruction of kennels.

Ihor Ivanov, an ethnic Bashkir who lives in Trostyanets, still cannot believe that his wife is no more. He did not want to leave the city during the occupation because he hoped she would return.

On 1 March 2023, Yevhen Zakharov, director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG), addressed the European Parliament’s sub-committee on human rights, and described the fate of Ukraine’s citizens in territories now occupied by Russia. This is an updated version of his address.

Okhtyrka resident lost her son on the second day of Russia’s invasion, he died while helping to equip a bomb shelter in a kindergarten. Due to constant shelling, they were able to bury him only three days later.

Over the past twelve months the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) has documented a total of 9,252 incidents (war crimes, crimes against humanity, acts of genocide) in the Kharkiv Region. At least two thirds of the incidents (6,048) were linked to shelling or bombardment by Russian forces.

Enforced disappearances are among the most common crimes systematically committed in Ukraine, thus far with impunity, by representatives of the Russian Federation.

To identify Ukrainians who are opposed to the occupying forces, Russia uses searches, interrogation and torture.

Drawing on information gathered in the T4P database, we offer a systematic account of the use of mines and other explosive devices in the Kharkiv Region over the past year (24 February 2022-20 January 2023).

Over the past year, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group has gathered information about damage to hospitals, other medical institutions and medical transport throughout the Region.

We spoke with the deputy director of the aggregate plant, which used to be called the ‘concentration camp’ of Russians.

One year ago, Russia launched a massive invasion of Ukraine. The 'hybrid warfare' of the previous eight years became a full-blown aggressive war on a scale unseen in Europe since 1939. A statement by International Memorial.

FIDH and its members worldwide call on international institutions and governments to ramp up efforts to ensure justice in Ukraine as a means of promoting international peace and security.

On the anniversary of Russia’s invasion: An Appeal by the ‘First of December Action Group’.

As Ukraine awaited a new invasion, Russia continued to shell and bomb its villages, towns and cities. On Monday 9 January 2023, for instance, bombs and shells took civilian lives in the city of Kherson and in the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk Regions, wounding people there and in the Mykolaiv Region further to the west.

Last month, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) published yet another intercepted phone call. They recorded a conversation between Russian soldiers about the war crimes they committed, and why.

This survey lists the war crimes and crimes against humanity recorded by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) during the first 270 days of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine.