Tuesday, 6 September ‘22

Ukraine’s New ECtHR Commissioner

On August 31, the Ukrainian government appointed Margarita Sokorenko as the new commissioner for ECtHR affairs.  The previous ECtHR commissioner was dismissed almost a year ago.

In her first statement after being appointed, Sokorenko said Ukraine was continuing to collect evidence of human rights violations.

“The main difficulties we face are how to collect evidence in the occupied territory, to which we do not have physical access,” she said, adding that information was being gathered about destroyed or damaged property, and people missing or being held captive.

“We receive a large amount of information from government agencies regarding murders,” Sokorenko continued.

The Ukrainian authorities expect the ECtHR’s first procedural instructions against the Russian Federation to come in October. On June 23, Ukraine filed a full-fledged interstate case regarding Russia’s illegal invasion into its sovereign territory.

Prosecutor General Records Almost 32,000 War Crimes

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has recorded 31,738 incidents of aggression and war crimes. A further 14,738 crimes against the national security of Ukraine have also been registered.

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are continuing work on war crimes cases against Russian troops, for example, considering the unlawful killing of 1,356 civilians by the Russian military in the Kyiv region. Law enforcement officers also identified three more servicemen of the armed forces of the Russian Federation who abused civilians in the temporarily occupied territories of the Kyiv region. 

A high-ranking Russian officer who led the attempt to seize the territory of the Kyiv region is to face trial. The Russian serviceman, whose name has not been released, is accused of encroaching on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine and planning, preparing, unleashing and waging an aggressive war.

Ukrainian Police Collect War Crimes Evidence

Ihor Klymenko, the head of the national police, told Forbes magazine in Ukraine that his officers had dedicated themselves to efforts to collect evidence about Russian war crimes.

“The entire law enforcement structure is aimed at quality collection of the evidence base of war crimes committed by the aggressor state,” he said, adding that the police function focused on collecting evidence and ensuring its storage and integrity.

“We conduct examinations, then transfer these materials to the Security Service [SBU} ... because it is the SBU that is responsible for investigating this type of crime,” he said.

Crimes Against Children

Since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion, Russian troops have illegally taken more than 7,000 Ukrainian children to Russia, Dmytro Lubinets, the parliamentary commissioner for human rights, said in an interview. Only 51 children have been returned to Ukraine.

The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general also said that Russian troops had killed 382 children in Ukraine, with more than 740 injured.

“These numbers are not final, as work is ongoing to establish [facts] in places of active hostilities, in temporarily occupied and liberated territories,” the office said in a statement.

The “Children of War” platform was established to enable the public to report and access information about children who suffered as a result of the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine.