For millions of Ukrainians from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the war began ten years ago. What did civilians and prisoners of war go through in detention centres in the occupied territories, how are these cases being investigated, and what opportunities and mechanisms does Ukraine have to prove that Russia committed the crime of aggression and other war crimes before the full-scale invasion?
These questions were discussed by the participants of the East discussion panel as part of the media marathon "10 Years of Russian Aggression in Ukraine. The Path to Justice", organised by the coalition "Ukraine. Five in the Morning" coalition at the Ukraine-Ukrinform media centre.
Human rights activists argue that the Russian aggression, which actually began in February 2014, was the embodiment of Russia's imperial delusions after the collapse of the USSR. It was a planned attack that was not provoked by any events in Ukraine, as Russian propaganda claimed. This is evidenced by the evidence and the behaviour of the Russian military in the so-called "L/DPR" territories occupied in 2014.
Tatiana Katrychenko, executive director of the Media Initiative for Human Rights, says that from the moment their mercenaries and hidden military personnel entered the territory of Ukraine, Russians began to set up torture chambers and places of illegal detention of Ukrainians in the occupied territories. Thousands of local residents went through these ordeals.
"While Ukraine was calling the events in the east the 'ATO' and the international community considered it an 'internal conflict', the Russian military was already taking prisoners of war by the thousands, torturing them without following any rules or norms of the Geneva Convention. When the Russians realised that Ukraine treated military and civilian prisoners equally, they began to detain civilians en masse. We still do not know the exact number of such prisoners. Unfortunately, the justice that these citizens hoped for has not yet come. And the full-scale invasion has further delayed this prospect," says Tatyana Katrichenko.
Olena Lazareva, an anaesthesiologist from Donetsk, who was taken hostage by Russia-backed illegal armed groups in October 2017 with her husband, shared her story of being in captivity.
She says that a few months after the Russians invaded Donetsk, people began to disappear, and their relatives actively searched for them through hospitals. Then the residents learned about the torture chambers where civilian prisoners were taken under false pretences. Olena and her husband were detained on charges of espionage. They spent more than two years in captivity, including 10 months in the notorious Donetsk 'Izolyatsia'.
"It seems that in this way, the Russians were forming an exchange fund to get their prisoners out. The conditions in the detention centres were terrible, there was no access to information. The detainees were forced to do hard labour, beaten, tortured, and women were treated especially cruelly, including sexual violence," says Lazareva.
Oleksiy Kodman, a veteran and scout with the 56th Motorised Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was captured by Russians in 2015. The soldier says that all the "local formations" had their own supervisors - career Russian officers. Therefore, he says, it is important to always emphasise that the war has been going on for ten years and the enemy is the same.
Oleksiy Kodman and Olena Lazareva"Representatives of neither Ukraine nor international organisations were allowed to visit us. Many prisoners of war were sentenced by local quasi-courts to 10-15 years and are serving their sentences in colonies in the occupied territories. I was also charged with terrorism, but managed to be exchanged in 2017, before the sentence was carried out," says Oleksiy Kodman.
These facts should help prove in international courts, including the International Criminal Court, that Russia's armed aggression is ongoing in Ukraine, not a civil or "mixed" conflict. And this is still Ukraine's main task.
Andriy Leshchenko, deputy head of the Department for Procedural Guidance and Support of Public Prosecution of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in the Context of Armed Conflict, Office of the Prosecutor General, says that the main focus in Donbas cases is to prove the fact of the crime of aggression.
"In 2013, Russia developed a new doctrine of warfare, the so-called 'Gerasimov's hybrid doctrine': according to it, the seizure of new territories should take place without direct aggression and declaration of war. For this purpose, the hidden protest potential, orchestrated mass unrest, influence on regional administrations to withdraw from the influence of the central government and declare "independence", and massive propaganda are used. The goal of such a war is to prevent Ukraine from integrating into the EU and to prevent it from joining NATO," explains Andriy Leshchenko.
He stressed that the Prosecutor General's Office has collected a large body of evidence that shows Russia's planned actions, which are in the nature of a hybrid war. This data is actively used in international and national courts. As for the actual mechanisms for bringing Russia and its top officials to justice, the prosecutor said it is a long process, complicated by international norms and the institution of immunity.
Alina Pavlyuk, a lawyer at the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group (ULAG), clarifies that the situation in the east is markedly different from the occupation of Crimea. In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Russia actively tested all the practices that it later used during the full-scale invasion. Therefore, in her opinion, all events since 2014 should be assessed as a single armed conflict.
"National legislation has not yet been adapted to the realities of war, there are no appropriate mechanisms for bringing perpetrators to justice, and the Rome Statute has not yet been ratified. It is necessary to raise these issues and speed up the justice process at all levels - national and international," says Alina Pavlyuk.
"It is very difficult to establish the facts of torture and deaths in the occupied territories. But even so, more than 4,500 verdicts in such cases in the L/DPR are registered in court registers. This is a unique experience in modern international law," says Supreme Court Justice Mykola Mazur.
In addition to criminal cases investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity, civil matters make up a large part of the courts' work. And one of Ukraine's tasks is to ensure that its citizens under occupation have access to the resolution of these issues.
Mykola Mazur, who has experience working in the court of Popasna, Luhansk region, says that courts in Donetsk and Luhansk regions continued to work and make decisions related to the civil status, rights and freedoms of citizens. In this work, the courts refer to the "Namibian exception", a principle of international law according to which documents issued by the occupying power should be taken into account by the courts if their disregard leads to serious violations or restrictions of citizens' rights. Consideration of such documents by the courts does not mean automatic recognition of the occupying power. This principle was used to register birth, death, marriage and property certificates in the occupied territories.
The full recording of the event is available here: in English and Ukrainian.
20.02.2024
