On 18 September 2026, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a thematic report prepared on the basis of the work of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine and covering the period from 24 February 2022 to 31 July 2026 (OHCHR, 2026, para. 1). The report…
Category: Research Centre
Empty Bunks, New Prisons: Why Does Russia Need Seven Super-Prisons If Its Prison Population Has Fallen Fourfold?
The Russian authorities have officially announced plans to build an entire complex of new prisons. By 2035, the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation intends to create seven “innovative institutions of a combined type”, each of which brings together a correctional colony, a prison and a pre-trial detention centre; these measures are laid down…
Russian Terror in Numbers: What the Mass Graves of Kharkiv Oblast Reveal Four Years On
Four years after the Kharkiv counteroffensive: Ukrainian Ombudsman releases consolidated data on mass graves and victims of the Russian occupation At an event marking the fourth anniversary of the Kharkiv offensive operation, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, presented consolidated data on mass graves and on the victims of the Russian occupation…
Gyunduz Mamedov: Change the System, Not Just the Name: The Task for the Next Prosecutor General
Following a high-profile scandal, the prosecution service has once again found itself at the centre of public attention. The system is facing a crisis of trust, accompanied by a crisis of understanding about what a modern prosecution service should actually look like and what place it should occupy within the criminal justice system. This is…
Dmytro Yagunov: Carceral orders: informal prison hierarchies in contemporary Europe and the political weaponisation of prison subculture
This paper examines informal prison hierarchies in contemporary Europe as sites of political power, social ordering, and geopolitical contestation, with particular focus on the Russian Federation’s deliberate weaponisation of carceral subculture across post-Soviet space. Drawing on penological theory, criminological sociology, and critical carceral studies, the paper argues that informal inmate hierarchies are not merely adaptive…
The Kremlin’s “Patsan” Diplomacy: A Foreign Policy Governed by Prison “Rules”
On 28 August 2026, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared once again, in yet another interview, that all questions concerning Ukraine must be settled between Washington and Moscow “patsan-style” [po-patsanski] – according to the masculine street-and-prison code of the post-Soviet criminal underworld. As he put it, “one can put it nobly, or one can put…
Rita Haverkamp, Dmytro Yagunov: The Carceral Continuum – How Transitions Have Reshaped Social Control in Eastern Europe
The countries of Eastern Europe constitute a unique setting for studying profound transformations of social control. In no other region of the world has the transition from one model of punishment to another proceeded with such speed, radicalism, and internal contradiction. It is precisely for this reason that the conceptual framework of the “carceral continuum”…
Dmytro Yagunov: Between Doctrine and Reality: The Institutional Fragility of the Absolute Prohibition of Torture
I am pleased to announce the publication of my new article, “Between Doctrine and Reality: The Institutional Fragility of the Absolute Prohibition of Torture,” in European Political and Law Discourse. The article addresses one of the foundational principles of European human rights law: the absolute prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment under Article…
When There Are No Victories on the Battlefield, the Kremlin Goes Looking for Them in the 14th Century
In July 2026, emergency restoration work in the Kremlin’s Archangel Cathedral opened up access to the long-known burial and sarcophagus of Dmitry Donskoy. In August, officials announced that the identity of the remains had been confirmed. But who was this Dmitry Donskoy, the man we’ve been shown for decades as almost an archangel of the…
Fatima Souleimanova: When the Chechens Shattered the Myth of Russian Invincibility
Today, thirty years after the Chechen victory over Russian military aggression, it is essential to revisit an episode that remains more relevant than ever. At a time when Russia continues its war against Ukraine and poses an increasingly serious threat to European democracies, this chapter of history remains largely unknown. August 6, 1996, marks a…