Russia’s withdrawal from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture is a step that confirms that torture is part of the Kremlin’s state policy. This decision is not just a formality in legal terms, but a demonstrative step that removes the last ‘masks’ and confirms that torture is part of the Kremlin’s state policy….
Category: Research Centre
Mykola Polovyi, Olena Chaltseva: Impact of the war on social and political institutes
Just as the armed forces are considered a mirror of society, conflict is a manifestation of relationships within a collective, and war is an effective manifestation of all social processes and relationships. Everything, both positive and negative, in social relations and political processes that was not noticeable in peacetime, which people tried not to notice…
Dmytro Yagunov: How to Return Trust to the Police in Postwar Ukraine
During the war, the Government had the priority to combat against Russian occupiers, where a traditional peace-time issue of human rights approach has been replaced with humanitarian law. There are grounds to believe that Ukraine will have a generation of police officers grown up on the long distance from procedural justice and human rights. We can also presume…
Valentyna Yurchenko: The Phenomenon of ‘Busification’ as a Threat to Human Rights in Ukraine
Busification is an informal but extremely common term that emerged in Ukrainian society during the general mobilisation in connection with martial law. It is widely used as a synonym for the concept of ‘illegal mobilisation’, namely situations where military personnel from territorial recruitment and social support centres (hereafter – recruitment centres) ‘catch’ and forcibly load…
Maryna Demura: The State of Compliance with Fundamental Human Rights Guarantees in Criminal Proceedings Under Martial Law
Access to a lawyer is an important guarantee of the right to a fair trial, the right to defence, the presumption of innocence and other fundamental rights. In Ukraine, representation in courts and public authorities is carried out exclusively by lawyers (advocates)[1]. Article 213 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (CPC) obliges the official who carried out…
Dmytro Yagunov, Maryna Demura: Domestic Violence in Ukraine. Crime Trends and the Impact of the War
Recently, domestic violence has become an object of special attention by the Parliament, the Government, and the society in general. Therefore, domestic violence could be an attractive object for criminological research in the context of the impact of the War on the society. In 2017, the Criminal Code was supplemented by Article 126-1 according to…
Joint Statement by Ukraine, the European Union, and 36 States
The international community must remain united in addressing these grave violations of international law and in supporting Ukraine’s freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders. For this reason, we stand united in our solidarity and we jointly call on the Russian Federation to stop the killingand enter meaningful negotiations with Ukraine. We…
Dmytro Yagunov, Dmytro Tupchiienko: New War – New Crimes, or How the Russian Invasion Changed the Criminal Landscape in Ukraine
Ukrainian legal and law-enforcement practices demonstrate how unprepared Ukraine’s criminal justice system was for the challenges of war. To avoid Ukraine’s mistakes, the EU states need to consider this experience. Given that war is a total mobilisation and military service with a constant threat to life, it is natural that a large number of men resorted…
United Nations: Civilian Detainees Subjected to Torture Since Russia’s Full-Scale Attack on Ukraine
Russian authorities have subjected Ukrainian civilian detainees in occupied territory to torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, in a widespread and systematic manner. Most of the 215 released civilian detainees interviewed by the UN Human Rights Office since June 2023 gave consistent and detailed accounts of their treatment in captivity. They recounted severe beatings and…
Dmytro Yagunov: Crime Rates in Ukraine and the Impact of the War
In 2022, the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies (hereafter – LEA) registered 362636 crimes with corresponding criminal proceedings where the above-mentioned numbers reflect both criminal proceedings with concrete suspects and so-called “factual” criminal proceedings (without concrete suspects). It should be noted that the number of registered crimes even for the period of ten months of 2022…