Country Profile
This overview was updated on 30 May 2022.
Russia began an all-out invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, carrying out extensive military operations marked by war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law. Using indiscriminate weapons such as cluster munitions in populated...
Country Profile
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed chronic under-resourcing in health care. The authorities used the pandemic as a pretext to continue the crackdown on all dissent, including through amendments to a vaguely worded law on “fake news” and tightening restrictions on public gatherings. Peaceful protesters,...
News
Ukraine
Armed Conflict
Since the occupation of Crimea 10 years ago, Russia has sought to change the peninsula’s ethnic makeup and suppress the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar communities, Amnesty International said today in a new publication, on the tenth anniversary of the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula by...
March 18, 2024
Research
Europe and Central Asia
Censorship and Freedom of Expression
During ten years of occupation, Russia has attempted to reshape the demography of Crimea. It has also suppressed Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar identities through restrictions on education, religion, media, representative institutions, judicial system, and cultural celebrations. Russia must end...
March 18, 2024
News
Europe and Central Asia
International Justice
Responding to the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing arrest warrants against Lt. Gen. Sergei Kobylash and Adm. Viktor Sokolov, of the Russian Armed Forces, each allegedly responsible for the war crimes of directing attacks at civilian objects and of causing excessive incidental harm to...
March 5, 2024
News
Ukraine
Armed Conflict
There can be no justice for Ukrainians without full accountability for all crimes committed by Russia since its military intervention in 2014, Amnesty International said today, on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Since the 2014 occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea, Amnesty...
February 22, 2024
News
Europe and Central Asia
Armed Conflict
Responding to the news that occupying Russian authorities have sentenced 33 Ukrainian prisoners of war to jail terms ranging from 27 to 29 years following unlawful trials, Anna Wright, Researcher for Amnesty International, said: “The captured Ukrainian soldiers stood accused of grave crimes under...
February 8, 2024
News
Ukraine
Right to Education
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, those living under Russian occupation have risked brutal reprisals for seeking to continue Ukrainian education, with some parents choosing to hide their children to avoid them being taken to ‘re-education’ institutions, for adoption in Russia, or...
December 11, 2023
Research
Europe and Central Asia
Armed Conflict
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was followed by civilian deaths and injuries, mass displacement of people, and widespread destruction and damage of many civilian objects, including of schools and other educational facilities, and has resulted in widespread and systemic violations of children’s right...
December 11, 2023
Campaigns
Europe and Central Asia
Detention
Russian authorities have forcibly disappeared Mariano García Calatayud, a 75-year-old Spanish volunteer humanitarian worker whom their forces had abducted from occupied Kherson, in Ukraine, in 2022. They held him incommunicado, without charges, in occupied Crimea. The last parcel ordered for him in...
December 11, 2023
News
Europe and Central Asia
Armed Conflict
Displaced older people with disabilities in Ukraine are physically and financially unable to access adequate housing and care amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, sometimes leaving few alternatives to being placed in residential institutions, Amnesty International said in a new report today ahead of the...
December 1, 2023
Research
Ukraine
Armed Conflict
Older people, who make up one-fourth of Ukraine’s population, have faced unique violations of their human rights since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Disproportionately among those killed or injured during the conflict, they also struggle in displacement to access housing, support services, and...
December 1, 2023
Campaigns
Europe and Central Asia
Censorship and Freedom of Expression
Irina Danilovich, a nurse and human rights activist, was abducted by security officers in Russian-occupied Crimea in April 2022 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment following an unfair trial. She has been denied access to the healthcare she required for acute ear pain. She was recently...
November 24, 2023
Research
Europe and Central Asia
Censorship and Freedom of Expression
Amnesty International strongly condemns a new escalation in the attack against the legal profession by the Russian authorities, after repressive legislation was used to arbitrarily arrest, detain and bring politically-motivated charges against lawyers representing Aleksei Navalny, and to jail...
October 27, 2023