The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Alain Berset, has presented the governments of European countries with his yearly report on the human rights situation in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. The document covers a one-year period from April 2025 to March 2026. The report was delivered today at a meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the key decision-making body of the 46-country organisation.
Russia in “flagrant breach of international obligations as an occupying power”
“According to the Ukrainian authorities, approximately 3.5 million Ukrainians continue to reside in the temporarily occupied territories. The occupation has become more entrenched through the enactment of new Russian laws and policies aimed at undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty over the occupied territories and separating them from the rest of Ukraine in flagrant breach of Russia’s international obligations as an occupying power,” the report reads.
“Notably, attempts to conduct the State Duma [Russian parliament] elections, scheduled for 20 September, in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, would not only be incompatible with fundamental principles of international law, but would also further aggravate the consequences of the full-scale military invasion and jeopardise peace efforts.”
Forcing Russian citizenship on Ukrainians remains issue in occupied lands
The report analyses the situation with the constant threats to human rights enshrined in the European Convention in the framework of the armed conflict and in the context of occupation running through it.
It notably looks at the consequences of forcible extension of Russian citizenship and documentation issues, at the situation of Ukrainians, indigenous people and persons belonging to national minorities, of the cultural heritage. Freedom of thought, conscience and religion; access to education, including mother tongue-based education; freedoms of expression and movement; right to property, as well as issues related to conscription in temporarily occupied territories and gender aspects are equally covered. Special attention is paid to forcibly transferred and unlawfully deported children, as well as to the questions of accountability and transitional justice.
The report stresses that Russia’s actions during the period under review bore witness to a systematic strategy that focuses not merely on control of territory, but also on asserting dominance on the Ukrainian population through structural violence, erasure of their national identity and grave violations of basic human rights in an increasingly coercive environment.
Systemic and far-reaching human-rights abuses are being ingrained
“Alongside ongoing armed hostilities in the context of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the deterioration of the human-rights situation in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation persisted during the period under review”, the report concludes. “The occupation has further entrenched patterns of grave, systemic and far-reaching human-rights abuses that are fundamentally incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, causing profound harm and trauma to individuals and communities”.
Notwithstanding numerous violations documented by international and local human-rights organisations, lack of physical access for international organisations to the temporarily occupied territories and the continued refusal of cooperation by Russian occupying authorities have impeded independent monitoring, fact verification, tracing and direct contact with victims, including children. The real scale of documented violations, therefore, remains increasingly difficult to assess.
The document is based on the results of Council of Europe’s officials’ visits to Kyiv and Warsaw and on the information provided by Ukrainian authorities, international organisations, human-rights defenders and civil-society activists, as well as available in the public domain. Because of Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine and its exclusion from the Council of Europe in 2022, “meaningful discussions with the Russian government on the relevant issues at stake, including access, could not be pursued.”
Role for the Council of Europe
In this context, the Council of Europe and its institutions must continue to contribute to the monitoring of human rights in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by Russia, to expand assistance to the Ukrainian authorities in establishing relevant and legal and institutional frameworks and to advance accountability, the report suggests.
The Council of Europe’s contribution to the protection of human rights of the affected population, to the extent that circumstances allow, should be tailored. It should support broader efforts laying the groundwork of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace, including in the context of any future peace arrangements.
A credible peace process must effectively address, among other things, the release of civilian detainees and prisoners of war, the return of Ukrainian children, Russia’s accountability for the crimes committed during the war of aggression, as well as the human rights of Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories, the report concludes.
