Columns 
Originally published on The Ukrainian Weekly. Part I you can find here.
The toll of the Kremlin’s war on Russian-occupied Ukrainian lands and the human beings who live there has been devastating.
Russia’s military has killed thousands of civilians. It has savagely wiped out several cities, not to speak of numerous villages. These cities include Bakhmut, Volchansk and, most notoriously, Mariupol, a city that half a million people called home before thousands were killed and 90 percent of the buildings demolished.
Homes, hospitals and schools throughout the invaded regions have been destroyed, as was infrastructure – roads, bridges, rail links, power grids, water supplies and sewage facilities. Russia has laid waste to incredibly rich farmland, including the mining of fields, and created untold environmental damage. Numerous industrial sites have been shut down. Monuments, museums, churches and libraries have been bombed and cultural and historical artifacts stolen. Clearly, all this destruction has made life much more difficult for the people in the occupied lands.
The human rights situation in the Russian-occupied territories is in many respects comparable to that of North Korea. Granted, the abuses in Ukraine are mostly the result of the ongoing war and Russian occupation, whereas the abuses in totalitarian North Korea are more systematic and long-standing and are a fundamental feature of its deeply institutionalized and entrenched political system and ideology. For the average person suffering under both extremely repressive regimes, however, this may be a distinction without much of a difference.
Freedom House, in its latest Freedom in the World report (covering 2024), using a scale of 1-100 with 100 being the highest score, gave the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine an astounding “-2” score for political rights and a “1” score for civil liberties. This is the lowest score of the 195 countries and 13 territories covered in the report. For purposes of comparison, Russia received a “12,” which is in the “not free” category. Ukraine received a “51” score, remaining in the “partly free” category.
So, what justifies the exceedingly low score for the Russia-occupied Ukrainian lands?
The pattern of human rights violations encompasses torture and ill-treatment of civilians and prisoners of war, including sexual violence. The terror tactics include forced disappearances as part of a coordinated state policy that constitutes crimes against humanity. Victims include local officials, journalists and activists – i.e. anyone daring to oppose the occupation. Individuals even believed to be harboring pro-Ukrainian views are intimidated, harassed or much worse.
There have been extra-judicial killings, including summary executions of detainees. Rule of law, including fair trials, is a fiction. Cruelty is the norm and the rule.
Russia claims that the seized regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson are annexed (even though they are only partially under Russian control). The referendums to approve the annexation were nothing short of a total farce and, not surprisingly, were not recognized internationally.
Democratic norms and practices are simply non-existent. Just as Russia’s occupation is not recognized as legitimate under international law, neither are the repressive laws that are imposed on the unwilling population of the occupied lands.
The repression of the inhabitants of the subjugated lands entails the stifling of elementary rights – freedom of speech, association and assembly. Independent media has been brutally silenced.
Religious freedoms are severely restricted in Russian-occupied Ukraine for all but the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The targeted religions include the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic and Roman Catholic churches, Protestants, particularly Evangelicals, as well as Muslims and Jews. Clergy have been killed, arrested and tortured, and religious sites destroyed or closed. The persecution of these groups that form Ukraine’s rich religious fabric are part and parcel of Russia’s overall attempts to extinguish Ukrainian identity.
The imposition of not only Russian political control over the occupied territories, but also of Russian language, culture and the concomitant eradication of Ukrainian identity is a principal goal of the Kremlin. Ukrainian language, culture, education, symbols and other expressions of national identity are suppressed in a systematic, deliberate, calculated manner.
The Russian occupiers have inflicted unimaginable suffering on children, who have faced heinous crimes, including summary executions, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence. Well-known is the egregious, forcible deportation – abduction, if you will – of tens of thousands of young Ukrainians to Russia and Belarus. Perhaps less well-known are the various ways in which children are subjected to Russification. School curriculums glorify Russian imperialism and forbid and demonize anything Ukrainian, including the language. Parents who resist face losing custody of their children. Kids undergo military training, propaganda and ideological brainwashing aimed at erasing their Ukrainian identity and turning them into patriotic Russian robots. Earlier this month, the Helsinki Commission expressed alarm about Russian officials’ announcement that they will transfer 50,000 children from Russian-occupied territories to camps or Russian schools for “summer vacation.”
Other coercive measures against Ukrainians residing in the occupied lands include passportization – the forcible issuance of Russian passports. As of January 1, the occupying authorities in some oblasts stopped paying social benefits to individuals without Russian passports. And a recent Russian decree states that Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories of Ukraine must leave by September 10 unless they obtain Russian passports or register as foreigners. Think about that for a minute – without a Russian passport you effectively become a foreigner within your own country.
Property seizures constitute another violation – arbitrary confiscations, particularly impacting those Ukrainians who had fled war and repression.
What I’ve outlined is by no means an exhaustive list of human rights, democracy and rule of law violations. Indeed, accounts of abuses experienced by individuals alone living under Moscow’s barbaric control would fill volumes.
It is crystal clear that the Russian overlords exhibit contempt for human dignity and Ukrainians living in the occupied lands live in a climate of fear. As Nobel Peace Prize recipient Oleksandra Matviichuk has said, an end to the fighting where Russia maintains control over territories is not peace but a continuation of war in different form.
The prospects for any just and durable peace, or even a ceasefire, in Ukraine look dim at present. Tragically, it is likely that Ukrainians under Russian domination will continue to suffer. We hope and believe that this will be for a limited duration.
In the meantime, any preliminary peace agreement should strive to include protections for the basic human rights and freedoms of those inhabiting the temporarily occupied territories. Above all, these millions of souls, whose suffering is reminiscent of Stalinist times, must not be forgotten or abandoned. We must speak out on their behalf, defend them, document the crimes against them and, as much as is feasible, hold perpetrators accountable.