Russia must immediately stop illegal detention and persecution of Ukrainians - MFA

The ministry said this in a statement posted on its website on the occasion of Human Rights Day.

It recalled that on December 10, the world celebrates Human Rights Day. On this day in 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The adoption of this universal human rights document and the creation of an international human rights protection system took place after the end of the Second World War, when the international community, realizing the consequences of terrible violations of human rights and crimes against humanity, developed protection mechanisms to prevent and avoid this in the future.

However, according to the statement, today, 74 years later, Russia, which still remains a member of the UN, "openly demonstrates contempt for the principles laid down in the Universal Declaration, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as well as in other international legal tools."

The ministry said that violations of human rights and freedoms by the aggressor state have been ongoing since 2014, when it seized Crimea, Sevastopol, and territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

With the beginning of full-scale armed aggression, systematic violations of rights and restrictions of basic freedoms, including illegal arrests, enforced disappearances, murders, deprivation of the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of speech, also spread to other Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied by Russia.

"After February 24, 2022, investigative bodies of the National Police of Ukraine initiated 47,822 criminal proceedings relating to crimes committed on the territory of Ukraine by servicemen of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and their henchmen. More than 140 citizens of Ukraine remain illegally arrested by Russia on politically motivated charges, and this number continues to grow," the ministry said.

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian administration has handed down a number of null sentences to political prisoners in Crimea, whose total prison terms already amount to more than 1,300 years.

"Russia must immediately put an end to the oppression of political, linguistic, cultural and religious rights in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and stop the illegal detention and illegal persecution of Ukrainian citizens," the ministry said.

Violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as humanitarian law committed by Russia in Ukraine, threaten the proper functioning of the international human rights system. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is convinced that this can only be prevented by joint international efforts to strengthen the ability to more effectively respond, prevent and punish such crimes.

"We call on the international community to increase pressure on Russia so that it stops violating human rights and releases all illegally detained citizens of Ukraine. We also emphasize the need to create a special tribunal regarding Russia's crime of aggression against Ukraine. Punishing the Russian Federation and its leadership will make it impossible to repeat Russian aggression in the future," the ministry said.