Court ruling finds 'massive scale' of Russian human rights abuses

Russia has committed flagrant and unprecedented abuses of human rights since it invaded Ukraine in 2014, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and forced labour, the European court of human rights found yesterday.

- Haroon Siddique

The court’s grand chamber unanimously held that between 11 May 2014 and 16 September 2022, when Russia ceased to be a party to the European convention on human rights, it had committed “manifestly unlawful conduct ... on a massive scale”.

Pro-Russia armed groups entered the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

In its judgment, the court said there was evidence of widespread and systemic use of sexual violence, accompanied by acts of torture, such as beatings, strangling or electric shock. Civilians and prisoners of war were subjected to mock executions, the severing of body parts and electric shocks, including to intimate areas of their bodies, the court said.

Finding repeated violations of the convention, many of which had taken place over a period of more than eight years, the court said: “These actions seek to undermine the very fabric of the democracy on which the Council of Europe and its member states are founded by their destruction of individual freedoms, their suppression of political liberties and their blatant disregard for the rule of law.