More than 7,600 people in Ukraine have been accused of collaborating with Russia. Some have been accused of passing on information about military objectives to the invader, of participating in repressive actions, but also of glorifying the enemy through a message published on a social network, of being caretakers of a school in the occupied territories or of providing food sell to Russian troops. Of the 691 verdicts announced up to last September, only two were acquittals. The United Nations and Ukrainian human rights organizations warn that hundreds of people could become victims of vague laws that allow for a degree of arbitrariness that is inappropriate for a constitutional state.
Zmina, one of the reference centers for the defense of human rights in Ukraine, presented on October 30 in Kiev the most comprehensive study to date on the prosecution of suspected Russian collaborators in Ukraine. The document was prepared jointly with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research (KhISR). The result is devastating because it exposes the poor wording of the Criminal Code condemning cooperation with the intruder, which allows for a lax interpretation of the law, shows that two people can be punished with very different sentences for the same act and also shows that a A court can convict a person with weak evidence.
Alena Lunova, an expert at the Zmina Center, warned: “There are people who have been in occupied territories for nine years and do not know what awaits them, and Russian propaganda tells them that they will end up in prison if Ukraine does “The authors of the report stressed that the future cohesion of Ukrainian society is questionable if this legal dysfunction is not resolved now. “It is a question of the unity of the country in the future. Because prison for 6,000 people solves nothing,” said Andrii Chernousov, head of research at KhISR, at the presentation of the report.
In addition to the overwhelming number of crimes committed by Russia against Ukrainian civilians, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) also warns in its reports on the war in Ukraine about the situation of those accused of collaboration. In a document submitted to the UN General Assembly on October 19, the Independent International Commission for Ukraine stressed that the law “needs to be amended to clarify the definition of ‘collaborative activities’ in order to avoid legal uncertainty and damage to social cohesion to avoid”.
The Zmina Center explains that there are three articles of the Criminal Code that can condemn the same crimes of collaboration and glorification of the enemy, but with very different penalties. Two of these articles were passed by the legislature in March and April 2022, a few weeks after the start of the invasion, with virtually no parliamentary debate or the participation of experts. The OHCHR noted in an Oct. 4 report that 28% of the penalties targeted people “who worked in a civilian capacity for the occupation authorities, such as village chiefs, education system employees, and officials responsible for distributing humanitarian aid “, accountants, guards, secretaries, humanitarian volunteers without official positions and even temporary street or block guards.”
The OHCHR warns that in many of these cases the convicted individuals claim that they were forced to carry out these tasks. “OHCHR is concerned that many of those detained are being prosecuted for conduct that could, in principle, have been compelled by the occupying power under international humanitarian law,” Nada al Nashif, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, said on October 10. Human Rights.
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The KhISR and Zmina reports provide a paradigmatic example of this. Last August, a man was sentenced to four years in prison, including ten years without the possibility of holding public office, in addition to having all his assets confiscated, for serving as a guard at the public medicine warehouse in Balaklia, a municipality in Balaklia Province Kharkiv Province was released in September 2022. He was accused of “protecting drugs of Russian origin in order to distribute them to the population of the occupied territories.” The man did this work in exchange for food and basic supplies.
“What do we do with the 30,000 teachers in Crimea?”
Zmina points out that the greatest arbitrariness lies in the accusations of providing “material resources” to the intruder and carrying out “economic activities” with him. The regulations also do not provide that “if the occupation of a place lasts a year or more, people must make a decision in order to live,” Lunova explained. Onisiia Siniuk, a legal expert at Zmina, added that the criminal code also does not very specifically concern the crimes of collaboration or dissemination of Russian propaganda in the school environment. “The law does not take into account the specifics of those who have been under Russian occupation for nine years. What do we do with the 30,000 teachers in Crimea? “Send them all to prison?” Lunova wondered.
Siniuk points out that another area where they have discovered “flagrant” cases of punitive excesses are convictions for glorifying the invader through messages on social networks, with prison sentences of up to five years. The OHCHR also emphasized this in its October report: “The severity of punishments for non-violent crimes appears in some cases to be disproportionate to their seriousness.” The OHCHR documented the case of a 60-year-old woman who was accused of armed She justified aggression and the violent overthrow of the state by sharing messages about the war in Ukraine on social networks. She was sentenced to five years in prison.”
Zmina’s report illustrates the arbitrariness of punishments with two different convictions for the same crime and in the same location: In the village of Boromlia, a person was sentenced to one year and three months in prison for sacrificing two lambs to offer them free to the Russian troops. In the same city, another person who sacrificed lambs, prepared food and washed clothes of invading soldiers was fined 17,850 hryvnia (460 euros).
Another problem, according to prosecutors interviewed by Zmina and KhISR, is “the lack of resources” in the judicial system and security forces, “which, among other things, represents a deterioration in the quality of investigations.” “The investigators, overburdened with work, conduct only a minimal investigation and do not examine the evidence in detail,” they emphasize. Chernousov recalled that the system is oversaturated with cases about crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine, which is why the trials of collaborators should focus on people who have assumed high responsibilities in the occupied territories or on people who have committed military activities participated or collaborated in violent actions against the state.
Chernousov ended his speech by admitting that among the twenty police officers and members of the public prosecutor’s office interviewed for the study, there was a taboo that no one wanted to mention: the evidence of possible physical and psychological abuse against those accused of collaboration. In its October 19 report, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry in Ukraine claimed it was certain that there had been at least three illegal detentions, one of which ended in torture.
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