Search Results for: Donbas

According to officials, the European Parliament (EP) opened an investigation Tuesday into Tatjana Ždanoka, a Latvian member of the assembly who has been accused of working as a Russian agent for several years. The MEP denies the allegations but it has sparked concern amongst the parliamentarians, with some saying that there may be other Russian [...]

Putin spent more than four hours on Thursday chatting with journalists and constituents about matters ranging from Moscow’s endgame in Ukraine to Putin’s favorite Russian salad. Talk of Russia’s nuanced interpretations of international law featured prominently in the discussion and offered insights into the calculus driving Putin’s continued aggression in Ukraine. Below, we outline key [...]

The Conflict Observatory released a new report on Wednesday that found that Russia has promulgated a series of laws to accelerate the application process for Russian citizenship while simultaneously penalizing those who did not apply for citizenship in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. The report detailed how Russia’s forced “passportisation” involves two parts: de jure passportisation [...]

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released their 2023 Press Freedom Index and accompanying report Wednesday, noting that the rise of artificial intelligence, “fake content” and authoritarianism endanger journalistic integrity and expression around the world. As in past years, the organization says that most countries have “problematic,” “difficult” or “very serious” press freedom situations. RSF has also [...]

Ukrainian law students and young lawyers are reporting for JURIST on developments in and affecting Ukraine. This dispatch is from Yulii Kozub, a law student from Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. He files this from Vienna.  The Chinese Foreign Ministry recently presented a “Peace Plan,” which contains 12 proposals to end the conflict between [...]

Human Rights Watch Thursday released a report documenting the unlawful detention and torture of Kherson residents by Russian forces, which took place during their occupation of the Ukrainian city between March and November 2022. The report details numerous war crimes committed by Russian forces, including the willful mistreatment, torture, and killing of civilians and captured [...]

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group announced Saturday that Russia has again used its “proxy ‘Donbas republics'” to violate international law by staging the trials and sentences of three Ukrainian prisoners of war. The Investigative Committee of Russia has accused human rights defender and journalist Maksym Butkeyych of attempted murder and has claimed that Butkeyych shelled [...]

Freedom and democracy are slumping worldwide, trends spurred on by rising authoritarianism, media suppression, and myriad governments’ failures to adhere to the rule of law, advocacy group Freedom House warned in its 2023 Freedom in the World report, released Thursday. The annual report, which ranks the world’s countries and territories from most to least free, [...]

Oksana Bidnenko is a staff correspondent for JURIST. She is a Ukrainian law student at the Riga Graduate School of Law in Riga, Latvia, and is currently an exchange student at the University of Oslo, Norway. Earlier this week, the press service of the ‘Russian Investigative Committee in Crimea’  reported that the Russian-controlled Yalta City [...]

Russia appears to be accelerating efforts to replenish its battlefield strength through passportization and conscription of Ukrainian nationals in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Such efforts suggest a certain degree of desperation on Russia’s part in the face of battlefield setbacks during its illegal and ill-conceived war against Ukraine. They shine a light on the plight [...]