In light of the illegality of the Russian invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian territories, any and all actions of the occupation regime resonate as proceeds of crime. This does not mean, nonetheless, that the occupation operates as a legal black hole. Rather than legitimising the occupation, a clear demarcation of the activities that the Russian Federation, as the occupying power, is entitled and obliged to carry out in the occupied territories, highlights multiple interwoven ways in which Russia both violates the law and uses it to establish and entrench its governance.
The Russian army and occupation authorities have subjected Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories to a mix of direct coercion and physical violence with routine inescapable oppression. Replacement of the Ukrainian educational system with the Russian one, measures aimed at altering the national and civil identity of Ukrainian children, forced imposition of the Russian citizenship as a condition to access basic services, repressions against priests and religious organisations, expropriation of private property and economic assets, constitute, when assessed jointly and as a system, mutually reinforcing elements of a far-reaching transformation, designed to be permanent, of the political order, social fabric and economic structures of the occupied territories.
This theme interrogates legal frameworks applicable to the occupied territories, their role in exposing the occupation as a regime built on and through systemic violation and denial of rights, and their potential for pursuing justice in and beyond courtrooms. It looks at the relationship between the crime and the documentation thereof in real time, and assesses the tasks facing Ukrainian judiciary and society, as well as international allies and institutions, on the way to accountability.
Questions we ask
- Where does the line run between lawful administration and prosecutable crime?
- Which acts of the occupation amount to crimes under international law, and on what evidence?
- How many civilians are detained, deported, or disappeared, and what becomes of them?
- How is the occupation's own conduct being documented for future accountability?
The full picture
The role of the law under occupation does not diminish but grows more complex with the fragmentation of legal frameworks governing the occupied territories or supposed to. On the one hand, international law is expected to put brackets on the coercion against the population of the occupied territories and offers a prospect of accountability. On the other hand, the implementation of the Russian legislation, including the provisions designed specifically for the occupied territories, and prosecutions of Ukrainian citizens accused of violating this legislation, turn the law itself into an instrument of occupation and of crime. Ukrainian laws continue to apply to the occupied territories de jure and affect the present and the future of the residents of the occupied territories.
International law of occupation regulates which acts of the occupying authority are lawful and even required for it to fulfil the obligations to restore and maintain civilian life irrespectively of the legality or legitimacy of the act of occupation itself. Lawful administration of the occupied territory is guided by the principle of necessity in prescribing certain interactions between the occupying authorities and the occupied population, excludes activities involving the population in military operations of any kind, and should minimise the changes introduced by the occupier into the local ways of governance and of life. Essential safeguards under international human rights law – such as freedom from torture and from slavery, or right to fair trial – continue to apply under occupation.
Against this international legal framework, known acts perpetrated by the Russian occupation regime in Ukraine include, but are not limited to, forcible transfer and deportation, persecution, illegal detention and enforced disappearance, inhumane treatment, rape, sexual slavery, conscription of the occupied population into the enemy’s armed forces and forced labour. All these constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as elements of the crime of genocide, under international criminal law.
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was instantly dubbed “the most documented war”, reflecting the live coverage of the events in social and mass media. While civil society initiatives aimed at recording the evidence of crimes committed by the Russian army and the occupation regime, and at preserving victims’ and witnesses’ experiences and perspectives, emerged after 2014, they have multiplied with the new phase of the Russian aggression. Experts have emphasised the importance of implementing a holistic transitional justice framework encompassing legal and extra-judicial measures not waiting until the end of the conflict.
As of summer 2026, Ukrainian authorities have opened over 220,000 cases into suspected war crimes committed since February 2022. Documenting the crimes taking place under occupation requires collecting bits of evidence from survivors and witnesses who left the occupied territories, as well as triangulating the data available from open sources including social media, and the information shared by the occupation authorities themselves.
Justice-seeking processes are therefore fraught by the challenges of securing access to crime scenes, gathering material evidence and testimonies, conducting investigations and prosecutions in absence of the accused, and handling procedural issues such as the admissibility of evidence collected by non-state actors and online. The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine runs a public website to report the violations one has witnessed or suffered, which states that the data “will be used by Ukrainian and International courts and tribunals”. The International Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights have been looking into the violations of international criminal and human rights law committed in the course of the war, including in the occupied territories.
In the meantime, the occupation regime has been actively availing itself of legal instruments to ensure compliance of the population of the occupied territories – committing international crimes in the process. Despite wide international awareness of arbitrary detention and disappearances of Ukrainian civilians at the hands of the Russian and occupation authorities, as well as instances of their forcible transfer within and deportation from the occupied territories, their numbers and, accordingly, the scale of these crimes, remain hard to confirm. Unlawfully detained civilians are often held without formal charges. But they are also tried at courts in the occupied territories and in Russia on the accusations of terrorism, treason, sabotage and other manifestations of disloyalty, and are subjected to torture and mistreatment. The Ukrainian civil society organisation Media Initiative for Human Rights has recorded over 4,000 cases of unlawful detention of civilians in the occupied territories since 2022, with almost 2,500 still detained, and over 800 criminal cases with above 600 convictions reached. In turn, according to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, up to 16,000 disappeared civilians could be in the Russian captivity as of summer 2026, out of which Ukraine has verified about 2000, including 982 persons via the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Describing the occupied territories as “territories of the absence of law, even the Russian law” denotes the impunity and indeterminacy with which crimes can be committed against their Ukrainian residents. Yet comprehending the legal architecture of the occupation – as envisaged under international law, as erected by the Russian state, and as approached by the Ukrainian society and authorities – is crucial to resist and revert the absence the law, or rather the omnipresence of crime.