Ukraine: news from the front lines

Vadym Chovgan. According to the reports that we and our partners receive, the situation is critical. The Russian authorities use prisoners to achieve their goals. You may have heard about their mobilising prisoners from their own territory and treating them as a waste material and cannon fodder. This logic of using prisoners as a means also applies in the Ukrainian prisons. For example, since Russian authorities are not able to convince enough Ukrainian citizens to accept Russian citizenship, they are forcing prisoners to do so: prisoners have to sign a special document stating that they request the Russian nationality. Prisoners are also used as forced labour: for example, they must, under threat, dig trenches for the Russian army. If they refuse, they may be tortured or threatened by torture or death. This shows how people deprived of the liberty are being used for political reasons, since authorities have more control on them than on free citizens.

It is also worth mentioning that rocket launchers and missiles systems have been placed next to prisons in the occupied regions. Prison facilities are used as military bases to store ammunitions and to accommodate Russian soldiers for the night. For the Russian authorities, prisons are of considerable interest: since prison facilities are areas where hundreds of people are concentrated, they know that the Ukrainian forces will not launch any attack, for fear of killing many of their own people.

Regarding the provision of food and water, there are concerning reports of shortages, but we cannot directly confirm this. We have had to stop all direct communication with prisoners incarcerated in occupied territories: the interception of even the most basic message from a prisoner can lead to his death.

We are observing huge violations regarding criminal procedures. Around one third of the prison population have not yet been tried, and many of them are reaching the maximum legal limit for pre-trial detention. Courts are not currently functioning in the occupied territories. Instead, sentencing judgments are issued by commissions composed solely of prison administration staff. This constitutes a complete denial of basic legal safeguards: prison directors take on the role of judge, prisoners have no lawyer and there is no possibility of appealing the decision.

Some prisons in the occupied territories are also used for civilian detainees and prisoners of war, sometimes in separated wards. Prisons are, in a way, easy to use: there is always manpower, prisoners, and also prison staff. Some Ukrainian prison staff left when the Russian forces took control of the prisons. Those that stayed may be considered as collaborators by Ukrainian Law.

VC. In the regions that remained under Ukrainian control, the situation has somewhat worsened. One could have expected a catastrophic humanitarian situation, but this is not really the case, mainly because all prison staff have stayed in place. Indeed, by remaining at their post, they cannot be mobilised for the war.

Some prisons have been shelled or touched by bombing, in one way or another. The sanitary conditions are worse than before, especially because prisons are not being repaired. Using the state budget to repair prisons was difficult enough in peacetime, but it is now literally impossible. Certain regions have seen waves of displacement, for security reasons: many doctors left, which had an impact on access to healthcare for prisoners. This is also the case for lawyers, causing significant delays in proceedings for those on remand. Evacuation is still a very pressing issue: some prison facilities have still not been evacuated even though they are under constant threat of bombing.

Cases of violence and riots have been reported. A few weeks ago, prison staff in Polytska prison n°76, in the West of Ukraine, started a riot. This is unprecedented in Ukraine and is forbidden by law. Protestors denounced corruption on the part of the management, claiming that it kept for themselves the bonuses intended for the staff. Two weeks later, another riot was organised in the same facility, this time by prisoners. They set fire to the canteen and barricaded doors, claiming that it was a response to violations of their rights by prison staff. In addition, there is a footage showing a prisoner being beaten at his hips with a truncheon by a deputy director of the prison.

Similar cases of abuse are not uncommon, and they existed before the war. Some cases of collective ill-treatment have been brought to the European Court of Human Rights in the past by the Kharkiv Human Rights Group. This year, at least 12 prisoners in Sokyriany prison n°67 have filed complaints, some because they were severely beaten, others because their property was destroyed. These are the two methods sometimes used by the special intervention units in Ukraine to discourage prisoners from engaging in any form of protest, be it silent or passive: beating the prisoners and destroying their property. This kind of things happened in Ukrainian prisons even outside of the war context.

VC. In the Ukrainian controlled territories, monitoring work continues as it did before the war. However, the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) does not seem to be currently functioning, due to the change of the Ombudsman. Our partners can still carry out visits in the framework of other mandates, for instance as members of the Community Advisory Council of the Ministry of Justice.
We have found the Ukrainian authorities quite cooperative since the beginning of the war. They might be a little more irritated by the visits, but they are still obliged to let the monitors in. They are also aware that monitoring bodies can be of great help to the prison administration, notably in playing the role of intermediaries between the prison and humanitarian organisations or even within the prison administration hierarchy.

In the territories occupied by Russian forces, the situation is very different. We are doing open-source monitoring and trying to adjust certain methodologies that already exist, such as the one that is being developed based on the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations. Since this instrument is not specific to the many particularities of prisons, we have prepared a draft methodology for this context. It also includes specific methods of indirect monitoring, such as relying on released or evacuated prisoners or talking to prisoners’ relatives, or prison staff who left the occupied territories. These methods are necessarily indirect because it is difficult to have contact with prisoners there, even with those willing to give us information. This would violate the “do not harm” principle, which is fundamental in this type of context: obtaining information is always less important than putting in danger a person’s life. No one is allowed access to facilities located in the occupied areas, neither civil society organisations, nor the international organisations such as the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine.