UK comments on think tank’s report on ethnic cleansing in occupied areas of Ukraine

Referring to the report by the Center for Defense Reform, British diplomacy said at the question of whether Russia has committed crimes shall be decided by competent courts after all available evidence has been considered, Guildhall wrote.

“We have always been clear that Russia’s attempted annexations of the temporarily occupied territories are a gross violation of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine as well as the UN Charter,” the UK Foreign Office said.

“It is our long-standing position that the determination of whether crimes have been committed is normally a matter for competent courts after consideration of all the available evidence,” the comment reads.

The Foreign Office also noted that the UK consistently advocates for the protection of human rights in the temporarily occupied territories, supporting human rights defenders and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, which documents and reports violations and abuses in this area.

The Office emphasized that Russia continues to deny international human rights monitoring missions – including the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission – access to the temporarily controlled territories of Ukraine, making it difficult to verify the full extent of Russia’s human rights violations and abuses.

In turn, the chief of the International Affairs Committee of the Danish Parliament, Christian Friis Bach, believes Russia must be held accountable for its violations of international law and human rights in the temporarily occupied territories, including repression against Ukrainians.

Earlier, Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, Member of the European Parliament from France, representative of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, also called for the development of a strategy to stop ethnic cleansing in the temporarily occupied territories.

Finnish MP Heikki Autto said the West needs to ensure that all those responsible for war crimes committed in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are held to account.

Earlier, the Center for Defense Reform published a report calling for international control to stop ethnic cleansing by the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied territories. The report states that Russia systematically persecutes Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories, including through putting filtration camps, forced deportations, illegal conscription into the Russian army, forced Russification and forced issue of Russian passport. Such actions, as per the definition of UN Security Council Commission No. 780 (1992), qualify as ethnic cleansing, which requires an immediate response from the international community.

Analysts emphasize the need to introduce mechanisms for international control over the observance of human rights in the occupied territories, including the deployment of a UN humanitarian mission.