Extrajudicial killings, psychological threats, illegal detention, torture and child enticement are characteristic of life for Ukrainians in Russian-occupied regions.
Trump has eliminated Ukrainian US troops and opened air support options
White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said President Trump has removed boots on Ukraine’s ground in order to maintain peace.
So, what will it be? The Russian security guard asked, “I’ll become mayor or break your leg.”
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, researchers and human rights groups have quietly documented examples of what everyday life has been like for the estimated 3.6 million Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory. That threat to Ukrainian officials in the Kherson region was linked to the presentation of an ultimatum, dragged underground by Russian security guards and supported by Sledgehammer.
Such human rights issues could become even more pronounced as President Donald Trump appeared to be putting pressure on Ukraine to consider abandoning its territory as part of his peace talks with Russia.
For about four years, Russia has not provided independent access to these Ukrainian regions, including Donetsk, Khalkiv, Carson, Luhansk, Mikolife and parts of the Zaporisia region. However, testimony came from Ukrainian evacuees, those who fled, and civilians and officials living in frontline areas liberated by Ukraine.
And that’s awful.
There have been extensive reports of extrajudicial killings, psychological threats, illegal detention, torture, child enticement and loss of failure. Residents face a sustained shortage of water, electricity and healthcare. Locals are pressured to become Russian citizens and serve the military as part of the “Rosifis” indoctrination programme. Local Ukrainian government representatives face persecution.
The incident with local Ukrainian authorities threatened in Kherson in March 2022 was documented by the Kyiv-based human rights group Zmina. The Russian administrator wanted him to take on the role of mayor as sitting mayor Volodimia Mikolaienko was detained and detained in a Russian prison where he still suffered and refused to cooperate with the occupying regime..
“I told him I didn’t want to be mayor, I didn’t want to work at all and didn’t want to break my leg,” an official told Zmina. “He said I had options. They would break my leg or I would work. I said I didn’t want either.”
Zmina records dozens of similar cases, including police officers, village chiefs, public administrators and civil servants, whom Russia tried to force to cooperate with Russian occupying forces.
Russia doesn’t even bother to deny this. If so, the Ukrainians say they are happy to be brought to the fold in Russia.
Stolen children, not war orphans
More recently, one Ukrainian, a former military man whose hometown is occupied by Russia, told USA that his cousin spent a month in prison after it was found to be linked to the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB Security and Intelligence Reporting Agency. After Russia took over much of the Zaporidian region, it banned the Catholic Church and Catholic charities in Ukraine, saying it worked for the benefit of foreign intelligence agencies and stored weapons.
Mykola Kuleba is the CEO of Save Ukraine, a charity working to return an estimated 35,000 Ukrainian children stolen by the Russian military, and has been illegally transferred to Russia and Belarus, which could represent a war crime. He recently raised an alarm in his digital recruitment database. There, approximately 300 adducted Ukrainian children can be searched and sorted by age, gender, color, health status – personality traits.
“These kids are presented as products in e-commerce stores,” Kleva writes on social media platform X.
“These children are not “war orphans.” They had their names, their families and many others being fired.
Russia denied that all this activity was happening and dismissed it as Ukrainian propaganda.
Nevertheless, the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands issued a warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova Belova.
Can Putin be trusted peacefully?
The next step in any peace process between Ukraine and Russia may be for Ukrainian President Voldy Mie Zelensky and President Putin to hold a direct meeting.
It is not clear whether that will happen or not. Zelenskyy appears to meet with joy. Putin isn’t.
“We’ll see if Putin and Zelensky will work together,” Trump said on August 22.
Still, while Trump talks about “land swaps,” it is not clear that Zelensky is willing to agree to territorial concessions as a way to end the war. Zelenskyy argued that many European leaders agreed – such a move does not only set a potentially dangerous precedent for legalizing illegal military occupations. It may be a short reprieve before Putin attempts to invade Ukraine, or before another region lost when the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of the Cold War is lost.
The White House said the US will play some role in ensuring Ukraine’s security in the event of a peace agreement, but said such forces are likely outside the NATO military alliance and details are vague.
Zelensky also states that the Ukrainian constitution explicitly prohibits the renunciation of the state’s territory.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Pizzi, legal counsel at Global Rights Compliance, an international human rights law firm located in its offices in Washington, D.C., The Hague and Kiev, Hague, helps in building war crime cases against Russia. He said Russian authorities in the occupied territories continue to pursue coordinated national policies of abuse targeting people who are perceived as anti-Russians.
Pizzi said the Ukrainian-Russian land exchange debate was a “sarcastic concept” that “in fact it involves risking millions of lives in the terrible horrors of Russian occupation.” Others, like Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, describe the exchange of land as a “basic issue” that discusses at peace talks, highlighting the major cracks in the issue.
What Ukrainians want
A poll conducted by the Kyiv Institute of International Sociology in June showed that 68% of Ukrainians were opposed to the idea that if the war was to end, they would officially recognize “parts” of the occupied territories as “parts” belonging to Russia. Approximately 24% accepted the idea. The same survey shows that 78% of Ukrainians are against the idea of giving up on land that Kiev’s military still controls.
Pollers did not look into opinions in Russian-occupied areas.
There is a good reason.
Jade McGlynn is a British researcher and Russian expert at King’s College London. Her recent work focuses on Russian war against Ukraine, with an emphasis on life in the occupied territories.
She said the Ukrainians living there faced stifling freedom of expression, and local governments are cruelly “weaponized” by threatening to take them from their parents if they are not complying with Russian regulations.
This includes forcing Ukrainians to apply for Russian passports and submit regularly to checkpoints and intrusive searches that get in the way at home. Their mobile phones are also being monitored. This is a situation in which Russia said it had moved to deploy state-issued mobile phones preloaded with software to track users’ communications, making communications with friends and relatives outside the occupying area even more dangerous.
McGlynn said she asked for a private vote, which showed that about 50% of Ukrainians who were able to leave the occupied territory, was in contact with their home family. However, all new phones purchased in areas occupied since September come with “Max Messenger,” so it’s almost certainly going to change.
The act of resistance
Still, many Ukrainians along the occupied territories were able to resist through intelligence gathering and obstructing the major railway transport networks. The locals don’t dare to protest. Sometimes people will give Russians the wrong direction as an act of personal rebellion. Ukrainian military special forces also appeared to carry out targeted assassinations with the assistance of civil resistance activists.
They do so at a great risk.
McGlynn said last month that more people associated with resistance groups have disappeared, particularly in the Zaporizhzhia region. She said it is still relatively easy to be killed or attacked in the middle of the street due to perceptions of violations against Russian local governments.
“People understand that you don’t need to threaten them. They realize that their feet can break,” she said. “It’s normalized.”
She also pointed out that the conditions for Ukrainians living in the occupied territories are strict, but that doesn’t mean they would necessarily approve Zelensky’s policies. Some people feel abandoned. Others view Russia sympathetically. The Ukrainian leader also elicited criticism in Ukraine of the draft policy that led to allegations of human rights abuses. The man was dragged out of his home and even his nightclub by recruiters.
In the case of 23-year-old Andriy Sechko, who lived in the occupied territories of the Harson area before fleeing in 2024, his village life has been transformed into what he described as a horrifying game of “Hide and Seek.”
He said “silent terrorism” reigned in his village as collaborators reported on pro-Akrainian residents. Sechko survived the search and inspection of Russia for two years, he told Ukrainian outlet Babel.
Russia generally cannot leave the occupied territory for men of combat age.
Sechko’s family took a risk.
One day, with the help of volunteer activists, they loaded them into a minibus with Ukrainian documents. They prepared a fake cover story. They stopped at two different checkpoints. Sechko’s phone was checked.
“I reset the phone to factory settings. They saw that the phone was open. The Russians believe their propaganda. They were sure I would be shot in Ukrainian territory or sent to the front as cannon feed.
