Over 10,000 human rights violation cases have been registered in Crimea during the 11 years of occupation. Statistics of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during hostilities in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and other parts of Ukraine were also entered into the Register of War Crimes.
Since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, the human rights situation in the peninsula has been characterized by large-scale and systematic abuses. The Crimean Tatar Resource Center reports that between 2017 and 2024, a minimum of 10,018 human rights abuses have been documented in occupied Crimea, with 6,730 of them being cases of Crimean Tatars, the native inhabitants of the area.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center’s press service reported this. A lawyer from the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, Yulia Korotkikh, discussed the digital War Crimes Register, which was established to record human rights violations associated with both the start of the occupation of the peninsula and the full-scale invasion, at a press conference devoted to the presentation of the Analysis of Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Crimea.
She claims that this Register is a digital tool that includes all of the data the organization has access to on human rights abuses that have been documented since 2014. Over the course of its 11-year tenure, the CTRC has recorded over 10,000 such occurrences. The attorney underlined the importance of organizing and presenting the gathered data in a way that facilitates efficient use, including analytical processing, building an evidence base, and sending materials to international organizations or law enforcement agencies conducting investigations.
A group of IT experts is working to enhance the Register, and the tool will soon be finished, said Eskender Bariyev, Chairman of the CRO’s Board. He claims that the CTRC and the Prosecutor’s Office conducted a focus group in November of last year when comments and recommendations were made. A focus group or workshop with representatives of the National Police, the Security Service of Ukraine, and other agencies is scheduled for May in order to consider the particulars of their job.
Earlier, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution that makes it possible to claim compensation for the harm done by Russia starting in 2014, when the occupation of Crimea began. On April 14, the occupation authorities were detaining 225 individuals, including 134 Crimean Tatars.
Peninsula residents are nevertheless subject to fines for sharing “unwanted” information; throughout the year, more than 1200 administrative cases were filed, about half of which involved women. Repressions persist: at least 13 searches, including seven searches of Crimean Tatars, occurred in Crimea in the first three months of 2025 alone. The most common reason for detentions is “discrediting the Russian army.”