Ukraine has hailed as “historic and unprecedented” the European court of human rights ruling that Russia committed flagrant human rights abuses since it invaded Ukraine in 2014.
In its judgment published in Strasbourg on Wednesday, the European court of human rights said there was evidence of Russia’s widespread human rights violations, including sexual violence, acts of torture, beatings, electric shocks between 11 May 2014 and 16 September 2022 when Russia ceased to be a party to the European convention on human rights. According to the court ruing, Russia violated the international law by killing and wounding thousands of civilians and creating fear and terror.
“These actions seek to undermine the very fabric of the democracy on which the Council of Europe and its member states are founded by their destruction of individual freedoms, their suppression of political liberties and their blatant disregard for the rule of law,” the court said. The court pointed to prevalence of sexual violence and rape by Russian servicemen in Ukrainian territories, describing it as abhorrent.
Mykola Hnatovskyi, a Ukrainian judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), has described the Court's ruling in the case of Ukraine and the Netherlands vs. Russia as historic.
The court has yet to decide on whether Russia should pay a compensation. Meanwhile, the Kremlin dismissed the ruling. Asked about the judgment before the rulings were read, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We won’t abide by it, we consider it void.”
