Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on Thursday highlighting the unjust prosecution of Ukrainian civilians under Ukraine’s “anti-collaboration” laws. The report highlights how civilians performing legitimate and essential tasks in areas under Russian occupation have been prosecuted under these laws, and examines the broader impact these prosecutions have had on both the individuals involved and the community as a whole.
In March 2022, the Ukrainian Parliament enacted two legislative measures aimed at addressing collaboration with occupying forces. These laws expand the scope of “collaboration” to include any act by a Ukrainian citizen that publicly denies the existence of an external armed aggressor or demonstrates cooperation with occupying forces. Additionally, civilians who have held organizational or administrative roles under the occupying authorities are subject to prosecution under these provisions. Individuals convicted of such activities may face imprisonment, property confiscation, and additional penalties, including disqualification from participating in elections or holding public office.
According to the report, the laws’ overly broad and vague definition of “showing support” enables arbitrary prosecution of civilians. This has especially affected individuals holding public offices or providing essential services under occupation, such as in education or healthcare, which are vital for the civilian population. Residents of formerly occupied regions are subjected to a mandatory “filtration” process as part of a security screening, with failure to pass potentially leading to prosecution. Even if prosecution does not occur, individuals may be barred from employment in their professional field due to their decision to continue working under occupation. HRW notes that the conviction rate in such cases has been nearly 100 percent.
The laws have also been criticized for targeting those who did not support Russia and only carry out functions necessary for the benefit of other civilians. The Head of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Danielle Bell, emphasized this further by stating that the law has often been applied unfairly. Despite these criticisms, the Ukrainian government has yet to take any steps to address the arbitrary application of the law, even as the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches its third year.
Despite reclaiming 54 percent of the territory initially occupied by Russia, Ukraine continues to see 18 percent of its territory under Russian control, primarily in the southern and eastern regions of the country. In recent weeks there has also been growing concerns over Russia’s policies in the territories it occupies, with reports indicating that Ukrainian teachers are being forced to teach Russian propaganda, while Ukrainian children are being abducted and place into the Russian adoption system for alleged indoctrination. According to the UN, the Russian occupation has created “a climate of fear” in these regions, where civilians face arbitrary censorship, detention, enforced disappearances, and, in some cases, torture. Additionally, citizens have been pressured into taking Russian passports, despite their Ukrainian nationality, as part of an effort to legitimize the notion of these territories becoming part of Russia.
“All She Did Was Help People”
Flawed Anti-Collaboration Legislation in Ukraine
Summary
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has wreaked devastation on the civilian population, causing immense suffering. Russian forces have committed numerous apparent war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. As of November 2024, the Ukrainian government had registered 147, 559 alleged war crimes and other abuses, and Russia exercised control over swaths of Ukrainian territory, including parts of Luhanska, Donetska, Zaporizka, and Khersonska regions, as well as the entire Crimean Peninsula, which Russia occupied in 2014.
Trapped behind the frontline are millions of Ukrainian citizens who must daily contend with bombardment and shifting battlelines, predation by their occupiers, wartime deprivation, and often split up families and households.
Many Ukrainians are no longer behind enemy lines, after the areas where they live were de-occupied, but they endured other hardships that have lasted long after Russian occupation ended.
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The experience of Veronika V. (pseudonym), a 50-year-old child psychologist with almost 30 years of experience, illustrates some of these hardships. Veronika lives in a city in Kharkivska region. By April 2022, after intense fighting, Russian forces occupied Veronika’s city, and it remained under occupation until late September that year.
Like many other residents, Veronika spent the first month of the occupation at home, the constant shelling leaving her too terrified to venture outside. By mid-June, she decided she was ready to help her community. She resumed her work at a local kindergarten, where she and other staff cleaned up the building before it could reopen, sweeping out glass and rubble and shaking out mattresses. Due to ongoing hostilities, the kindergarten remained closed to children. Staff who continued working received humanitarian aid weekly from Russian occupying authorities and volunteers.
Veronika was a well-known psychologist, and soon residents began seeking her support. She said that she started providing counseling to a group of approximately 10 women, all local residents:
People’s need [for psychological help] was huge. Everyone was terrified. For two months, people lived in their basements, afraid to go outside. And when they could meet for a group session, talk about their emotions …it was so important.
At the request of the local education department, now under the control of Russian occupying authorities, Veronika was then asked to write an article for a local newspaper on how to best support children emotionally during the war. The article, published under her name, offered practical advice on helping children cope with the stress. She said:
It was a professional article. Not screaming about how well we had it under occupation but focused on how to support children under such traumatic, unstable circumstances. It talked about things like having a routine, taking children for walks when possible, keeping a schedule.
In September, after an almost six-month Russian occupation, Ukrainian forces liberated the city. Like other residents, Veronika had to undergo “filtration,” a screening process by Ukrainian security services. Although they cleared her of all suspicion of collaboration with Russian forces, local authorities made it clear to Veronika she would never work with the local education department again. A local official specifically mentioned her article as the reason, she said.
Veronika started looking for a new job. Despite applying for several positions, including at four charity foundations, she was unable to find employment as a psychologist in her home city. The head of one of the foundations, which hired Veronika initially and then was forced to fire her, told Human Rights Watch that the municipal authorities had explicitly prohibited the foundation from hiring Veronika:
They told us, if [the foundation] wants to be able to work … to rent office space, even for money, you can’t hire her [because she is a “collaborator.”] [They said], “Remember, you either work with us or you are against us.”
Veronika said that she was shocked by what she had to face after her city was de-occupied. She said that she was proud of her work under occupation and had stayed to help her city and other Ukrainians. She questioned her own naivety and wondered if she should have hidden her work.
Another resident from Veronika’s city said: “People who stayed and worked under occupation have become unemployable. They can’t even get a job as a street sweeper now.”
Veronika’s story is only one example of the many unjust experiences of Ukrainian civilians caught in the crossfire of Russia’s war in Ukraine. While she has not been criminally prosecuted, many others, who engaged with occupying authorities to no greater extent than she did, have been.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian authorities have prosecuted hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, sentencing some to lengthy prison terms, on charges of “acts of collaboration” under overly vague and broad anti-collaboration legislation that Ukraine’s parliament adopted in March 2022, two weeks after the invasion. More than 8,400 investigations have been opened since then.
Intended to deter collaboration with occupying forces, the practical impact of the legislation goes much further. In effect, it criminalizes Ukrainian civilians who provide routine public services to their fellow Ukrainians, as they are expected to do under occupation. The broad range of activities and interactions with the occupier that fall under the legislation in practice make it very difficult for Ukrainians employed in public service before their towns were occupied or who wanted to assist with delivery of public services afterward, to avoid falling afoul of the legislation.
The penalties set out for different types of so-called acts of collaboration range from bans on working in certain professions or public service for up to 15 years, corrective labor and asset seizure, to life imprisonment.
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This report analyzes Ukraine’s anti-collaboration laws and their impact on a range of rights. It highlights how some anti-collaboration provisions criminalize legitimate civilian activities under occupation. It also outlines cases of arbitrary prosecutions and penalties against Ukrainian civilians and describes how authorities have at times used these laws to penalize the mere act of continuing to work under Russian occupation, without adequate regard to establishing the accused’ intent to undermine Ukraine’s security or demonstrate that actual damage was inflicted as a result their actions. It also looks at the broader consequences of these laws and their implementation on communities emerging from occupation.
The collaboration prosecutions documented in this report involved people from de-occupied areas of Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities have also prosecuted individuals who are currently living in occupied territories, trying them in absentia.
This report documents cases of Ukrainian citizens, including volunteers, municipal workers, medical personnel, and teachers, who were prosecuted for actions that had no criminal content and caused no public harm. Yet they suffered harsh, arbitrary penalties for alleged collaboration with occupying forces. For instance, in one documented case, a veterinarian was sentenced, in absentia, to 10 years in prison for accepting an administrative role in the local veterinary service, while an electrician who took part in the efforts to restore electrical supply to a city, damaged by hostilities, was handed a three-year prison term, accompanied by confiscation of property and a professional ban of 10 years. Although an appellate court issued a more lenient sentence, it did not exonerate the man or expunge his criminal record.
The Ukrainian government is within its rights to adopt legislation to punish those who pose a threat to national security under occupation. Such measures may be necessary to respond to public calls for justice and prevent a sense of impunity in society. However, as this report describes, the current anti-collaboration legal framework is deeply flawed. Its language is imprecise, overly broad and vague. It casts too wide a net, capturing not only those who actively harm Ukraine’s safety and security, but also civilians carrying out ordinary work for fellow civilians under occupation or performing other activities necessary for survival.
International human rights law requires that legislation meets the criteria of “legality,” which means that to be valid, laws cannot be overly broad or vague. Instead, they need to be sufficiently accessible and precise so that an individual can reasonably foresee the consequences of their actions, in particular when they may be in violation of the law.
Ukraine’s international legal obligations also require it to ensure due process and fair trial rights, with due consideration afforded to duress or coercive circumstances, equal application of the law, and proportionate punishment. Ukraine’s anti-collaboration laws do not meet these tests. The fact that courts have issued different verdicts for similar acts, and identical verdicts for very different acts and seemingly very different levels of culpability under a given provision of the criminal code, is a demonstration of the legislation’s arbitrariness and the lack of foreseeability.
Analysis by Human Rights Watch and other organizations of existing court verdicts shows that the conviction rate in collaboration cases is close to 100 percent. This, combined with the prevalence of plea bargains, the low rate of appeals, and the scarcity of lawyers willing to handle collaboration cases raises significant concerns about whether individuals charged with collaboration have adequate access to due process. Many collaboration prosecutions are also conducted in absentia, but without meeting any of the due process safeguards required to render those proceedings fair under international law.
Ukrainian legal experts and human rights defenders interviewed by Human Rights Watch for this report mostly criticized the anti-collaboration laws. Many believed them to be unfair and unjust, and thought that they punish people for simply trying to survive under difficult circumstances. Some argued that the Ukrainian government should be encouraging people to stay in their communities and provide Ukrainian civilians with services under occupation, rather than punishing them for doing so.
The anti-collaboration legislation does not sufficiently address the coercion and duress that civilians face under occupation. The report describes how the legislation enables the courts to unfairly punish civilians who were forced to engage with Russian occupying authorities to protect themselves and their families. To address this, prosecutors and courts should in each case carefully review and consider individual circumstances, such as evidence of intimidation, pressure, or threats of violence.
In May 2024, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine took an important step by issuing a directive to the heads of regional prosecutor’s offices, instructing them to comply with international human rights law and international humanitarian law during pre-trial investigations and providing procedural guidance in criminal cases involving collaboration. The instruction, which the Prosecutor General’s office shared with Human Rights Watch, re-iterated the prevalence of international human rights and humanitarian law over domestic law. Recognizing that Ukraine’s collaboration laws do not explicitly differentiate between criminal collaboration and necessary interactions with the occupying power, the letter instructs the prosecutors to apply practical considerations to make this distinction.
While this is a positive move, at time of writing, the extent of the impact of these instructions on new and ongoing investigations and prosecutions or previously issued verdicts remains unclear.
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In some cases, described in this report, local authorities returning to de-occupied areas have targeted residents even after they underwent “filtration” and were cleared of any suspicion of violating anti-collaboration laws. Like Veronika, described above, these residents can then be targeted by local authorities who publicly signal that they will not be able to get a job again because during the occupation they did not leave and continued to work. Official policy does not condone this, but as a Ukrainian Supreme Court judge critical of the law told Human Rights Watch: “To put it simply, they are being punished for not fleeing their homes.”
A woman whose city was occupied between April and September 2022 summarized her experience:
Our mayor left just before the Russians came in. He didn’t help us, didn’t tell us to evacuate. He just ran away, quietly, took his family out. And then when our [Ukrainian forces] liberated us, the mayor suddenly reappeared. He said that all of us who stayed behind and worked are collaborators. People started … asking: what were we supposed to do to feed our families? And he responded: “You were supposed to eat worms [rather than collaborate with the Russians.]”
Nearly three years after the shock of the Russia’s full-scale invasion and the rushed passage of the anti-collaboration laws, some Ukrainian legislators are rethinking their impact and proposing amendments. Ukrainians we spoke with said the current anti-collaboration laws are counterproductive in that they effectively encourage Ukrainians to abandon occupied communities, while incentivizing those who remain, whatever their sympathies, to fear rather than welcome Ukrainian authorities after de-occupation. This, they argue, has made Ukrainian recovery of its territorial integrity and reintegration of liberated populations more difficult.
As detailed below, many in Ukraine’s civil society believe that prosecuting individuals for collaboration should be considered through the broader lens of transitional justice, with a careful balance between Ukraine’s immediate security needs, the humanitarian needs of Ukrainian civilians, and the long-term interests of Ukraine in recovering and reintegrating Russian occupied territories.
