At the Coordination Headquarters for the return of Ukrainian citizens to the controlled territory of Ukraine through the territory of the Russian Federation and third countries raised the issue of returning to Ukraine citizens who were serving sentences in correctional institutions by decisions of Ukrainian courts and found themselves in temporary occupation.
According to various sources, after the full-scale aggression of Russia on February 24, 2022, in the new temporarily occupied territories, in particular Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, up to 3,000 prisoners remained in Ukrainian places of detention, a significant part of which were unlawfully deported to penal institutions in the temporarily occupied Crimea and territory of the Russian Federation.
Considering that the active phase of military aggression has already been going on for more than a year, some of these convicts have already completed their terms of serving sentences and the occupying authorities released them and gave them fake certificates of release, which bear the seals of the occupation administration or the Russian penitentiary authority.
Unfortunately, for more than nine years of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which began in February 2014 with the temporary occupation of Crimea, the Ukrainian state has not been able to clearly determine the algorithm of actions in relation to such citizens of Ukraine, in particular, how to return to controlled territory of Ukraine and how it will be taken into account that they actually served under the control of the occupation or Russian administration the punishment determined by him by the decision of the Ukrainian court.
Lawyer of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center Volodymyr Liashenko has experience in positively resolving the issue of returning to Ukraine from the territory of the Krasnodar Region a citizen of Ukraine who served his sentence in the territory of the Kherson region and was released by the occupiers after the end of his term. In February 2023, at a meeting of the Coordinating Headquarters for the return of Ukrainian citizens to the controlled territory of Ukraine through the territory of the Russian Federation and third countries, he raised the issue of the need to amend the current legislation of Ukraine, which would take into account the fact that they actually served their sentences on the territory of Ukraine.
On February 23, a relevant meeting was held with the participation of representatives of central government authorities, law enforcement agencies, judicial authorities and members of the public, where it was noted that this issue has been relevant since the very beginning of Russian aggression in 2014 and requires amendments to existing codes, laws and by-laws. The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, as the main body of state power in the field of legal politics, is developing a draft law of Ukraine on amendments to the legislation of Ukraine, which is designed to resolve this issue.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center, as a human rights organization that systematically deals with the issue of protecting human rights, in particular those who ended up in the temporarily occupied territories or were illegally deported to the territory of the aggressor’s country, joins this work.