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Cities under occupation are high-risk zones for human rights violations committed by Russia. The lack of access to occupied territories for international missions and independent media enables Russia to commit atrocities without witnesses and feed the global community deceitful propaganda. The absence of prompt photo and video documentation directly from the scene significantly complicates the legal process of proving Russian war crimes in the TOT before international courts.
Today, Ukraine is actively engaging the international community through platforms like the UN and OSCE, demanding the opening of a humanitarian corridor for the population of Oleshky in the occupied Kherson region. The town is suffering from an artificially induced humanitarian catastrophe created by Russia.
Arrests in Crimea
Since the start of the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the Kremlin has launched large-scale repressions against the indigenous population. According to information from the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, 560 people have fallen victim to fabricated criminal cases, with more than half of them being Crimean Tatars—predominantly public figures and human rights defenders.
Russia is deliberately erasing Crimean Tatar identity: the occupiers outlawed the Mejlis, shut down independent media, and resorted to torture and inhumane detention conditions to suppress resistance. With the onset of the full-scale war in 2022, this pressure escalated into open terror involving civilian abductions and the forced conscription of Crimean Tatars into the enemy’s armed forces.
Water Crisis in Donetsk Region
Life for people in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions has turned into a struggle for survival under the weight of total control, humanitarian decay, and criminal lawlessness. An artificial water crisis stands as a distinct war crime committed by Russia. The water supply system was destroyed by the occupiers themselves through active fighting, military exploitation of infrastructure, and the embezzlement of funds allocated for new pipelines. Despite this, the Kremlin groundlessly accuses Ukraine of a “water blockade,” using the self-inflicted humanitarian collapse as a justification for further aggression and attempts to capture Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Meanwhile, occupation media cynically romanticize the everyday hardships of local residents.
Terrorist Attack in Olenivka
Occupying forces are expanding a network of prisons and torture chambers across the seized territories to systematically crush Ukrainian resistance. The penal colony in Olenivka became a symbol of this terror when, on the night of July 29, 2022, Russians orchestrated a planned detonation of a barracks housing captured defenders of Azovstal. The tragedy took the lives of over 50 defenders and severely injured more than 140 others, with occupiers deliberately blocking medical assistance for hours. In an attempt to cover up traces of torture and internally placed explosives, Russia blamed the Ukrainian Armed Forces for the attack and blocked an international investigation. However, intercepts of phone calls by the SSU disproved the Kremlin’s narrative, confirming that the explosion was not caused by a Ukrainian strike, but rather by explosives placed inside the colony premises by the Russians themselves.
Tragedies of Mariupol
To conceal their war crimes in Mariupol, the occupiers simply demolished ruined buildings and hauled away rubble along with the remains of dead local residents. Heavy machinery was used to flatten the ruins of the Drama Theatre, burying hundreds of victims underneath. The Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre, which served as a shelter for over a thousand civilians—mostly women and children—was destroyed by two aerial bombs on March 16, 2022. The tragedy occurred just a day after Associated Press journalists were forced to leave the besieged city, leaving Mariupol behind a dense information curtain under full control of the occupation regime.
Later, an AP team conducted its own investigation by building a 3D model of the theatre and interviewing 23 witnesses. This debunked Russian fakes about a military base inside and proved that the blast claimed approximately 600 lives. Reflecting on the complexity of such a reconstruction, the journalists emphasized:
“There were no journalists there. This underscores how crucial it is for professional journalists to remain in conflict zones. Without them, investigating war crimes simply will not be possible.”
Blackouts at ZNPP
Due to another loss of off-site power at the occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP in early August 2026, the plant suffered its 24th blackout since the start of the full-scale war and the 12th in 2026 alone. For an hour, critical systems of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant relied on emergency diesel generators, posing severe nuclear safety risks.
The occupation of the ZNPP constitutes an act of international nuclear terrorism: Russia transformed the plant into a military base with heavy weaponry inside turbine halls, established drone control posts and military depots on-site, and subjected personnel to repressions and torture. To mitigate disaster risks, the power units were placed in a "cold shutdown" state. The situation at ZNPP demonstrates that international nuclear safety mechanisms remain powerless against warfare waged directly at nuclear power plants, despite the presence of IAEA monitoring missions.
Destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant
The deliberate blowing up of the Kakhovka Dam on June 6, 2023, caused a massive man-made disaster. The uncontrolled floodwaters inundated dozens of settlements across Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Rescuers and volunteers evacuated civilians and animals from flooded areas under direct Russian artillery fire, while civilians in occupied areas were denied escape routes by Russian forces. Due to a lack of access to the Kakhovka HPP and occupied territories, the international community and certain human rights observers refrained for a long time from directly accusing Russia of destroying the dam.
Occupying the Kakhovka HPP from the first days of the full-scale invasion gave Russian forces unhindered access to the facility. By mining the structure and intentionally creating excessive water pressure on the dam supports, they caused its catastrophic destruction. The primary motive behind this terrorist act was to block and delay the advance of the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
Famine in Oleshky
Ukraine calls on the world to hear and save the residents of occupied Oleshky—once a peaceful town in southern Kherson region—from Russian terror. Currently, up to six thousand civilians are surviving without electricity, gas, medicine, food, or clean drinking water. The town is under constant shelling, with occupiers actively targeting residents using FPV drones. Meanwhile, Russia deliberately blocks official humanitarian corridors and denies access to UN and Red Cross missions. For the local population, condemned to starvation by the occupiers, the only lifeline has been Ukrainian soldiers delivering food via drones.
Kremlin authorities blame Ukraine for creating the humanitarian disaster in Oleshky. Truth about the events in the town relies entirely on the accounts of a few residents fortunate enough to escape occupation.
“Whether we like it or not, people and nations supporting us trust not only official announcements, but also live, genuine stories reported by journalists on the ground. And ultimately, they trust the latter more,” says photojournalist Ivan Antypenko from Kherson.
Contributors to this piece:
Researcher and author: Yana Yevmenova
Picture editor: Marusia Maruzhenko
Copy editor: Yulia Futey
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