Report of the UN Secretary-General: Russia is imposing its own political, legal, administrative, law enforcement, and judicial systems in the occupied territories of Ukraine
On 3 July 2026, in Geneva, at the UN Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk will present a report on Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and the human rights situation in Ukraine, as well as the report of the UN Secretary-General on the human rights situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.
You can follow the presentation of the report and the discussion online on the UN WEB TV. The discussion will begin on 3 July at approximately 13.30 Latvian time.
During the discussion, the joint statement from the Baltic and Nordic countries will be read by the Ambassador of Iceland and Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva Einar Gunnarsson.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights notes in the report that:
- during the winter months of 2025–2026, the Russian armed forces systematically and repeatedly – at least 423 times – attacked energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine, damaging and destroying energy generation, transmission, and distribution facilities. The attacks affected millions of civilians. In many places, households were left without electricity for extended periods. Due to the electricity shortage, the authorities in Ukraine were forced to implement regular power outages across the country, providing electricity for only a few hours a day.
- Systematic and repeated attacks were carried out against the centralised heating infrastructure, which provides heat and hot water to the majority of households in Ukrainian cities, leaving many without heat and hot water for weeks.
- Power outages disrupted water supply and the operations of healthcare facilities and schools.
- Attacks on Ukraine’s railway infrastructure and port infrastructure in the Odesa region intensified.
- During the reporting period, at least 1260 civilians were killed and 6706 were injured, including 77 medical workers.
- Since February 2022, Russian armed forces have killed 128 Ukrainian prisoners of war and non-combatants. There have been 793 documented cases of conflict-related sexual violence against 628 men, 149 women, 14 girls, and 2 boys.
The report of the UN Secretary-General concludes that Russia in its occupied territories of Ukraine:
- imposes its own political, legal, administrative, law enforcement, and judicial systems;
- by restricting access to medicines, healthcare, social protection, public education, public-sector employment, and freedom of movement, is pressuring residents to obtain Russian citizenship;
- deports people to Russia or third countries and implements policies that force people to leave the occupied territories, as well as prevent many from returning;
- demands that men register for military service and subjects the population to constant threats of conscription or mobilisation into the Russian armed forces;
- treats detained civilians cruelly – they are subjected to sexual violence, beaten, kicked, humiliated, and attacked by dogs; it is difficult for relatives to obtain information about the fate and whereabouts of their family members;
- imposes fines for expressing anti-war views, condemning the occupation, or criticising the Russian government, as well as for expressing pro-Ukrainian views or showing support for the Ukrainian armed forces; holds individuals accountable for content on their mobile phones, including songs by Ukrainian artists, images of Ukrainian state symbols, or images of the colours of the Ukrainian flag; issues convictions and imposes fines or administrative detention for up to 14 days for displaying Ukrainian national symbols;
- imposes the Russian state curriculum and militarised subjects; promotes Russian narratives through education, including extracurricular activities;
- restricts the use of the Ukrainian language; Ukrainian is no longer taught in schools;
- maintains a comprehensive system for monitoring citizens’ private lives and communications – conducts frequent home visits by law enforcement officials to individuals suspected of expressing pro-Ukrainian views, searches children’s phones in schools for software used to access Ukrainian online education and checks the contents of mobile phones at checkpoints;
- requires the installation of equipment in place of satellite antennas to allow access only to pro-Russian television channels and requires internet service providers to block access to Ukrainian websites;
- intimidates and persecutes human rights defenders, lawyers, activists, and journalists; restricts the right to freedom of religion or belief; and confiscates homes.
Since 2014, at the request of the Ukrainian government and in light of the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine, a UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission has been deployed to Ukraine.
Since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission has been monitoring the impact of Russia’s war on human rights throughout Ukraine, as well as remotely in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories to which it has no access.