On 16 December 2025, Volker Türk, High Commissioner for Human Rights, presents a report on the human rights situation in Ukraine to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The presentation and discussion of the report can be viewed online on the UN TV website. The discussion will begin at 16.00 Latvian time on 16 December. The joint address by the Baltic and Nordic countries will be read by Heidi Schroderus-Fox, Ambassador of Finland and Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva.
A report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights points to alarming trends: an increase in civilian casualties both on the front line and in cities, constant attacks on energy infrastructure, and the continued systematic and widespread torture and ill-treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians.
- As Russian military operations intensify, 1420 civilians have been killed and 6545 wounded – a 37% increase compared to the previous six months; enormous damage has been caused to homes and other critical infrastructure in villages and towns on the front line and far beyond. Large-scale coordinated attacks on energy facilities across Ukraine caused regional power outages lasting up to 10–18 hours a day.
- The Russian authorities are systematically and extensively torturing Ukrainian prisoners of war and treating them cruelly – beating them severely, suffocating, humiliating them, subjecting them to sexual violence, electric shocks or dog attacks, and keeping them in inhumane conditions. Extrajudicial executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war and persons incapable of fighting, as well as civilians, have also been documented.
- The occupying authorities have deported dozens of Ukrainians to Georgia and issued notices on at least 4500 homes as potentially “abandoned”, which can be expropriated if ownership rights are not confirmed.
- Residents of the occupied territories face constant restrictions on freedom of speech, access to independent information and communication, and freedom of religion or belief.
- The occupying authorities continue to engage in “patriotic education” of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories from the age of three and to militarise them by teaching them air, land and sea drone piloting and combat medicine, as well as organising militarised competitions under the supervision of soldiers of Russian armed forces.
Since 2014, at the request of the Ukrainian government and in view 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 areas of Ukraine to which it has no access.