{"id":1258287,"date":"2025-07-09T13:49:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T10:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/russia-is-responsible-for-the-war-in-donbas-and-the-downing-of-flight-mh17-echr-adopts-historic-decision\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T13:49:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T10:49:58","slug":"russia-is-responsible-for-the-war-in-donbas-and-the-downing-of-flight-mh17-echr-adopts-historic-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/russia-is-responsible-for-the-war-in-donbas-and-the-downing-of-flight-mh17-echr-adopts-historic-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia is responsible for the war in Donbas and the downing of flight MH17: ECHR adopts historic decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, July 9, the European Court of Human Rights made a historic decision \u2014 finding the Russian Federation guilty of a number of serious human rights violations in the territories under its control in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as in the case of the shooting down of flight MH17 in July 2014.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Euronews reports<\/a> this.<\/p>\n

According to the decision, from May 2014 to January 2022, Russia effectively controlled part of Donbas. This automatically makes it responsible for violating rights enshrined in the European Convention \u2014 such as:<\/p>\n

– the right to life<\/p>\n

– prohibition of torture and freedom from slavery<\/p>\n

– freedom of peaceful assembly<\/p>\n

The court also confirmed that flight MH17 was shot down over territory under Russian influence, killing 298 people. However, the ECHR decided that a separate examination of the complaint regarding the right to an effective remedy in this case was not necessary – the position was supported by 16 out of 17 judges.<\/p>\n

The court made the following demands on the Russian Federation:<\/p>\n

– immediately release or return persons illegally detained in the occupied territories as of September 16, 2022<\/p>\n

– to participate in the creation of an international mechanism for the return of deported Ukrainian children<\/p>\n

– stop the attack on the Ukrainian language and cultural education, which violates Protocol No. 1 to the Convention<\/p>\n

This is the largest inter-state case in the history of the ECHR: it brought together four inter-state applications from the period from 2014 until the full-scale invasion. The case has record support, with 26 countries and one international organization joining it.<\/p>\n

Last year, in June 2024, open hearings were held in Strasbourg, where Ukraine presented evidence of Russian war crimes \u2014 from deportation and torture to restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly.<\/p>\n

Margarita Sokorenko, Commissioner for ECHR Affairs at the Ministry of Justice, described the decision as “the culmination of 10 long years of complex defense of justice.”<\/p>\n

“This case went far beyond the scope of our duties \u2014 we were innovators in presenting an interstate lawsuit and building an evidentiary base,” she wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n

As a reminder, in January 2023, the court recognized that Russia exercised effective control over part of Donbas, and the downing of MH17 occurred in its area of jurisdiction<\/a> . The ECHR also documented the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine since April 2014, definitively refuting Moscow’s claims of “non-involvement.”<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , Twitter<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, July 9, the European Court of Human Rights made a historic decision \u2014 finding the Russian Federation guilty of a number of serious human rights violations in the territories under its control in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as in the case of the shooting down of flight MH17 in July […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":887782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76873],"class_list":["post-1258287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}