EPLN, PPU, and KHPG present ICC Article 15 communication on the deportation of Ukrainian prisoners from Kherson and Mykolaiv — and call for international accountability
On 26 May 2026, European Prison Litigation Network (EPLN), Protection for Prisoners of Ukraine (PPU), and Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) held an online international briefing presenting their joint Article 15 communication submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The event brought together representatives of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC), DIGNITY – Danish Institute Against Torture, PPU, and academia, for a wide-ranging discussion on the criminal and human rights accountability architecture available to victims of the deportation and unlawful confinement of Ukrainian civilian prisoners. The event was moderated by Dr. Yuliya Zabyelina of the University of Alabama.
Opening remarks: OVER 3 years of documentation
EPLN Legal Director Hugues de Suremain opened the event by framing the ICC communication as the result of more than three years of sustained joint documentation work carried out together with KHPG and PPU. The submission draws on over 400 interviews conducted with prisoners who were deported and eventually returned back to Ukraine – a body of evidence assembled primarily through the painstaking field work of PPU, cross-checked and analysed by EPLN in collaboration with DIGNITY.
He situated the submission within the broader argument that prisons and the penal system have played a central and deliberate role in Russia’s war against Ukraine – not only as sites of punishment but as instruments of military, political, and colonial domination. In that context, he argued, ICC intervention is necessary not only because every crime must be prosecuted regardless of the victim’s status, but because the systematic use of detention as a tool of occupation demands an authoritative international criminal response.
“Carceral warfare”: situating the case in a historical and analytical context
Dr. Yuliya Zabyelina introduced the concept of carceral warfare – defined as the intentional use of prisons, detention, and punishment as instruments of warfare, occupation, and sovereign control – to frame the deportation of Ukrainian prisoners within a long historical and institutional continuum. Drawing on her article published in the British Journal of Criminology and co-authored with EPLN’s former legal advisor Volodymyr Boriak, she argued that prisons in occupied territories were systematically transformed from civilian detention facilities into instruments of military occupation and territorial control, repurposed for military, political, ideological, and economic objectives.
Dr. Zabyelina traced this institutional logic to the Soviet Gulag system – a vast network of camps used to discipline society, suppress political opposition, and exploit prisoner labour – and argued that these modes of governance did not disappear with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Contemporary Russian penitentiary practices in occupied Ukraine, she argued, reflect the continuation and adaptation of this older imperial Soviet legacy. What we call carceral warfare, she suggested, may be a new name for a very old practice – one whose recurrence demands recognition and a decisive institutional response.
In her closing remarks, Dr. Zabyelina noted that war does not only unfold on the battlefield: it unfolds behind prison walls, and harms some of the most vulnerable. The experiences of deported Ukrainian prisoners, she said, force the international community to confront difficult questions about accountability, sovereignty, and the meaning of international norms – questions that will only grow more urgent in the months ahead.
Presentation of the submission: from labour camps to the ICC
EPLN Senior Legal Adviser Dmitry Gurin presented the substance of the Article 15 communication. Deportation of prisoners from Kherson, he argued, are part of a long-known Soviet and Russian practice of mass deportation targeting occupied populations, from Crimean Tatars and Chechens to Lithuanians, Estonians, and Ukrainians.
He described the deportation from Kherson and Mykolaiv as unfolding in consecutive stages. From February 2022, Russian forces took control of eleven penitentiary facilities in the newly occupied oblasts, in addition to twenty-eight already under occupation since 2014. These facilities ceased to function as prisons in any meaningful legal sense: detainees were beaten, tortured, forced to dig trenches and repair military equipment – held not on the basis of Ukrainian court sentences but as hostages and internees. Russia simultaneously dismantled the Ukrainian legal order in the occupied territories, replacing it with its own legislation, which rendered the continued detention of pre-conflict prisoners unlawful under both the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute.
Over the following months, prisoners were consolidated from multiple facilities into Hola Prystan colony no. 7, before being loaded into overcrowded prison vans in early November 2022 and transported to Crimea and then to Russia – to colonies in Krasnodar, Rostov, Volgograd, Mordovia, and as far as the Russian Far East. The transfers were characterised by beatings on arrival at each new facility, no communication with families, no legal assistance, and dire conditions of transport.
Ukrainian court sentences were retroactively converted under Russian criminal law – a practice previously challenged in Crimea and found by the UN Human Rights Committee to constitute a breach of the prohibition on retroactive criminal law. Upon expiry of their Ukrainian sentences, many prisoners were immediately re-detained as alleged illegal migrants – a Kafkaesque trap for people who had been forcibly taken to Russia against their will.
Gurin concluded that the forcible, permanent removal of a large civilian population in an atmosphere of terror, without any military justification and with no attempt at return, constitutes deportation: absolutely prohibited under international humanitarian law, constituting a war crime under the Rome Statute, and – given the scale of similar attacks across Ukraine – a crime against humanity. The submission, he said, is a contribution to finally breaking the chain of impunity.
The Ukrainian investigation: what domestic proceedings can and cannot reach
Oleksandr Ziuz, representing the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in the Context of Armed Conflict at the Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG) of Ukraine, described the OPG’s active cooperation with EPLN and PPU going back to 2023, which resulted in the joint submission to the ICC alongside EPLN and PPU. He outlined three parallel domestic investigations: into the unlawful transfer and deportation of prisoners; into the conditions of detention and torture; and into crimes against prisoners and civilians held in the same Russian facilities as Ukrainian POWs, who serve both as victims and as witnesses to crimes against other categories of detainees.
In terms of concrete results, Ziuz reported that in Mykolaiv oblast, proceedings against a Russian official have been sent to court and a verdict obtained. In Kherson oblast, proceedings against seven individuals have similarly been sent to court, with verdicts pending. He described the cooperation with PPU as one of the most effective forms of civil society–prosecutorial partnership: PPU assists in the logistics of return for prisoners who have come back to Ukraine, facilitates their access to Ukrainian investigators, and supports their legal representation throughout domestic proceedings. The materials assembled by civil society, he emphasised, form the evidentiary foundation of both Ukrainian domestic proceedings and the international-level accountability effort.
Ziuz noted that the OPG cooperates with the ICC OTP in two directions: receiving requests from the Prosecutor’s Office on specific investigative priorities, and sending submissions – including civil society-led communications such as the present one — to the Prosecutor’s attention. He expressed confidence that the joint work would continue and deepen.
Documentation and methodology: building the evidentiary base
DIGNITY was represented by legal adviser Olena Ashchenko and Senior Legal Officer Adelaide Pereira Figueiras. Olena Ashchenko described DIGNITY’s support to KHPG and PPU in trauma-informed interviewing, evidence collection and management, and legal analysis, including the construction of a shared database of testimonies and supporting materials. DIGNITY also organised a model ICC court proceeding in December 2025, involving former ICC judges and a sitting prosecutor, to allow partners to understand directly how the evidence they collect would be assessed in a real ICC proceeding — and how to strengthen their documentation accordingly.
Adelaide Pereira Figueiras announced the simultaneous publication by DIGNITY of their report — examining the deportation of Ukrainian civilians serving custodial sentences to Russia, based on analysis of 233 accounts collected by PPU. Drawing on her own prior experience as a legal officer at the ICC, she described DIGNITY’s methodology: working rigorously through the contextual elements and elements of each crime to assess whether the deportation and confinement of Ukrainian prisoners may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. She underlined that these prisoners are among the most vulnerable and overlooked victims of the war – civilians who deserve protection and accountability as much as any other group. The report’s launch took place the following day, on 27 May, both online and in Kyiv, with the participation of victims, PPU, KHPG, and EPLN representatives, and officials from the Office of the Prosecutor General and the Ministry of Justice.
The humanitarian dimension: the long way home
Hanna Skrypka, co-founder of PPU, gave a deeply personal account of the humanitarian reality behind the legal framework. She described how, just a few years ago, the topic of prisoner deportation was almost entirely invisible – no public awareness, no criminal proceedings, no documentation. Today, she noted, there are hundreds of documented testimonies, court verdicts, and a growing recognition that Ukrainian citizens held in correctional facilities in occupied territories were also victims of war crimes.
But for PPU, she said, this was never about numbers or documents. Her team has been present with these people at every stage – from the first phone call received from a Russian colony to the moment someone crossed the Ukrainian border. The organisation collected over 400 testimonies from returned prisoners and helped them navigate the practical nightmare of return: documentation, travel routes, accommodation, medical care, and the basic question of what to do next.
The situation remains grave. Between 300 and 450 Ukrainian citizens, by PPU’s estimates, remain in Russian places of deprivation of liberty. Some 50 are in immigration detention centres, waiting for a path home that does not yet exist. Many are seriously ill – prisoners from facilities that served as tuberculosis hospitals and HIV treatment centres, now detained in migrant centres without antiretroviral therapy or adequate medical care. For those still serving sentences in Russian colonies, there is currently no functioning mechanism of return. Only prisoner exchanges have produced results – 25 returned through that route – but those serving sentences have not been included. Hanna Skrypka drew attention to a further and deeply troubling gap: Ukraine has no systematic state support programme for returned deportees. There is no legal status, no dedicated return programme, no rehabilitation framework. Returned prisoners risk being mobilised at the border before reaching their families. PPU has pursued legal challenges to establish victim status for this population, and the EU’s 2025 country report recommended granting returned prisoners the status of civilian captives – but legislative change has not followed. Civil society organisations, she said, are carrying this burden alone, and called on the international community to continue documenting, advocating, and supporting the return of those still held
The human rights architecture: complementary routes to accountability
Nataliia Stepanenko of EHRAC situated the ICC communication within the broader landscape of international human rights accountability, developing a central argument: the ICC process, human rights litigation, and international humanitarian law are not competing routes to accountability. They are mutually reinforcing components of the same architecture – and that complementarity is particularly important in the present case.
She identified three specific ways in which human rights processes complement international criminal accountability. First, they establish state responsibility: while international criminal law asks who bears individual criminal responsibility, human rights law asks whether the state’s conduct was compatible with its international obligations – a different but equally important question. Second, human rights litigation preserves the victim-centred dimension: in criminal proceedings, the accused tends to become the focal point; in human rights proceedings, the individual victim – their separation from family, their inability to return, the absence of remedies – remains at the centre. Third, human rights processes generate findings that support accountability more broadly, by identifying patterns, confirming the relevance of international humanitarian law, and creating a record that other mechanisms, including the ICC, can draw upon.
She highlighted three cases of particular relevance. The ECtHR Grand Chamber judgment in Ukraine v. Russia concerning Crimea found that the transfer of Ukrainian prisoners from Crimea to penal facilities in Russia violated the right to private and family life, and explicitly considered the transfer against the background of the law of occupation and the obligation to respect the legal order of the occupied territory – confirming that such transfers are not merely administrative or logistical questions but matters of fundamental legality. The Grand Chamber judgment in Ukraine and Netherlands v. Russia further confirmed that Russia’s practices of arbitrary detention, imposition of Russian law, and transfer of civilians were not isolated but formed part of a broader pattern of state conduct in Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory.
The decision of the UN Human Rights Committee in Bratsylo and Others v. Russia – litigated by EHRAC in cooperation with Ukrainian partners – established that Russia’s application of its criminal law to persons previously convicted under Ukrainian law, including the forced imposition of Russian citizenship and their transfer to other regions of Russia, was retroactive and arbitrary, and that the ICCPR continues to apply concurrently with international humanitarian law in situations of armed conflict and occupation. Russia’s argument, she noted, was formalistic and largely unpersuasive – but the fact of engagement with the UN treaty body system means that legal findings can still be obtained and Russia can still be required to respond. For victims, these mechanisms remain among the few international avenues where the state can be held to account.
Documentation and the contextual element
Mykhailo Romanov of KHPG brought a broader perspective to the documentation effort, drawing attention to a figure that placed the Kherson deportation in a much larger context: approximately 21,000 Ukrainian prisoners were affected by deportation or displacement in one form or another since 2014. The systematic nature of these transfers – spanning more than a decade, across multiple occupied regions, carried out by the same institutional actors – was not accidental, he argued. It was a deliberate policy. That systematic quality is precisely the contextual element that supports the characterisation of individual acts as part of a larger criminal enterprise, and that elevates them from isolated violations to crimes against humanity.
He noted that KHPG is currently conducting approximately one hundred criminal proceedings in which convicted prisoners who were deported and subsequently returned to Ukraine are the beneficiaries. The work of documentation, interviewing, legal assistance and case-building, he argued, contributes not only to individual proceedings but to the construction of an evidentiary record that challenges Russia’s systematic impunity – a pattern of conduct that, when it goes unaddressed over a decade, corrodes the authority of international norms and institutions themselves.
Questions and discussion
The Q&A session, facilitated by Dr. Zabyelina, addressed questions from the audience on the frequency and mechanisms of prisoner return to Ukraine; the ability of families to maintain contact with prisoners in Russian detention and in occupied territory; the legal status – or its absence – of returned prisoners in Ukraine and the obstacles they face; and the feasibility of independent monitoring of Ukrainian prisoners held in occupied territories and in Russia. Panellists emphasised the near-total absence of official mechanisms for family contact, the risks facing relatives who attempt to communicate with prisoners through informal channels, and the growing role of prisoner exchanges as the only realistic avenue of return for those still held. The absence of Ukrainian state support – no legal status, no rehabilitation programme, no dedicated financial assistance – was a consistent theme, with panellists calling for urgent legislative reform and greater international pressure.
acknowledgement
This communication was made possible through the generous and essential support of the Fondation de France. EPLN, PPU and KHPG also wish to express their deep gratitude to the German Federal Foreign Office for their sustained commitment to documenting war crimes and supporting victims of some of the most overlooked violations committed in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
This documentation work would also not have been possible without the major involvement of DIGNITY – the Danish Institute Against Torture.
Further information
The video record of the webinar is available at https://youtu.be/rhJTJvOEXK8
The full text of the Article 15 communication is available at: https://www.prisonlitigation.org/articles/joint-icc-submission-deportation-ukrainian-prisoners-2026/
DIGNITY’s report “Deportation to Hell” is available at: https://dignity.dk/en/news/russia-unlawfully-deported-ukrainian-prisoners-to-its-territory/