Russia files complaint against Ukraine with ECHR

The Russian Federation lodged an inter-state complaint against Ukraine with the European Court of Human Rights, the Russian news agency Tass reported citing the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office.

The PGO said the complaint, filed on July 20, is expected to draw the international community’s attention to “blatant and systemic human rights violations by Ukrainian authorities, record numerous facts of crimes in the international legal framework and make Ukrainian authorities stop their perpetration.”

“It details the process of the unconstitutional change of government in Ukraine and promotion of nationalists to government bodies which was the basic reason behind subsequent mass violations of the Convection for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and protocols thereto,” the PGO said.

The complaint covers ten basic categories of violations such as Ukrainian authorities’ responsibility for civilian casualties, illegal deprivation of freedom and cruel treatment of people including in Donbass in the course of the so-called anti-terrorist operation.

The PGO said that part of Russia’s claims referred to the Ukrainian authorities’ breaches of law against Russian citizens who had been killed or wounded.

Earlier, spokeswoman for the LPR Prosecutor General’s Office Inna Semyonova said that prosecutors had helped more than 850 residents hurt by Ukrainian army aggression draw complaints with the European Court of Human Rights.

The Ukrainian government launched the so-called anti-terrorist operation against Donbass in April 2014. Conflict settlement relies on the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, signed on February 12, 2015 in the Belarussian capital by the Contact Group members and coordinated by the Normandy Four heads of states (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine). The document provides for ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons from the contact line. *i*s