Donetsk, Jul 22 - DAN. Russia’s appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was a logical outcome of Ukraine’s intractability, Donetsk People’s Republic Head Denis Pushilin said on Thursday.
Earlier, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said that the Russian Federation had filed its first ever complaint with the ECHR against another state, Ukraine. The complaint covers ten basic categories of human rights violations by Ukrainian authorities such as Kiev’s responsibility for the death of civilians including in Donbass, illegal deprivation of freedom and cruel treatment of people, suppression of freedom of expression, persecution of dissidents, discrimination against Russian-speaking population etc.
“It’s an absolutely unprecedented event for the Russian Federation. But it became a logical outcome of Ukraine’s intractability. Russia repeatedly tried to mend relations with Kiev authorities, but this strategy did not yield positive results,” Pushilin in a statement posted on the DPR leader’s official website.
He said that the last warning to Ukraine was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s article in which he said that “Hate and anger, as world history has repeatedly proved this, are a very shaky foundation for sovereignty, fraught with many serious risks and dire consequences.”
“Russia moved from warnings to active actions in the legal framework to protect compatriots and the Russian speaking community living in Ukraine. It is just the beginning of the demonstration of what consequences, in the first place legal ones, Ukraine is facing for its actions. The appeal to the ECHR has already delivered reputational strikes at Ukraine in the international arena,” Pushilin said.
In his opinion, Russia has enough proofs of Kiev’s crimes on all points of the complaint, including against Donbass civilians. “The Ukrainian military’s actions go against all universal conventions approved by the international community,” the DPR leader said expressing the hope that Russia’s complaint would be considered impartially and that the “war criminals who govern Ukraine must receive appropriate punishment for all their evil deeds.”
Russia’s complaint notes violations of ten articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and protocols thereto, including right to life (Art 2), prohibition of torture (Art 3), right to liberty and security (Art 5), right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions (Art 1, Protocol 1), right to free elections (Art 3, Protocol 1), right to effective remedy (Art 13) , right to freedom of expression (Art 10), right to respect for private and family life (Art 8), prohibition of discrimination (Art 14).*jk