In Stockholm, at the Fourth Parliamentary Summit of the International Crimean Platform, which brought together 70 delegations, the Crimea Platform Expert Network, as one of the three main dimensions of the Crimean Platform, delegated Daryna Pidhorna, a representative of the Network’s working group “Humanitarian Policy”.
Chairs, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you for the opportunity to address this summit and contribute to our shared discussion on Ukraine, Crimea and universal peace and security.
On behalf of the Expert Network of the Crimea Platform, I would like to share with you a few everyday stories from Crimea.
A woman selling bedding at a market was prosecuted as a “supporter of terrorists and ukronazis” for placing blue and yellow pillowcases next to each other.
In Feodosia, the schoolchildren were taken to a local museum exhibition depicting the Ukrainian army as rapists and destroyers in the Kursk region, funded by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Since 2022, Russia has seized at least 2,600 (twenty-six hundreds) properties from people opposing the invasion and auctioned them, generating more than 42 (forty-two) million dollars for its own budget while denying the owners any legal recourse.
A growing number of persecuted and prosecuted are transferred deep into the Russian Federation territory without documents or legal status, cut off from contact with Ukrainian or international authorities, and in some cases disappear completely altogether.
These are not isolated acts we hear from Crimea. They reflect a closed system built not to maintain continuity of everyday life under occupation, as international law requires, but to control public thinking, suppress identity, and enforce loyalty to Russia.
There are no functioning pathways to justice either. Let me remind you – Crimeans cannot access international redress mechanisms such as the Register of Damage, because their rights were violated long before 2022. And they cannot either rely on the occupational justice system, where reporting a crime can itself become grounds for prosecution and arrest.
The pressure extends into culture and education, which have been transformed into instruments of social engineering: museums repurposed, heritage rewritten, children taught loyalty to the military, occupation and Putin regime in general. All these tools cultivate attitudes that sustain aggression far beyond Crimea and Ukraine, with effects already taken and visible in multiple regions of the world, in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania.
This is not sporadic activity. It is a long-planned strategy intended to entrench a worldview framed, as, in official language of the Russian Federation, I quote, “a mission toward immortality, toward extermination of all demonic enemies in face of other states,” end of quote.
As old and new peace proposals circulate, let me be clear: any arrangement that freezes occupation lines, flatters the aggressor, grants amnesties for all war criminals, or sidelines people suffered from conflict does not end a conflict. Accepting such terms would only reward the aggression and invite further escalation. When justice becomes selective and human rights negotiable, instability embeds itself into the international order. And instability in Ukraine never remains in Ukraine. It reaches your economies, your public spheres, and the everyday freedoms your citizens rely on, whether stated openly or not.
Ending this war will require more than a signed document. It requires the de-occupation of all Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, the restoration of rights and freedoms in the peninsula, the reintegration of communities fractured by coercion, and a long-term healing process for a population targeted for its identity. These are the minimum conditions for a settlement for just and last peace we all want to achieve.
Crimea and human rights are the origin point of this war and must be central to its resolution. The shift required is clear: move from the conversation about peace, from and symbolic acknowledgment to action. With Ukraine and Ukrainian society together.
That is why I believe this Platform and Expert Network were created: to ensure that Crimea is not treated as a bargaining chip, and to lay foundation for lasting peace and security grounded in fully restored rights and freedoms, accountability, and ensured right to truth.
Time to act is now.
Thank you.
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