The Non-Recognition of Russian Occupied Territory in Ukraine

It has been more than 1,450 days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nearly 12 years since Russia’s invasion of Crimea, which many would say is when the war truly began. The same fact stands as it did back in 2022 and back in 2014: we do not recognise the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine as Russian. That is why the policy of non-recognition is as paramount today as it has ever been.

Ukraine is a sovereign state with established borders, including Crimea and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Those borders are recognised by the United Nations and the majority of states worldwide.

There are some significantly grave atrocities being committed against Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories. According to Freedom House, the index of civil and political rights in the Russian-occupied territories is minus 1. For comparison, North Korea’s index is 3. The Russian-occupied territories are the least free place in the world. More than 100,000 people in the occupied territories have been killed as of January 2026. If not killed, there are heavy efforts to engineer ideological control. In 2022, the Russian Ministry of Education dictionary instructed teachers on how to “re-educate” Ukrainian children based on Russian “spiritual and moral values”.

I’d like to guide readers through Russia’s systemic abuse of the Ukrainian civilian population in the temporarily occupied areas, based on Dr Jade McGlynn’s work: First, there is persecution, including the creation of blacklists and the monitoring of the activities of individuals who are associated with civic activism. Secondly, there are arrests in the temporarily occupied territories, which means detaining individuals expressing views that are deemed inconsistent with Russia’s position. Thirdly, there is deportation and forcible transfer, with the use of official and unofficial detention sites in over 30 regions across Russia and Belarus to forcibly transfer detained Ukrainian civilians. Next, there are enforced disappearances. Following deportation, many civilians disappear, and their location and condition remain unknown to their relatives. Finally, there are unfair trials and illegal imprisonment. After some time, often years, civilians are brought to court, where they receive a sentence on fabricated charges, mostly relating to terrorism or espionage, which is straight out of the playbook of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Russian families come to the occupied territories of Ukraine, abduct the children of detained or murdered parents and take them to Russia. There was coverage of an interview on the BBC’s “Ukrainecast” in December about the so-called Russian “children’s rights commissioner”, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the allegedly unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. She gave an interview in October on a Russian talk show in which she openly discussed a child she claimed to have “adopted” from Mariupol. She described how Philip, a young Ukrainian boy, was reluctant to accept a Russian identity and how he spends his time, in Moscow in her home, on Ukrainian websites and singing songs in Ukrainian, but also how she managed to “gradually” change his mindset to the “way things were”. Those abducted Ukrainian children will consequently be militarised and indoctrinated, and used as troops against their own people.

I would like to highlight three main asks in addition to the overall policy, which we should retain, of non-recognition of Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. First, we need to work with major British news outlets such as the BBC, including the World Service, Sky News and The Guardian to profile civil detainee cases, focusing on personal stories such. We must reinforce the global legal consensus. Secondly, we need to support evidence-sharing initiatives with the ICC and European prosecutors working on war crime cases. Thirdly, we need to deter any attempts to normalise or legitimise aggression. That must be underwritten, of course, by legitimate and firm security guarantees for Ukraine.

To finish, with the words of Artur, whom Jen Stout interviewed in 2022:

“To defend Ukraine, we’re defending all of Europe. The West would be next, they’ll capture your cities. Putin fancies himself an Emperor. If you don’t help us, there’ll be no more peace in your homes. I sacrificed my health at 22 years old, to protect the whole of Europe from Russian madness”.

I thank Dr Kseniya Oksamytna of the University of London; Tanya Mulesa of Justice and Accountability for Ukraine; Dr Jade McGlynn of the Centre for Statecraft and National Security; the Foreign Policy Centre; and the Ukrainian embassy in London for their help with this update. Moreover, I thank the people of Ukraine, whose resilience ensures that Ukraine stays strong through the biting winters and beaming summers. Slava Ukraini!