30/09/2025
Part One
The Roots of the Russian Occupation Grow Deeper
There are no signs that this is a peace agreement that the regime is even considering.
Three years ago today, the Russian Federation annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia.
A closer look at the Russian occupation reveals an elaborate machinery of conquest. This machinery has transformed the conditions in the annexed regions over the past three years, but at the same time has also made it very difficult for them to return to Ukraine. The Russian occupation regime in the Ukrainian regions constitutes a continuous violation of international law. Russia has abducted children from Ukrainian orphanages and sent them to orphanages, foster homes and adoptive families in Russia. Children from the occupied regions are sent on class trips to Russian cities so that they can “get to know the diversity of their country.”
The displacement of an occupied population and the ideological reeducation of children in occupied territories are clear violations of the Geneva Conventions and the human rights of citizens. Even before the full-scale invasion, Russian authorities questioned Ukraine’s legitimacy as a state and its sovereignty in eastern Ukraine. For example, in a 2021 article, Putin claims that “modern Ukraine is entirely a product of the Soviet period” and that “We know and remember that [Ukraine] has been formed to a significant extent at the expense of historical Russia.”
He writes that the Ukrainian national movement was artificially cultivated by Russia’s rivals. He also claims that the redistribution of territories within the Soviet Union, where modern Ukraine was established, was arbitrary. He further claims that since 2014, Ukrainian authorities have threatened ethnic cleansing of Crimea and the regions of southeastern Ukraine. Putin calls the Maidan revolution a coup d’état.
From the top, Ukraine is thus portrayed as an artificial state with an illegitimate government, whic