Today the world celebrates Human Rights Day. 67 years ago the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, in 1950, proclaimed 10th December as the Human Rights Day in order to annually draw attention to this document, as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations".

Ukraine is guided by this document in recognizing the human person, his or her rights and freedoms the core value and the basis of state policy. The proof of this is the development and approval in 2015 – for the first time in the history of independent Ukraine – of the National Human Rights Strategy and the corresponding Action Plan, with the wide participation of government institutions, civil society and international organizations.

On this day Ukraine draws special attention of the international community to systemic human rights violations by the Russian Federation under its armed aggression against our country and to its occupation of a part of the Ukrainian territory. Russia should immediately put an end to the oppression of political, linguistic, cultural and religious rights in the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and in Donbas and stop illegal detention and unlawful persecution of Ukrainian citizens in Russia who became political prisoners.