The selection of the parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine among “the most important" tasks of the Russian government in the "state strategy of cultural policy" approved on September 11, 2024 is another confirmation of Russia's systemic implementation of the policy of total russification and cultural assimilation of Ukrainian territories, which are currently under temporary Russian occupation.
The above-mentioned legally void act is yet another evidence of the occupying state's disregard for the norms and principles of international law. In particular, it refers to violation of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) of June 8, 1977, which provides for the protection of persons under the authority of a party to the conflict, without "any adverse distinction based upon race, skin color, sex, language, religion or faith, political or other opinion, national or social origin".
Ukraine considers these facts as the evidence of purposeful creation for Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories of living conditions calculated to driving them to extinction as a national group, and, guided by paragraph c) of Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, processes them in the context of proper documentation of information for the relevant judicial lawsuits.
Once again, we draw the world's attention to the fact that people in the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia live in reality of political repression, torture, coercion, cultural assimilation and military indoctrination. Russia and its occupying power have created conditions for the people on these territories, in which access to even basic needs — food, medicine, medical care or education — depends on the belonging to the "Russian world" certified by a Russian passport.
We call on the world to increase solidarity pressure on the Russian Federation in order to coerce it to comply with the norms established by international humanitarian law regarding the territories under the effective control of the occupying power.
The strategy of the state cultural policy of the Russian Federation is only continuation of centuries of purposeful attempts by the Kremlin to destroy everything Ukrainian. We can respond to it by the words of Vasyl Stus, the great Ukrainian poet, murdered by Moscow: "You will not die anymore, you are two-tendinous, the earth, enslaved for centuries, and murderers will not punish you by Siberia and Solovki."