Collaboration with Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine

[1] Concerns have been raised over the effects of the anti-collaboration legislation on those whose actions do not validly endanger Ukraine's security, such as people who resort to accepting Russia's authority in an attempt to survive and adapt daily aspects of life to the circumstances of long-term (or indefinite) military occupation; Ukraine's methods for prosecuting collaborators have thus been classified by Human Rights Watch and the United Nations OHCHR as standing in violation of international humanitarian law.

Other members of the Salvation Committee include Kirill Stremousov,[13] a pro-Russian far-right blogger and anti-vaxxer, who won 1.3% of the vote in the 2020 Kherson mayoral elections.

Other members of the committee were associated with the movement of the oligarch, Vladimir Putin's godfather Viktor Medvedchuk, the banned Communist Party of Ukraine and various pro-Russian organizations, had problems with the Ukrainian special services.

(OPLE), who was part of the team of the chairman of the regional council Vladislav Manger, suspected of involvement in the murder of Kherson activist Kateryna Handziuk.

[14] On 12 March, in Henichesk, the Russian military ousted the legally elected mayor and appointed Gennady Sivak from Kramsk as the head of the occupation administration.

Andriy Klochko, a deputy of the district council from the Opposition Platform For Life party, a former activist of Viktor Medvedchuk's Ukrainian Choice organization, became the city's chairman.

So in March 2022 (under the current Ukrainian authorities), Vladimir Rogov, a radical pro-Russian activist and former ally of Oleg Tsarev, who ended up in Russia as part of a prisoner exchange in 2014, proclaimed himself Mayor of Melitopol.

[9] After the legally elected mayor Ivan Fedorov was kidnapped by the Russian military in Melitopol, his acting Galina Danilchenko was appointed - a deputy of the City Council from the pro-Russian "Party of Regions", and then the "Opposition Bloc".

[38] In Volnovakha during the first months of the occupation, the Russian military replaced 4 leaders of the city, in May 2022 this position was occupied by a former security official, businessman and MP from the Opposition Platform for Life, Artur Antsiferov.

[13] The first case of collaborationism was sent to court on 30 March 2022, where a resident of Kramatorsk published a video in TikTok in which he denied the fact of the Russian invasion and called to support the actions of the aggressor country.

[40] In the vast majority of cases, the defendants pleaded guilty and received minimal punishment - suspended sentences, a ban on holding elective positions and certain types of activities.

Representatives of the legal community noted that such punishment for the lightest forms of collaborationism was apparently intended as a kind of lustration to exclude collaborators from politics and local government in the future.

[46] On 7 April 2022, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said that on behalf of President Zelensky, work was underway on a register of collaborators, which would soon be published.

[1] The invasion was supported by a People's Deputy from the already banned pro-Russian party Opposition Platform — For Life, Ilya Kiva, calling for "liberation of Ukraine from Western occupation."

A number of MPs from the including anyone affiliated with businessman and Vladimir Putin's close friend, Viktor Medvedchuk, left Ukraine even before the invasion started: they are Oleg Voloshyn, Vadim Rabinovich, Nataliya Korolevska, Igor Surkis.

[57] The Washington Post noted that the FSB unit in Ukraine began expanding in 2019 and was actively recruiting supporters (both ideologues and those working for money) in security agencies.

During the large-scale purges in February-August 2022, more than 800 officers of law enforcement agencies up to generals were detained in more than 650 cases of treason (the conspiracy uncovered in April was reported by the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov).

[62] In December 2022, one Ukrainian artillerymen alleged that "80 percent" of the remaining civilian population of Bakhmut, surviving in basements and supplied by mobile grocery trucks that periodically enter the city, was pro-Russian.

[1] Danielle Bell, the head of the UN's Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said that in many cases the 2022 collaboration laws were "applied unfairly" and there are "countless examples where people have acted under duress and performed functions to simply survive.

"[1] On 1 December 2022, Zelenskyy said that the government was preparing a draft law banning religious organizations linked to centres of influence in the Russian Federation from operating in Ukraine.

Earlier the SBU reported that during a search in a monastery of the Moscow Patriarchate in Zakarpattia Region, it found a large amount of materials which were considered propaganda.

[64] On 1 January 2015, in Lutuhyne, the motorcade of Oleksandr Bednov, who served as the Minister of Defense of the "LPR" in August 2014 and was later named Chief of Staff of the 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade, was burned with flamethrowers.

[70] In September 2016, the occupation authorities arrested Gennadiy Tsypkalov, the head of the "LPR Council of Ministers," in Luhansk in a case of attempted coup d'état.

"[71][72] On 4 February 2017, Oleg Anashchenko, the head of the department of the so-called "People's Militia of the LPR", was killed in Luhansk as a result of a car bombing in the city center.

[73][74] On 19 January 2018, Valentyn Doroshenko, an active participant in the so-called "Russian Spring" of 2014 in Odesa and the leader of the "Stalin Party", was killed by police officers in a shootout on Novoselsky Street.