26.03.2025

“We dream of becoming unnecessary”: the Tribunal for Putin (T4P) initiative presents three-year report

On March 25, 2025, the Tribunal for Putin (T4P) initiative released the results of its three years of work — nearly 85,000 documented war crimes and nine submissions to the International Criminal Court.

The T4P (Tribunal for Putin) initiative was launched in March 2022 by three human rights organizations—the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, the Center for Civil Liberties, and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union — in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion. Today, the initiative unites more than forty organizations working to document crimes that fall under the definitions set out in the Rome Statute.“The goal of the initiative is to achieve justice for every person affected by this aggression — and for Ukrainian society as a whole,” says Oleksandra Romantsova, Executive Director of the Center for Civil Liberties.

T4P documenters work both with open sources and directly on the ground — collecting photo and video evidence, conducting interviews. All information is verified, analyzed using OSINT methods, and systematized into individual case files. These include some of Russia’s most devastating attacks, such as the bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater, the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, threats to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and strikes on religious and medical facilities, including the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital.

What makes T4P’s approach unique is its territorial structure: each organization is responsible for a specific region, allowing for a deeper understanding of local contexts and more effective data collection. In several regions, T4P has documented more war crimes than state or international institutions. As a result, the T4P database is now one of the largest repositories of data on the war in Ukraine. Yet the actual number of certain types of crimes is almost certainly much higher than what can currently be recorded.

“There’s also a separate database managed by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group itself, which includes cases that have been classified as investigated criminal proceedings. This database currently contains over 15,500 such cases. So we can say that overall, across all our databases, we have documented more than 100,000 incidents,” says Yevhen Zakharov, Director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.

As of March 20, 2025, the T4P initiative has documented 84,396 war crimes committed during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In addition, at least 3,745 cases of destruction or damage to cultural, religious, and social infrastructure have been recorded — including historic landmarks, churches, hospitals, and educational and research institutions. A total of 17,421 documented attacks have directly targeted civilian objects such as residential buildings, businesses, schools, kindergartens, and other facilities. Full statistics are available on the official T4P website.

Over the past three years, T4P has been actively spreading awareness of war crimes through national and international media, public actions, performances, and a wide range of educational materials. Among its projects are:

• the Shadows on the Left Bank documentary by The Kyiv Independent, which depicts life in temporarily occupied territories;

• Voices of Mariupol, telling the stories of three Mariupol residents who survived in a besieged city without power or communication under relentless russian airstrikes;

• the Hostages (Un)Protected documentary, exploring the challenges faced by former detainees upon their return home;

• the Stay Strong! I Am Holding On! poetic project, conveying the pain and resilience of Ukrainians in russian captivity—and of those awaiting their return.

Another notable T4P publication is the Prisoners’ Voice brochure, which collects 50 testimonies of unlawfully imprisoned civilians, offering deeper insight into the scale of human rights violations. The Voices of War: Mariupol book, the first printed collection of war witness interviews from Ukraine, features 24 residents of Mariupol sharing their unique stories of life in an encircled city and their attempts to escape.

An essential part of T4P’s mission is international advocacy. The initiative works closely with the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the European Union to help maintain sustained international pressure on the Russian Federation.

Over the course of three years, the initiative has prepared and submitted nine communications to the International Criminal Court, focusing on:

“Not only crimes, but also justice has no statute of limitations. I believe this should be Ukraine’s firm stance,” says Yevhen Zakharov, Director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.

Yuliya Bohdan, Director of the Center for Law Enforcement Activity Research (CLEAR), emphasized the role of national institutions in the investigation of war crimes:

“I emphasize the objective need for involving national judicial bodies in investigating and documenting crimes committed under the orders of high-ranking military and political leadership—crimes that have mostly targeted civilians, not soldiers, in the temporarily occupied territories. Only this approach reflects the true reality, rather than imitating a fight against some abstract enemy.”

Vladlena Padun, analyst at the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, emphasized the importance of establishing an international tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine:

“We sincerely hope that, with the support of the Council of Europe, the European Union, and a number of European and global partners, the tribunal will be established in the near future. Its goal is not only to bring justice for Ukraine but also to uphold shared principles of international law for the entire world. It is positive that Ukraine has managed to unite many states around this initiative. This tribunal will become a new mechanism for ensuring accountability—and a crucial precedent: evil will be punished.”

Truth Hounds, one of the participants in the initiative, uses the principle of universal jurisdiction in its work, which allows prosecuting perpetrators of international crimes regardless of where they were committed. As of today, the organization has already submitted five submissions to the competent authorities of other countries to initiate relevant criminal proceedings.

“Russia has been committing war crimes not since 2022, but since 2014, so the lack of accountability and the possibility of alleged impunity give rise to more and more violations. This is why it is important for us to achieve results that demonstrate that even in 10-15 years, the perpetrators will be brought to justice, and perhaps this will have some preventive effect, reducing the number of offenses committed today,” says Zera Kozlieva, Legal Director of Truth Hounds.

One of the key aspects of achieving justice is restoring the rights of victims — especially civilians who returned from unlawful detention as a result of armed aggression against Ukraine. Their rights are protected under the Law of Ukraine “On the Social and Legal Protection of Persons Deprived of Personal Liberty as a Result of Armed Aggression Against Ukraine, and Members of Their Families.”

However, as Ihor Kotelianets, Head of the Association of Relatives of Kremlin Political Prisoners, points out, the law was adopted before the full-scale invasion and its current version fails to reflect the new realities. In particular, it contains discriminatory approaches, providing assistance only to certain categories of victims.

«Ми мріємо про те, щоб стати непотрібними. Усі правозахисники мріють про той день, коли їх можна буде звільнити», — каже Олександра Романцова, виконавча директорка Центру громадянських свобод.

Під час події ініціатива T4P також представила брошуру з результатами своєї роботи, яка доступна англійською та українською мовами.

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