THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MODEL METHOD OF INVESTIGATING OFFENSES COMMITTED IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORY OF UKRAINE

Abstract

Annexation by the Russian Federation of Ukrainian Crimea in 2014, occupation together with representatives of terrorist organizations of the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” of parts of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as from the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 – Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr and Sumy regions, which were later liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Luhansk regions, the liberation of which continues to this day, does not mean that Ukraine “automatically” bears no responsibility for the violation of the rights of Ukrainian citizens who are temporarily occupied territory. Despite the conditions of military aggression and full-scale hostilities, the obligation to investigate human rights violations exists even in difficult and dangerous conditions, including conditions of military conflict, including when the events that led to the need to investigate violations occur in an atmosphere of widespread violence and investigators must work under conditions of obstacles and difficulties that force them to resort to less effective methods of investigation in the conditions of hostilities. With the general trend of a decrease in the level of crime in 2022 in the territory under the control of Ukraine, the facts of an increase in their number in the temporarily occupied territories, not under the control of Ukraine, relative to civilians, including the least protected category, such as women, children, elderly people, are of particular concern from gender, people with disabilities, related to murders, rape, illegal deprivation of liberty and abduction of persons, including minor children, seizure of other people’s property by violence, ecocide, mass destruction of people, etc. There are rare cases of intentional murders that are connected with the concealment of a corpse, imitation of death during combat events, etc. As of May 27, 2022, according to available information from open sources, the Prosecutor General’s Office registered 20.877 crimes of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, including 14.193 crimes of aggression and war crimes and 6.684 crimes against national security. Along with this, as of June 21, 2022, 1.333 bodies of local residents who died at the hands of the occupiers were found in Kyiv region alone, 213 bodies have not yet been identified, and another 300 people are considered missing. At the same time, the vast majority of these crimes are committed by servicemen of the Russian Federation, mercenaries of private military companies fighting on its side, representatives of the so-called terrorist organizations “DPR” and “LPR”, collaborators in the relevant criminal groups. At the same time, the disclosure and investigation of these offenses poses serious difficulties for investigative bodies and the prosecutor’s office. Since the existing domestic criminalistic doctrine lacks work on the creation of a separate method of investigation of criminal offenses committed in the occupied territory, our study is devoted to highlighting the problems of building a type and inter-type method of investigation of offenses committed during hostilities in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in the period from the beginning the conduct of anti-terrorist and joint forces operations during 2014– 2022 and a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 to the present.