The least free place on earth: Occupied Ukraine

No political rights. No freedom of expression. No protection from secret detention without access to family, an attorney or a physician. No protection from deportation. Welcome to Russia-occupied Ukraine. For the second year running, U.S.-based democracy tracker Freedom House has listed Ukraine’s occupied eastern and southern territories as the most unfree places in the world — outranking South Sudan, North Korea and the Gaza Strip. Inhabitants here are subject to repressive Russian legislation, including forcibly imposed citizenship and the use of antiterrorism laws against political dissidents and religious minority groups, Freedom House says. And it is this system of surveillance, repression, indoctrination and state theft that pushes occupied Ukraine to the top of the list. Discriminatory policies publicly encoded in Russian law permeate every aspect of residents’ lives — measures that appear to be changing the region’s demographics. Russia is “deliberately changing the ethnic composition so as to destroy a culture or tip the political balance in favor of another group,” the report notes. International humanitarian law forbids any occupying power from introducing permanent changes to territories it occupies, particularly in demographic, social and economic domains. But Moscow claims these areas are not occupied — they are simply a part of Russia, and therefore subject to Russian law. “This occupation is one of the most well-documented systems of repression, oppression and human rights violations because so much is put on the public record,” said Danielle Bell, head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine. “This is a systemic approach to restricting people’s rights and fundamental freedoms.” Since 2022, HRMMU has noted at least 16 Russian laws and decrees limiting the rights of Ukrainian citizens in these territories. Schools teach a Russian version of history, instilling Russian identity and values. “Ukrainian nationalism,” which includes expressing sympathies with Ukraine or using the Ukrainian language, is punished as “extremist.” And resettlement from Russia to these areas is actively encouraged. The regime has “all the signs of cultural genocide,” said journalist Andrii Dikhtiarenko, a native of now-occupied eastern Ukraine. From passportization to deportation Starting from 2014, Russia has occupied about 20 percent of Ukraine in the country’s south and east — land Moscow calls “new historical territories.” And one of the processes aiding the Russification of these areas is passportization. By officially designating Ukrainians living in Russia-occupied territories as “foreigners,” occupation authorities compel them to obtain Russian citizenship — which they can do through simplified procedures — in order to access essential rights, such as health care, social services, employment or property ownership. For Liudmila Chub, it all began with her job. Speaking to POLITICO, Chub said that in 2023, she was told by her employer in Melitopol — located in the occupied Kherson region — that she had to obtain a Russian passport to keep working in his shop, or he would be fined. Chub went to the passport office, where she recorded an angry video about being forced to get a “chicken passport” — a dig at the two-headed Russian eagle emblem. The office’s security guard marched her straight to the occupation police. A man waits for documentation to apply for new Russian passport at a centre in Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region in August 2022. | AFP via Getty Images Chub spent the next eight months in detention in Kherson, with the courts regularly extending her arrest, alleging she was breaking military curfew. She was eventually given a statement to read out on camera, saying she did not want to live in Russia, then was allowed 15 minutes to collect items from her apartment and transported under armed guard to Russia’s border with Georgia. Deported from the home she lived in her whole life, Chub still consider