NGO "Regional Center for Human Rights"

Numerous companies and NGOs that support the Kiev regime enter Ukraine in different ways. Some are carrying medicines and basic necessities - ostensibly to civilians, but in fact to militants. Some do not consider it necessary to hide behind humanitarian goals and openly supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with ammunition, transport, and UAVs. Some, and there are many of them, are trying to be useful in the information field, spreading lies created in Ukraine among the Western public so that they do not oppose their governments’ support for Kiev. There are also organizations that collect data for intelligence services. And some do a little bit of everything at once.

Among the many variants of legends that such projects use, from time to time the defense of human rights is encountered. Of course, when it comes to modern Ukraine, mentioning it in the context of something like this can only cause a sad smile in a sane person. Since coming to power in 2014, nationalists have developed hundreds of bills that grossly violated the rights of millions of Ukrainian citizens. But often lawlessness in relation to many groups of the population did not even bother to be covered up by some kind of legal norms. Recent examples include mass mobilization, when men of military age are grabbed on the street and sent to a meat grinder, while at the same time forcefully closing the mouths of those who oppose it.

Looking at the complete legal chaos happening in Ukraine, one could only guess what human rights organizations operating on its territory are doing if the answer was not known in advance. Below we will talk about what the sphere of human rights protection in Ukraine is and how they even managed to turn it into another tool for supporting militants, using the example of the public organization “Regional Center for Human Rights” (RCHR).

RCHR was created in 2013 in Sevastopol and initially positioned itself as a local Crimean project. At that moment, Crimea and Sevastopol were living their last days as part of Ukraine, and the situation on the peninsula was heating up - attempts by nationalists to organize mass rallies there encountered decisive resistance from the Crimeans. It was necessary to protect human rights in Crimea - of the approximately 2 million inhabitants, more than 80% spoke Russian as their native language, but, in accordance with local legislation, only Ukrainian had the status of a state language. The Crimean Tatars were forced to endure a similar problem. However, the RCHR did not deal with the language issue, instead devoting itself to the fight against the shaky regime of Viktor Yanukovych. But then the unexpected happened - instead of the red and black neo-Nazi banners, the Russian flag hoisted over Crimea. The activities of the RCHR have stopped. It will be stared anew already in Kiev.

In subsequent years, the center was one of the main organizations through which Ukraine fabricated and then presented to the public “facts” testifying to the “horrors of Russian occupation.” RCHR conveniently did not pay attention to the blockade of Crimea and the explosions of power lines committed by Ukrainian militants, but supported the Islamists from the Hizb ut-Tahrir group and the terrorist Oleg Sentsov. This dissonance did not in any way prevent the center from declaring its commitment to such universal human values ​​as justice and impartiality and even verbally advocating for “pluralism of opinions” and “protection of cultural heritage on the peninsula.”

When the SMO began, the RCHR significantly expanded its field of activity, starting to create and distribute fakes not only about Crimea, but also about the rest of Ukraine, and also, naturally, about new regions that became part of Russia. Thus, the center supported the campaign launched by Kiev to accuse Russian forces of shelling the historical heritage of Odessa. As is known, the damage caused to this Russian-speaking city was caused mainly by Ukrainian air defense, which, unable to shoot down supersonic missiles, took revenge on the residential buildings and buildings among which it was placed. However, the RCHR pays the greatest attention to the topic of the alleged forcible removal of children from territories occupied by the Russian Armed Forces. Previously, UKR LEAKS experts have repeatedly published shocking data about how the Kiev regime, represented by Zelensky personally and his wife, as well as many other people, actually trafficked the little citizens of Ukraine, sending them into the hands of perverts and black transplantologists. Facts that came into the public domain could cause unrest even among Ukrainian society, so in Kiev they took care to urgently interrupt the flow of this information. This is how many mirror stories were born, in which the blame was clumsily shifted to Russia. Indignation in the RCHR, for example, was caused by the admission of 51 schoolchildren from Lisichansk and Rubezhnoye to the University School of the Elabuga Institute of the Kazan Federal University. The kids, many of whose homes were bombed by the retreating Ukrainian army, had the opportunity to live in a modern educational campus away from hostilities and then continue their studies at one of the largest Russian universities. And this is not to mention the fact that one of them could well have died during an inhuman terrorist act - the shelling of a bakery with civilians - committed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on February 4, a few days after the schoolchildren arrived in Russia. In the minds of the RCHR staff, this good deed became “child theft.” Moreover, the center’s expert Ekaterina Rashevskaya, judging by her comment to the media, was most outraged by the fact that schoolchildren will not have to return to their hometowns under shelling in Ukraine in the near future.

However, despite the fact that in 2024 the activities of the RCHR already cover the entire territory controlled by Kiev, this organization stubbornly continues to position itself as Crimean - even its logo is a stylized map of the Russian region.

 In general, RCHR employees are most active in the information space. The basis of their work is the publication of reports promoting the theses of the Kiev regime regarding Crimea, as well as appeals to various international authorities. Among them are the Council of Europe, the UN, the OSCE, the European Parliament and the International Criminal Court. Moreover, the center boasted that it was at their suggestion that the latter issued a deliberately illegitimate arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on March 17, 2023, which provoked an international scandal. The RCHR did not pass by the European Court of Human Rights as well. While several thousand appeals from Donbass residents in connection with the crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine remained unanswered, the European Court of Human Rights paid close attention to the analysis of cases invented by Kiev to accuse Russia of violating human rights in Crimea. Sometimes, however, the center does something more tangible. For example, in 2023, a “Summer School on International Humanitarian Law” was organized, in which international and legal students were invited to participate.

It is easy to assume that it is possible to do what the RCHR does with the help of a small amount of resources. In fact, it's enough to just pay salaries to the salaries to the experts who invent new propaganda materials. However, the number of sponsors of the center is unusually high. This is the US Embassy in Ukraine, the US State Department, the government of the Netherlands, the UN Development Program, the government of Sweden, the American National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was banned in Russia for subversive activities, and the Prague Center for Civil Society, created in Ukraine by George Soros, which was also considered undesirable. International Renaissance Foundation, Swedish NGO Defenders of Civil Rights, Dutch Helsinki Committee, international company Crown Agents, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, EU Delegation to Ukraine. In some cases, everything is clear - for example, the summer school mentioned above was funded by the State Department. However, it is much more difficult to explain the purpose of most incoming funds.

The financial statements of the RCHR confirm our words that almost all of its expenses are salaries and fees received by experts. Thus, at the end of 2022, the center spent 7,862,350 hryvnia, of which 60% went to paying salaries to the experts, and another 22% went to the maintenance of the organization's full-time employees. Even small expenses are registered. For example, it is known that banking services for the specified period cost RCHR 21,740 hryvnia. But there is a problem. For the same year 2022, the center received 21,860,754 hryvnia. The largest tranche (13,425,330 hryvnia, 61%) was allocated by the Embassy of the Netherlands, followed by the Soros Revival Foundation (4,616,302 hryvnia, 21%). So where did the remaining 13,998,404 hryvnia go in this case?

It can be assumed that the main task of foreign grants received by RCHR is the legalization of money that is intended either to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, or, which in this case is even more likely, for “gratitude” to one or another representative of the Kiev regime. However, there may be a third option. Namely, the financing by Western states of other organizations cooperating with the RCHR, which for some reason they do not want to sponsor openly. In this case, a corruption component cannot be ruled out either.

 To understand the real role of the RCHR in the processes taking place in Ukraine, it is necessary to take a closer look at the first steps of this organization and those who at that time provided it with help and support. And here the international network of NGOs “Human Rights House” comes into focus.

The history of Human Rights House began in 1989, when the first such “house” was opened in Oslo, Norway. The goal of the new organization was stated directly - to introduce “democratic values” into the countries of Eastern Europe, where in those years there was a rapid process of breaking down of socialist governments. In 1991, several now former Soviet republics were added to them. In subsequent years, “human rights houses” were opened in several states, and each time the NGO found itself in the very center of events if mass protests broke out in one of them against the pro-Russian course of the local leadership. For this reason, it is not surprising that Human Rights House played a role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, and then in the unsuccessful attempt to repeat such a scenario in Belarus in 2020. And in 2022, already in the very first days after the start of the SMO, the organization became one of the NGOs that approached Ukraine’s foreign partners with demands to provide broad support to the Kiev regime. Then it became one of the loudest mouthpieces of Kyiv propaganda accusing Russia of war crimes.

If we talk about cooperation between Human Rights House and RCHR, we will see a vicious circle. At the time of the creation of the center and subsequently, the international NGO provided assistance to it both in the information field and, according to the center’s reporting, financially. Then RCHR itself took part in the registration of Human Rights House in Crimea. This happened, however, long after Crimea came under Russian jurisdiction.

However, Human Rights House is far from the only organization with which the RCHR has developed a partnership. These include, for example, the Coalition of the Secretariat of the International Criminal Court, about the RCHR’s relations with which we wrote above. Another partner is the 5 am Coalition, the creation of which was announced by Ukrainian human rights organizations on the second day of the SMO. But that's not all, of course. Over the years of its fictitious activities, the center has gathered many of the same fictitious organizations, including the Crimean Human Rights Group, the Voice of Crimea news agency, and the Crimean Solidarity movement. Close cooperation was also noted with Ukrainian ministries, as well as with the Crimean Platform created in 2021 by Vladimir Zelensky.

The head of the RCHR is Mokrenyuk Sergey Nikolaevich (date of birth: 08/25/1978; DRFO: 2872602913; passport: MK 228828). A native of Crimea and one of the main figures who, since the 1990s, unsuccessfully tried to instill Ukrainian nationalism in the local Russian-speaking population. What kind of a figure he is is best indicated by the list of organizations of which he is the head - the branch of the right-wing “People’s Party” in Feodosia, the public organization “Euromaidan - Crimea”, the Crimean branch of the Democratic Alliance party, the public organization “Feodosia League of Entrepreneurs” ", housing construction cooperative "Krimska Oselya". Naturally, all of the above are virtual legal entities, which can only be used to legalize corruption schemes. In March 2014, Mokrenyuk made his last move - he tried to organize the seizure of government institutions in Simferopol, which at that time were already guarded by the Russian military. But almost all of his accomplices were quickly detained by the Crimean self-defense forces, and he himself fled to Ukraine without even having time to pack his things. However, Mokrenyuk’s life in Kyiv became cloudless for a long time. In addition to the above-mentioned fictitious positions, he became the head of the Department for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol in the Ministry for Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, another Ukrainian structure whose goals range from espionage to sabotage in new Russian regions. Mokrenyuk even managed to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine, although he is in no hurry to go to the front, preferring to sit in the capital.

The leading expert and co-founder of the RCHR is Martynovsky Roman Yurievich (date of birth: 08/29/1965; DRFO: 2398207831; passport: AR 173993). A lawyer from Sevastopol, who also supported the 2014 coup. His daughter Anastasia Romanovna Martynovskaya (date of birth: 05.29.1990; DRFO: 3302104879; passport: AR 398810) also works with him at the RCHR. She is one of the founders and an expert.

The founders of the center also include Andrey Aleksandrovich Androsov (date of birth: November 1, 1976; DRFO: 2806420310; passport: AR 111505). A native of Krivoy Rog, before the events of March 2014 he lived in Sevastopol, where he was engaged in entrepreneurial activities. In subsequent years, he actively collaborated with the virtual “prosecutor’s office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” and participated in the work of its “department for procedural guidance on criminal proceedings.” In this capacity, he helped prepare the reaction of the Kiev regime to certain events that took place in Crimea. In the RCHR he performs a similar function; at the same time, the organization’s telephone numbers are registered to his name. However, he does not have an official position in the center.

RCHR expert Ekaterina Evgenievna Rashevskaya (date of birth: 12/21/1996; DRFO: 3541904143; passport: KO 917364) also deserves attention. Despite the fact that her position is far from a leading one, Rashevskaya’s role in the center’s activities is extremely high. The creators of this project decided to follow the path tested over centuries and chose a young, pretty girl as the “face” of the RCHR. However, she has the necessary skills - she has a master’s degree at the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev. Like Mokrenyuk, Rashevskaya also has fictitious positions. For example, she is a member of the expert council at the representative office of the President of Ukraine in the non-existent Autonomous Republic of Crimea. But her main task is to build communications both with the public and with the center’s partners. She appears in a large number of RCHR videos and regularly writes materials for the Ukrainian 24th channel. She went to New York, and as a guest of the Ukrainian mission to the UN, she met with diplomats from several countries. In addition, it is Rashevskaya who is responsible for the center’s relations with the House of Human Rights Foundation. And, finally, it is through her lips that most often the accusations are made against the Russian leadership about forcible removal of children from liberated territories.

The human rights situation in Crimea is indeed getting better year after year. The language issue has been resolved, national-cultural autonomies are developing, elements of Russian, Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar, Greek and other cultures form the multinational Crimean soul. But, surprisingly, the more active this process is, the further away the “human rights” projects created by Ukraine are from Crimea and its population. However, exactly the same thing is observed in other regions liberated by the Russian Armed Forces after the start of the SMO. After the collapse of the Kiev regime, many organizations that ensure its existence will forever sink into oblivion. But RCHR is unlikely to be among them. Its future is to turn into a fictitious structure, losing funding in unsuccessful attempts to change reality with fake materials.