A local occupation authority installed by the Russian government and led by Sergey Aksyonov as “prime minister” of the “state council of the republic of Crimea” administers occupied Crimea. The “state council” is responsible for day-to-day administration and other functions of governing. In 2016 Russia’s nationwide parliamentary elections included seats allocated for purportedly annexed Crimea, a move widely condemned by the international community and that contravened the Ukrainian constitution.

Russian government agencies, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Federal Investigative Committee, and the Office of the Prosecutor General applied and enforced Russian law in Crimea as if it were a part of the Russian Federation. The FSB also conducted security, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism activities and combatted organized crime and corruption. A “national police force” operated under the aegis of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Russian authorities maintained control over Russian military and security forces deployed in Crimea.

Significant human rights issues included: disappearances; torture, including punitive psychiatric incarceration; mistreatment of persons in detention as punishment or to extort confessions; harsh prison conditions and transfer of prisoners to Russia; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners; pervasive and arbitrary interference with privacy; severe restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including violence against journalists and website blocking; gross and widespread suppression of freedom of assembly and religion; severe restriction of freedom of association, including barring the Crimean Tatar Mejlis; significant restrictions on freedom of movement; restrictions on political participation; systemic corruption; and violence and systemic discrimination against Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians.

Occupation authorities took few steps to investigate or prosecute officials or individuals who committed human rights abuses, creating an atmosphere of impunity and lawlessness.

Most independent human rights organizations ceased activities in Crimea following Russia’s occupation. Occupation authorities refused to cooperate with independent human rights NGOs, ignored their views, and harassed human rights monitors and threatened them with fines and imprisonment.

Russia continued to deny access to the peninsula to international human rights monitors from the OSCE and the United Nations.

Birth Registration: Under both Ukrainian law and laws imposed by Russian occupation authorities, either birthplace or parentage determines citizenship. Russia’s occupation and purported annexation of Crimea complicated the question of citizenship for children born after February 2014, since it was difficult for parents to register a child as a citizen with Ukrainian authorities. Registration in the country requires a hospital certificate, which is retained when a birth certificate is issued. Under the occupation regime, new parents could only obtain a Russian birth certificate and did not have access to a hospital certificate. In 2016 the Ukrainian government instituted a process whereby births in Crimea could be recognized with documents issued by occupation authorities.

Institutionalized Children: There were reports occupation authorities continued to permit kidnapping of orphans in Crimea and transporting them across the border into Russia for adoption. Ukraine’s government did not know the whereabouts of the children.

According to Jewish groups, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Jews lived in Crimea, primarily in Simferopol. There were no reports of anti-Semitic acts.

Since the beginning of the occupation, authorities singled out Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians for discrimination, abuse, deprivation of civil liberties and religious and economic rights, and violence, including killings and abductions (also see sections 1.a.-1.d., 1.f., 2.a., 2.b., and 2.d.). The August UN secretary-general’s special report noted a “narrowing of space for manifestations of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar identities and enjoyment of the respective cultures in Crimea. The restrictions have reportedly been closely connected to the suppression of political dissent and alternative political opinion.”

There were reports that government officials openly advocated discrimination against Crimean Tatars. Occupation authorities harassed Crimean Tatars for speaking their language in public and forbade speaking it in the workplace. There were reports teachers prohibited schoolchildren from speaking Crimean Tatar to one another. Crimean Tatars were prohibited from celebrating their national holidays and commemorating victims of previous abuses. For example, on June 26, occupation authorities denied a request by the residents of the town of Oktyabrske to hold a car rally for Crimean Tatar Flag Day. Police arrived at the gathering, informed them the event was unauthorized, and video-recorded those present. According to press reports, as the cars proceeded anyway, they were pulled over four times by police for “document checks.”

Occupation authorities also restricted the use of Crimean Tatar flags and symbols (see section 2.a.).

By the end of 2014, Ukrainian as a language of instruction was removed from university-level education in Crimea. According to the HRMMU, in the 2017-2018 academic year no school provided instruction in Ukrainian, and there were eight available Ukrainian language classes in Russian schools that were attended by 318 children. In 2017 the International Court of Justice ruled on provisional measures in proceedings brought by Ukraine against the Russian Federation, concluding unanimously that the Russian Federation must “ensure the availability of education in the Ukrainian language.”

Occupation authorities have not permitted churches linked to ethnic Ukrainians, in particular the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, to register under Russian law. Occupation authorities harassed and intimidated members of the churches and used court proceedings to force the OCU in particular to leave properties it had rented for years. The largest OCU congregation in Crimea closed on September 23 following a ruling by occupation authorities that the cathedral located in Simferopol must be “returned to the state.” The church was shut down after repeated refusals by the authorities to allow it to register.

Occupation authorities allegedly selectively seized property belonging to ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars. According to the August UN secretary-general’s special report, during the year the HRMMU “received information about numerous cases of allocation of land plots to formerly displaced persons in Crimea, including Crimean Tatars, free of charge, as part of plans to legalize the unauthorized appropriation of land or allocation of alternative land plots.”

Russian occupation authorities prohibited Crimean Tatars affiliated with the Mejlis from registering businesses or properties as a matter of policy.

Human rights groups and local LGBTI activists reported that most LGBTI individuals fled Crimea after the Russian occupation began. Those who remained lived in fear of abuse due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

According to the HRMMU, NGOs working on access to health care among vulnerable groups have found it impossible to advocate for better access to healthcare for LGBTI persons due to fear of retaliation by occupation authorities.

Occupation authorities prohibited any LGBTI group from holding public events in Crimea. According to the HRMMU, LGBTI residents of Crimea faced difficulties in finding a safe environment for gatherings because of occupation authorities’ encouragement of an overall hostile attitude towards the manifestation of LGBTI identity. LGBTI individuals faced increasing restrictions on their right to free expression and assembly peacefully, because occupation authorities enforced a Russian law that criminalizes the so-called propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors (see section 6 of the Country Reports on Human Rights for Russia). For example, on June 29, the organizers of the theater company Territoria apologized for producing a play that showed two women kissing during a state-sponsored theater festival. High-ranking members of the Russian government called for the company to be prosecuted under the Russian law that prohibits the “propaganda” of “nontraditional sexual relations” to minors.

A variety of domestic and international human rights groups generally operated in the country, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases. Government officials were rarely cooperative or responsive to their concerns. Official harassment of independent NGOs continued and in many instances intensified, particularly of groups that focused on election monitoring, exposing corruption, and addressing human rights abuses. NGO activities and international humanitarian assistance in the North Caucasus were severely restricted. Some officials, including the ombudsman for human rights, regional ombudsman representatives, and Mikhail Fedotov, who was the chair of the Presidential Human Rights Council until late October, regularly interacted and cooperated with NGOs.

Authorities continued to use a variety of laws to harass, stigmatize, and in some cases halt the operation of domestic and foreign human rights NGOs (see section 2.b., Freedom of Association).

Officials often displayed hostility towards the activities of human rights organizations and suggested that their work was unpatriotic and detrimental to national security. For example, on May 15, the head of the Federal Prison Service, Gennadiy Kornienko, called human rights defenders who brought cases to the ECHR that involved abuses taking place in prisons “odious persons.”

Authorities continued to apply a number of indirect tactics to suppress or close domestic NGOs, including the application of various laws and harassment in the form of prosecution, investigations, fines, and raids (see sections 1.e. and 2.b.).

Authorities generally refused to cooperate with NGOs that were critical of their activities or listed as a foreign agent. International human rights NGOs had almost no presence east of the Ural Mountains. A few local NGOs addressed human rights problems in these regions but often chose not to work on politically sensitive topics to avoid retaliation by local authorities.

The United Nations or Other International Bodies: Authorities refused to cooperate with the OSCE Moscow Mechanism rapporteur investigating human rights abuses in the Republic of Chechnya in 2018 and did not permit him to visit the country.

Government Human Rights Bodies: Some government institutions continued to promote human rights and intervened in selected abuse complaints, despite widespread doubt as to these institutions’ effectiveness.

Many observers did not consider the 126-member Civic Chamber, composed of government-appointed members from civil society organizations, to be an effective check on the government.

The Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) is an advisory body to the president tasked with monitoring systemic problems in legislation and individual human rights cases, developing proposals to submit to the president and government, and monitoring their implementation. The president selects some council members by decree, and not all members operated independently. On October 21, President Putin overhauled the HRC, replacing its head, Mikhail Fedotov, with Valeriy Fadeyev, a senior member of the ruling United Russia party. Officially, Fedotov was dismissed because he had turned 70, the age limit for service in the government. President Putin could have issued a waiver that would have allowed him to stay on, leading human rights activists to speculate that authorities wanted an HRC head who would be more loyal to the president and less critical of restrictions on political freedoms. Some members of the HRC who were well-respected human rights defenders were also dismissed at the same time as Fedotov, compounding observers’ concerns.

Human rights ombudsperson Tatyana Moskalkova was viewed as a figure with very limited autonomy. The country had regional ombudsmen in all its regions with responsibilities similar to Moskalkova’s. Their effectiveness varied significantly, and local authorities often undermined their independence.

Rape and Domestic Violence: Rape is illegal, and the law provides the same punishment for a relative, including the spouse, who commits rape as for a nonrelative. The penalty for rape is three to six years’ imprisonment for a single offense, with additional time imposed for aggravating factors. According to NGOs, many law enforcement personnel and prosecutors did not consider spousal or acquaintance rape a priority and did not encourage reporting or prosecuting such cases. NGOs reported that local police officers sometimes refused to respond to rape or domestic violence calls unless the victim’s life was directly threatened. Authorities typically did not consider rape or attempted rape to be life-threatening and sometimes charged a victim with assault if he or she harmed the alleged perpetrator in self-defense.

For example, as of December the trial of 19-year-old Darya Ageniy for criminal assault in Krasnodar region continued. In July 2018 authorities charged her for stabbing an assailant who tried to assault her sexually while she was vacationing in Tuapse the month prior. She claimed the man pressed her against a wall and attacked her; she took out a small knife and stabbed him until he let go of her, after which she fled to her hotel. Two months later police arrested her at her home in the Moscow region and took her back to Tuapse, where her attacker had filed a complaint against her for causing him “grievous bodily harm.” Although she initially faced up to 10 years in prison, her lawyer worked with investigators to reclassify her case so that she would only face one year.

Domestic violence remained a major problem. There is no domestic violence provision in the law and no legal definition of domestic violence, making it difficult to know its actual prevalence in the country. The antidomestic violence NGO ANNA Center estimated that 60 to 70 percent of women suffering from some type of domestic violence do not seek help due to fear, public shame, lack of financial independence from their partner, or lack of confidence in law enforcement personnel. Laws that address bodily harm are general in nature and do not permit police to initiate a criminal investigation unless the victim files a complaint. The burden of collecting evidence in such cases typically falls on the alleged victims. The law prohibits threats, assault, battery, and killing, but most acts of domestic violence did not fall within the jurisdiction of the prosecutor’s office. The law does not provide for protection orders, which experts believe could help keep women safe from experiencing recurrent violence by their partners.

There were reports that women defending themselves from domestic violence were charged with crimes. According to a Mediazona study, 80 percent of women sentenced for murder between 2016 and 2018 killed a domestic abuser in self-defense. In one case in July 2018, three teenaged sisters allegedly killed their father, Mikhail Khachaturyan, in their Moscow home. On October 1, authorities confirmed that the father had physically and sexually abused the girls for many years without any repercussions. As of December the girls remained under house arrest as they awaited their trial for murder, which prosecutors argued was premeditated. The case ignited widespread support for the sisters across the country during the year, with many persons calling for their release.

According to a Human Rights Watch report on domestic violence published in October 2018, when domestic violence offenses were charged, articles under the country’s criminal law were usually applied that employed the process of private prosecution. The process of private prosecution required the victim to gather all necessary evidence and bear all costs after the injured party or their guardian took the initiative to file a complaint with a magistrate judge. The NGO believed that this process severely disadvantaged survivors.

On July 9, the ECHR issued its first ruling on a domestic violence case in the country, ordering the state to pay 20,000 euros ($22,000) to Valeriya Volodina, who had filed a complaint in 2017. Volodina stated that her former boyfriend severely beat her several times, threatened to kill her, and abducted her. Volodina also claimed that police ignored numerous calls she made for authorities to investigate. In 2018 authorities agreed to charge the man with violating her privacy after he published intimate photographs of her, but the investigations never led to a trial, and Volodina changed her name and fled the country.

According to NGOs police were often unwilling to register complaints of domestic violence, often saying that cases were “family matters,” frequently discouraged victims from submitting complaints, and often pressed victims to reconcile with abusers. The majority of domestic violence cases filed with authorities were either dismissed on technical grounds or transferred to a reconciliation process conducted by a justice of the peace whose focus was on preserving the family rather than punishing the perpetrator. NGOs estimated that 3 percent of such cases eventually reached the courts.

A 2017 law made beatings by “close relatives” an administrative rather than a criminal offense for first-time offenders, provided the beating does not cause serious harm requiring hospital treatment. According to official statistics released in 2018, since the law was passed, the number of reported domestic violence cases has fallen by half. NGOs working on domestic violence noted that official reporting of domestic violence decreased because the decriminalization deterred women suffering domestic violence from going to police. In contrast, an antidomestic violence hotline center noted an increase in domestic violence complaints after the 2017 amendments, which the center considered to be a direct effect of decriminalization. According to Gazeta.ru, the number of cases of women beaten by relatives or partners increased by 40 percent in 2018. Human Rights Watch identified three major impacts of the 2017 decriminalization: fostering a sense of impunity among abusers, weakening protections for victims by reducing penalties for abusers, and creating new procedural shortcomings in prosecuting domestic violence.

On November 19, in response to the ECHR’s questions on whether Russian officials acknowledged the seriousness and scale of domestic violence and discrimination against women in Russia, the Justice Ministry responded that claims about the scale of domestic violence in the country were “quite exaggerated” and these women’s claims were undermining “the efforts that the government was making to improve the situation.” The ministry added that men were more likely to suffer discrimination in the context of domestic violence because they did not ask for protection from abuse by women.

At the time of Human Rights Watch’s 2018 report, there were 434 shelter spaces nationally for women in crisis situations. NGOs noted, however, that access to shelters was often complicated, since they required proof of residency in that particular municipality, as well as proof of low-income status. In many cases these documents were controlled by the abusers and not available to victims.

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): The law does not specifically prohibit FGM/C. NGOs in Dagestan reported FGM/C was occasionally practiced in some villages, estimating that 1,240 Dagestani girls are subjected to it every year. In November 2018 Meduza reported that a private clinic in the Best Clinics network was offering FGM/C procedures to girls between ages five and 12, which the Federal Service for Health Supervision (Roszdravnadzor) later confirmed. The Best Clinics case was referred to the Investigative Committee in February.

Other Harmful Traditional Practices: Human rights groups reported that “honor killings” of women persisted in Chechnya, Dagestan, and elsewhere in the North Caucasus but were rarely reported or acknowledged. Local police, doctors, and lawyers often collaborated with the families involved to cover up the crimes. A December 2018 study by human rights defenders, the first ever conducted, found 39 cases of honor killings (36 women, three men) between 2008 and 2017 in the North Caucasus region but estimated that the real number could be much higher.

In some parts of the North Caucasus, women continued to face bride kidnapping, polygamy, forced marriage (including child marriage), legal discrimination, and forced adherence to Islamic dress codes.

Sexual Harassment: The law contains a general provision against compelling a person to perform actions of a sexual character by means of blackmail, threats, or by taking advantage of the victim’s economic or other dependence on the perpetrator. There is no legal definition of harassment, however, and no comprehensive guidelines on how it should be addressed. Sexual harassment was reportedly widespread, but courts often rejected victims’ claims due to lack of sufficient evidence.

On September 27, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow opened an investigation into a Moscow police station after two female employees complained of sexual harassment by one of its directors. Both stated that he pressured them into intimate relationships and threatened them with career repercussions when they did not comply. One victim told journalists that when she reported the incidents to the station’s management, they told her to keep quiet and ignore them.

Coercion in Population Control: There were reports of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization. Multiple media outlets during the year, including the Dozhd television channel on October 4 and the Izvestiya newspaper on November 7, published articles containing allegations that female residents of long-term psychiatric care facilities have been involuntarily sterilized or subjected to forced abortions. Data about the extent of the practice were not available. On April 30, a psychologist who worked with persons with disabilities in state care facilities published an account of at least two young women who were recently forced to have abortions at psychoneurological dispensary #30 in the Moscow region.

Discrimination: The constitution and law provide that men and women enjoy the same legal status and rights, but women often encountered significant restrictions, including prohibitions on their employment in 456 jobs. Although the government promised to open most of these jobs to women by 2021, the approximately 100 jobs that the Ministry of Labor has ruled especially physically taxing, including firefighting, mining, and steam boiler repair, would remain off limits.

Birth Registration: By law citizenship derives from parents at birth or from birth within the country’s territory if the parents are unknown or if the child cannot claim the parents’ citizenship. Failure to register a birth resulted in the denial of public services.

Education: Education is free and compulsory through grade 11, although regional authorities frequently denied school access to the children of persons who were not registered local residents, including Roma, asylum seekers, and migrant workers.

Child Abuse: The country does not have a law on child abuse but the law outlaws murder, battery, and rape. The penalties for such crimes range from five to 15 years in prison and, if they result in the death of a minor, up to 20 years in prison. A 2017 law that makes beatings by “close relatives” an administrative rather than a criminal offense for first-time offenders, provided the beating does not cause serious harm requiring hospital treatment, applies to children as well. Some Duma deputies claimed that children need discipline and authority in the family, condoning beating as a mode of discipline.

Studies indicated that violence against children was fairly common. According to a report published in April by the National Institute for Child Protection, one in four parents admitted to having beaten their children at least once with a belt. For example, on July 6, seven-year-old “Aisha” (not her real name) was taken to a hospital near her home in Ingushetia. She had countless bruises, bites, and burns all over her body; it turned out that her aunt, who had been her guardian for six months, had been abusing her. Aisha had to have extensive surgery to save her severely damaged arm. Her aunt was detained under the suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm to a minor.

Early and Forced Marriage: The minimum legal age for marriage is 18 for both men and women. Local authorities may authorize marriage from age 16 under certain circumstances. More than a dozen regions allow marriage from age 14 under special circumstances, such as pregnancy or the birth of a child.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: The age of consent is 16. The law prohibits the commercial sexual exploitation, sale, offering, or procuring for prostitution, and practices related to child pornography. Authorities generally enforced the law. For example, on September 25, authorities arrested an Orthodox priest, Nikolay Stremskiy, who had adopted 70 children and charged him with sexual assault and debauchery. He was alleged to have sexually abused seven of the minors in his care. As of December Stremskiy remained in pretrial detention.

The law prohibits the manufacture, distribution, and possession with intent to distribute child pornography, but possession without intent to distribute is not prohibited by law. Manufacture and distribution of pornography involving children younger than age 18 are punishable by two to eight years in prison or three to 10 years in prison if children younger than 14 are involved. Authorities considered child pornography to be a serious problem.

Institutionalized Children: There were reports of neglect as well as physical, sexual, and psychological abuse in state institutions for children. Children with disabilities were especially vulnerable. For example, on October 1, media reported on the death of a 15-year-old girl from a home for children with mental disabilities in Sakhalin. A nurse admitted leaving her alone in a bathtub after turning on the hot water; the girl was scalded and later died at the hospital. Authorities opened an investigation into the nurse’s actions, and Sakhalin governor Valery Limarenko ordered an internal review of the institution.

International Child Abductions: The country is a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/International-Parental-Child-Abduction/for-providers/legal-reports-and-data/reported-cases.html.

The 2010 census estimated the Jewish population at slightly more than 150,000. The president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, however, has stated that the actual Jewish population is nearly one million.

While anti-Semitism is not widespread, media reported several cases during the year. For example, on Passover eve on April 18, unidentified perpetrators drew a swastika on and set fire to the country’s largest yeshiva, located in the Moscow region. No one was injured, but a storehouse burned down.

In late August a group of Krasnodar residents entered a synagogue and interrogated a rabbi for an hour, accusing him of spreading alien religious practices. The group’s leader later announced that she would commence “partisan actions” against a Jewish community center.

Although leading experts in the Jewish community noted that anti-Semitism had decreased in recent years, some political and religious figures made anti-Semitic remarks publicly. On a visit to Jordan in August, Chechen Republic head Kadyrov allegedly told a group of ethnic Chechens that Jews were “the main enemy of Islam.” The month prior he allegedly told a group of Chechen police that Israel was a “terrorist organization.”

On April 24, the acting mayor of Lipetsk, Yevgeniy Uvarkin, answered a question at a public hearing from a local resident seeking to halt local stadium construction by wondering aloud whether the resident had a “Jewish last name.” He apologized for the remark the next day.

On May 6, presidential advisor Sergey Glazyev wrote an op-ed article in which he speculated that Ukrainian president Zelensky, along with the president of the United States and “far-right forces in Israel,” would seek to replace “Russians” in eastern Ukraine with “the inhabitants of the Promised Land tired of the permanent war in the Middle East.” On May 7, Glazyev asserted that his words were being misinterpreted.

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/.

The law provides protection for persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities, including access to education, employment, health services, information, communications, buildings, transportation, the judicial system, and other state services. The government often did not enforce these provisions effectively.

The conditions of guardianship imposed by courts on persons with mental disabilities deprived them of almost all personal rights. Activists reported that courts declared tens of thousands of individuals “legally incompetent” due to mental disabilities, forcing them to go through guardians to exercise their legal rights, even when they could make decisions for themselves. Courts rarely restored legal capacity to individuals with disabilities. By law individuals with mental disabilities were at times prevented from marrying without a guardian’s consent.

In many cases persons with mental or physical disabilities were confined to institutions, where they were often subjected to abuse and neglect. A June report by Nyuta Federmesser, the head of the Moscow Multidisciplinary Center for Palliative Care, compared these facilities to “gulags,” where many residents spend significant time in restraints and are denied medical care, nutrition, or stimulating environments.

Federal law requires that buildings be accessible to persons with disabilities. While there were improvements, especially in large cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, authorities did not effectively enforce the law in many areas of public transportation and in buildings. Many individuals in wheelchairs reported they continued to have trouble accessing public transportation and had to rely on private cars.

Election law does not specifically mandate that polling places be accessible to persons with disabilities, and the majority of them were not. Election officials generally brought mobile ballot boxes to the homes of voters with disabilities.

The government began to implement inclusive education, but many children with disabilities continued not to study in mainstream schools due to a lack of accommodations to facilitate their individual learning needs. Many schools did not have the physical infrastructure or adequately trained staff to meet the needs of children with disabilities, leaving them no choice but to stay at home or attend specialized schools. For example, according to a local organization of persons with disabilities, a kindergarten in the Leningrad region refused to admit Nikita Malyshev, a child with a disability, instead directing him to a specialized school more than 30 miles from his home. His mother filed a claim against the school, and on February 12, the Supreme Court ruled that the local administration must propose a reasonable alternative that is physically close and takes the family’s needs into account if the neighborhood school cannot accommodate the child. Activists praised the ruling but questioned how municipalities intended to implement it.

While the law mandates inclusive education for children with disabilities, authorities generally segregated them from mainstream society through a system that institutionalized them through adulthood. Graduates of such institutions often lacked the social, educational, and vocational skills to function in society.

There appeared to be no clear standardized formal legal mechanism by which individuals could contest their assignment to a facility for persons with disabilities. The classification of children with mental disabilities by category of disability often followed them through their lives. The official designations “imbecile” and “idiot,” assigned by a commission that assesses children with developmental problems at age three, signified that authorities considered a child uneducable. These designations were almost always irrevocable. The designation “weak” (having a slight cognitive or intellectual disability) followed an individual on official documents, creating barriers to employment and housing after graduation from state institutions.

The law prohibits discrimination based on nationality, but according to a 2017 report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, officials discriminated against minorities, including through “de facto racial profiling, targeting in particular migrants and persons from Central Asia and the Caucasus.” Activists reported that police officers often stopped individuals who looked foreign and asked them for their documents, claiming that they contained mistakes even when they were in order, and demanded bribes. On July 23, human rights activist Aleksandr Kim, a Russian citizen of Korean descent, filmed police as they stopped migrants in an underpass to check documents. One officer asked for Kim’s documents, admitting on camera that it was because he looked Asian. Kim was ultimately fined 1,000 rubles ($16) for disobeying police orders.

Hate crimes targeting ethnic minorities continued to be a problem, although the NGO SOVA Center reported that the number of such crimes declined thanks to authorities’ effectively targeting groups that promoted racist violence. As of December 2, six individuals had died and at least 33 had been injured in racially motivated attacks since the beginning of the year. One victim was an Uzbek migrant stabbed in St. Petersburg on September 16. Law enforcement bodies detained two young men from Moscow with ties to nationalist movements as the main suspects in what they have classified as a hate crime.

According to a 2017 report by the human rights group Antidiscrimination Center (ADC) Memorial, Roma faced widespread discrimination in access to resources (including water, gas, and electrical services); demolitions of houses and forced evictions, including of children, often in winter; violation of the right to education (segregation of Romani children in low-quality schools); and other forms of structural discrimination.

On June 17, a local official from the village of Chemodanovka in the Penza region admitted that authorities forcibly relocated approximately 900 Roma to the Volgograd region after a mass brawl erupted along ethnic lines on June 13, leaving one person dead and another in a coma. He subsequently retracted the comment and stated that the Roma had left the village voluntarily. On June 15, local residents burned the homes of Roma in the neighboring village of Lopatki.

The constitution and various statutes provide support for members of “small-numbered” indigenous groups of the North, Siberia, and the Far East, permitting them to create self-governing bodies and allowing them to seek compensation if economic development threatens their lands. The government granted the status of “indigenous” and its associated benefits only to those ethnic groups numbering fewer than 50,000 and maintaining their traditional way of life. A 2017 report by ADC Memorial noted the major challenges facing indigenous persons included “seizure of territories where these minorities traditionally live and maintain their households by mining and oil and gas companies; removal of self-government bodies of indigenous peoples; and repression of activists and employees of social organizations, including the fabrication of criminal cases.”

Indigenous sources reported state-sponsored harassment, including interrogations by security services, as well as employment discrimination (see section 7.d.). Such treatment was especially acute in areas where corporations wanted to exploit natural resources. By law indigenous groups have exclusive rights to their indigenous lands, but the land itself and its natural resources belong to the state. Companies are required to pay compensation to local inhabitants, but activists asserted that local authorities rarely enforced this provision. Activists stated that there was a constant conflict of interest between corporations and indigenous persons.

On November 7, a Moscow court ordered the closure of the Center for Support of Indigenous People of the North, a nearly 20-year-old indigenous advocacy group that was at the forefront of representing indigenous legal, economic, and environmental rights. The court cited incomplete paperwork as the reason for its closure, but activists called it an excuse to silence the indigenous voice that was critical of corporations and authorities.

The law criminalizes the distribution of “propaganda” of “nontraditional sexual relations” to minors and effectively limits the rights of free expression and assembly for citizens who wish to advocate publicly for rights or express the opinion that homosexuality is normal. Examples of what the government considered LGBTI propaganda included materials that “directly or indirectly approve of persons who are in nontraditional sexual relationships” (see section 2.a.). The law does not prohibit discrimination against LGBTI persons in housing or employment or in access to government services, such as health care.

During the year there were reports of state actors’ committing violence against LGBTI individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, particularly in the Republic of Chechnya (see sections 1.a. and 1.c.).

There were reports government agents attacked, harassed, and threatened LGBTI activists. For example, on June 17, an LGBTI activist from Novocherkassk told media outlets that an officer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Center for Combating Extremism had surveilled and harassed him in early June and then attacked him on June 14. Doctors diagnosed him with a closed head injury and concussion. When he went to file a police report, the officers allegedly laughed and joked about his situation.

Openly gay men were particular targets of societal violence, and police often failed to respond adequately to such incidents. For example, according to the Russian LGBT Network, in July police refused to reopen a criminal case into the 2017 beating of Volgograd teenager, Vlad Pogorelov, because they did not see “hatred and enmity” as the assailants’ motive. Instead, they fined each of the attackers 5,000 rubles ($78). In June 2018 Pogorelov had filed a complaint with the local prosecutor’s office against the local police decision to close a criminal investigation into the 2017 attack. Pogorelov, then 17 years old, was lured into a meeting by homophobic persons posing as gay youth on a dating website. They beat and robbed Pogorelov, who filed a police report. Police opened a criminal investigation into the attack but closed it within a month, citing the “low significance” of the attack and informing Pogorelov that police were unable to protect LGBTI persons. According to the Russian LGBT Network, the case was emblematic of authorities’ unwillingness to investigate adequately or consider homophobia as a motive in attacks on LGBTI persons.

There were reports that authorities failed to respond when credible threats of violence were made against LGBTI persons. For example, authorities failed to investigate the appearance of a website in spring 2018 called the Homophobic Game “Saw,” which called for acts of violence against specific LGBTI persons and human rights defenders. While the site was blocked several times by Roskomnadzor, it would periodically reappear under a new domain name. After the July 23 killing of LGBTI activist Yelena Grigoryeva, whose name appeared on the “Saw” list, the site was blocked again. Although police arrested a suspect on August 1 who apparently confessed to the crime, authorities gave no indication of his motive, and human rights defenders believed that investigators were pursuing the theory that the killing was unrelated to Grigoryeva’s activism for the rights of LGBTI persons. On August 4, the Ministry of Internal Affairs informed individuals who had filed a complaint about the “Saw” site that, since the site was blocked and inaccessible, they were unable to investigate its contents. On August 14, the FSB informed the individuals who filed the complaint about the site that they had examined it and found no evidence of a crime.

In April 2018 the Russian LGBT Network released a report that documented 104 incidents of physical violence, including 11 killings, towards LGBTI persons in 2016-17. The report noted the continuing trend of groups and individuals luring gay men on fake dates to beat, humiliate, and rob them. The report noted that police often claimed to have found no evidence of a crime or refused to recognize attacks on LGBTI persons as hate crimes, which impeded investigations and perpetrators’ being fully held to account. During investigations of attacks, LGBTI persons risked being outed by police to their families and colleagues. LGBTI persons often declined to report attacks against them due to fears police would mistreat them or publicize their sexual orientation or gender identity.

There were reports that police conducted involuntary physical exams of transgender or intersex persons. For example, according to press reports, on May 1, police in Makhachkala, Dagestan, arrested Olga Moskvitina, who is intersex, at a protest. When police discovered that she was marked as male in her passport, she was forced to strip to the waist so that officers could examine her and was questioned about her genitals. She was reportedly humiliated and threatened by the officers. On May 1, her personal identifying information was published on social networks along with threats against her, which Moskvitina believed was done by or with the support of local police. On May 5, Moskvitina’s landlord was reportedly visited by plainclothes officers, who pressured him to evict her from her apartment, which he did.

The Association of Russian Speaking Intersex reported that medical specialists often pressured intersex persons (or their parents, if they were underage) into having so-called normalization surgery without providing accurate information about the procedure or what being intersex means.

The law prohibiting the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual orientations” restricted freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly for LGBTI persons and their supporters (see sections 2.a. and 2.b.). LGBTI persons reported significant societal stigma and discrimination, which some attributed to official promotion of intolerance and homophobia.

High levels of employment discrimination against LGBTI persons reportedly persisted (see section 7.d.) Activists asserted that the majority of LGBTI persons hid their sexual orientation or gender identity due to fear of losing their jobs or homes as well as the risk of violence.

LGBTI students, as well as those suspected of being LGBTI persons, also reported discrimination at schools and universities. Roman Krasnov, a vice rector at the Ural State University of Economics in Yekaterinburg, admitted that the institution monitored the social media accounts of its students in order to ensure that they showed proper “moral character,” which students claimed was monitoring targeted at LGBTI individuals. A student who wished to remain anonymous told media outlets in September that Krasnov threatened him with expulsion after his social media accounts showed that he might identify as LGBTI because he was sympathetic to LGBTI matters.

Medical practitioners reportedly continued to limit or deny LGBTI persons health services due to intolerance and prejudice. The Russian LGBT Network’s report indicated that, upon disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBTI individuals often encountered strong negative reactions and the presumption they were mentally ill.

Transgender persons faced difficulty updating their names and gender markers on government documents to reflect their gender identity because the government had not established standard procedures, and many civil registry offices denied their requests. When documents failed to reflect their gender identity, transgender persons often faced harassment by law enforcement officers and discrimination in accessing health care, education, housing, transportation, and employment.

There were reports that LGBTI persons faced discrimination in the area of parental rights. The law does not allow for same-sex couples to adopt children together, only as individuals. The Russian LGBT Network reported that LGBTI parents often feared that the country’s prohibition on the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual orientation” to minors would be used to remove custody of their children. For example, Andrey Vaganov and Yevgeniy Yerofeyev fled the country in August after the Investigative Committee announced that it had opened a criminal negligence case against the officials who had allowed the adoption of their two sons. Although the couple had married in Denmark in 2016, only Vaganov had a legal relationship to the children. A statement on the Investigative Committee’s website accused the men of “promoting nontraditional relationships, giving the children distorted perceptions about family values and harming their health and their moral and spiritual development.” The state learned that the children were living with two fathers after a doctor treating one of the children reported it to police. The couple told media outlets they had no choice but to leave the country in view of the probability that their children would be removed from their home.

Persons with HIV/AIDS faced significant legal discrimination, growing informal stigma-based barriers, and employment discrimination (see section 7.d.). They also continued to face barriers to adopting children in many cases.

According to NGO activists, men who have sex with men were unlikely to seek antiretroviral treatment, since treatment exposed the fact that these individuals had the virus, while sex workers were afraid to appear in the official system due to threats from law enforcement bodies. Economic migrants also concealed their HIV status and avoided treatment due to fear of deportation. By law foreign citizens who are HIV-positive may be deported. The law, however, bars the deportation of HIV-positive foreigners who have a Russian national or permanent resident spouse, child, or parents.

Prisoners with HIV/AIDS experienced regular abuse and denial of medical treatment and had fewer opportunities for visits with their children.

Children with HIV faced discrimination in education. For example, on April 10, a woman in the small village of Iskitim, in the Novosibirsk region, reported that local authorities refused to register her adopted six-year-old son for school because the child was HIV-positive. Staff at a local clinic had reportedly violated doctor-patient confidentiality rules and were warning other village residents about her child’s diagnosis. The family received threats demanding that they leave the village. On April 18, the local Investigative Committee opened an investigation into the violation of the child’s privacy.

Until June 2018 when the Constitutional Court deemed the practice unconstitutional, HIV-positive parents were prohibited from adopting a child. On May 3, President Putin signed a law that allowed persons with HIV to adopt children already living with them. Several lawsuits preceded this legislation, most notably one filed by an HIV-positive woman in Balashikha. Because she was unable to have children, her sister decided to carry her husband’s child through artificial insemination, giving birth in 2015. The woman planned to adopt the child, but her HIV-positive status precluded her from doing so. She filed a lawsuit and won in February, after which she was allowed to adopt the child.

The Ministry of Justice continued to designate HIV-related NGOs as foreign agents, effectively reducing the number of organizations that may serve the community (see section 2.b., Freedom of Association).

The lack of an internal passport often prevented homeless citizens from fully securing their legal rights and social services. Homeless persons faced barriers to obtaining legal documentation as well as medical insurance, without which clinics refused to treat them. Media outlets reported that Moscow authorities relocated a number of homeless shelters from central areas to the city’s outskirts prior to the World Cup in 2018 and have not returned them to the original locations, although they were where the majority of homeless citizens resided.

A homophobic campaign continued in state-controlled media in which officials, journalists, and others called LGBTI persons “perverts,” “sodomites,” and “abnormal” and conflated homosexuality with pedophilia.

Ukraine is a republic with a semipresidential political system composed of three branches of government: a unicameral legislature (Verkhovna Rada); an executive led by a directly elected president who is head of state and commander in chief, and a prime minister who is chosen through a legislative majority and as head of government leads the Cabinet of Ministers; and a judiciary. On April 21, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected president in an election considered free and fair by international and domestic observers. On July 21, the country held early parliamentary elections that observers also considered free and fair.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs is responsible for maintaining internal security and order. The ministry oversees police and other law enforcement personnel. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is responsible for state security broadly defined, nonmilitary intelligence, and counterintelligence and counterterrorism matters. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reports to the Cabinet of Ministers, and the SBU reports directly to the president. The Ministry of Defense protects the country against foreign and domestic aggression, ensures sovereignty and the integrity of national borders, and exercises control over the activities of the armed forces in compliance with the law. The president is the supreme commander in chief of the armed forces. The Ministry of Defense reports directly to the president. The State Fiscal Tax Service exercises law enforcement powers through the tax police and reports to the Cabinet of Ministers. The State Migration Service under the Ministry of Internal Affairs implements state policy regarding border security, migration, citizenship, and registration of refugees and other migrants. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control over security forces in the territory controlled by the government.

Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture and other abuse of detainees by law enforcement personnel; harsh and life-threatening conditions in prisons and detention centers; arbitrary arrest and detention; substantial problems with the independence of the judiciary; restrictions on freedom of expression, the press, and the internet, including violence against journalists, censorship, and blocking of websites; refoulement; widespread government corruption; and crimes involving violence or threat of violence targeting persons with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons.

The government generally failed to take adequate steps to prosecute or punish most officials who committed abuses, resulting in a climate of impunity. Human rights groups and the United Nations noted significant deficiencies in investigations into alleged human rights abuses committed by government security forces.

In the Russia-induced and -fueled conflict in the Donbas region, Russia-led forces reportedly engaged in killings of civilians; forced disappearances and abductions; torture; unlawful detentions; and committed gender-based violence. Other egregious human right issues in the areas controlled by Russia-led forces included harsh and life-threatening prison and detention center conditions; political prisoners; the absence of judicial independence; severe restrictions on freedom of expression, the press, and the internet; restrictions on the rights of peaceful assembly, freedom of association, and religious freedom; restrictions on freedom of movement across the line of contact in eastern Ukraine; and unduly restricted humanitarian aid.

Significant human rights issues in Russia-occupied Crimea included: abductions; torture and abuse of detainees to extract confessions and punish persons resisting the occupation; unlawful detention; significant problems with the independence of the judiciary; restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including for members of the press; restrictions on the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association and religion. Occupation authorities in Crimea continued to engage in violence against and harassment of Crimean Tatars and pro-Ukrainian activists in response to peaceful opposition to Russian occupation (see Crimea sub-report).

A variety of domestic and international human rights groups generally operated without government restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases.

Authorities in Russia-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine routinely denied access to domestic and international civil society organizations. If human rights groups attempted to work in those areas, they faced significant harassment and intimidation (see section 2.b., Freedom of Association).

Government Human Rights Bodies: The constitution provides for a human rights ombudsman, officially designated as parliamentary commissioner on human rights.

In March 2018 parliament appointed Lyudmila Denisova parliamentary commissioner on human rights. The Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner on Human Rights cooperated with NGOs on various projects to monitor human rights practices in various institutions, including detention facilities, orphanages and boarding schools for children, and geriatric institutions. Denisova took a proactive stance advocating on behalf of political prisoners held by Russia as well as Crimean Tatars, Roma, IDPs, and persons with disabilities.

During the year the OHCHR and human rights groups documented fewer incidents of xenophobic societal violence and discrimination, compared with a spike in these incidents in 2018. Civil society groups remained concerned, however, about the lack of accountability for crimes committed by radical groups in cases documented in 2018. During the year members of such groups committed violent attacks on ethnic minorities (especially Roma), LGBTI persons, feminists, and other individuals they considered to be “un-Ukrainian” or “anti-Ukrainian.” The HRMMU noted that the failure of police and prosecutors to prevent these acts of violence, properly classify them as hate crimes, and effectively investigate and prosecute them created an environment of impunity and lack of justice for victims.

There were continued reports that the government provided grant funds to or cooperated with radical groups. For example, according to monitoring by independent investigative media outlet Bellingcat, during the year the Ministry of Youth and Sport awarded 845,000 hryvnias ($35,000) to groups–such as National Corps and C14 that have committed violence against minorities–to run “national-patriotic education projects” for children.

Rape and Domestic Violence: The law prohibits rape of men or women. The penalty for rape is three to 15 years’ imprisonment. Sexual assault and rape continued to be significant problems.

On January 11, amendments to the criminal code increasing liability for sexual, domestic, and gender-based violence came into force. The amendments expanded the definition of rape and introduced stricter punishment for sexual coercion by up to three years of prison and forced abortion or sterilization by up to five years.

Domestic violence against women remained a serious problem. Spousal abuse was common. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 761 cases of domestic violence were registered during the first nine months of the year. Police issued approximately 44,000 domestic violence warnings and protection orders during the first nine months of the year. Punishment included fines, emergency restraining orders of up to 10 days, ordinary restraining orders from one to six months, administrative arrest, and community service. Human rights groups noted that the ability of agencies to detect and report cases of domestic violence was limited. Human rights groups asserted that law enforcement often did not consider domestic violence to be a serious crime but rather a private matter to be settled between spouses, but they also noted that police were starting to take the problem more seriously.

According to press reports, in early March an intoxicated man stabbed his 25-year-old former wife in Podolsk. The woman managed to run to a hospital, despite being pursued by her former husband. Their seven-year-old daughter witnessed the crime. Odesa police found and detained the perpetrator two days later. He was charged with “intentional infliction of bodily harm.”

According to the NGO La Strada, the conflict in the Donbas region led to a surge in violence against women across the country. Human rights groups attributed the increase in violence to posttraumatic stress experienced by IDPs fleeing the conflict and by soldiers returning from combat. IDPs reported instances of rape and sexual abuse; many claimed to have fled areas controlled by Russia-led forces because they feared sexual abuse.

As of late September the government operated 24 shelters for victims of domestic violence and 21 centers for social and psychological aid across the country for victims of domestic violence and child abuse.

Sexual Harassment: While the law prohibits coercing a person to have sexual intercourse, legal experts stated that safeguards against harassment were inadequate. The law puts sexual harassment in the same category as discrimination and sets penalties ranging from a fine to three years in prison. Women’s rights groups reported continuing and widespread sexual harassment, including coerced sex, in the workplace. Women rarely sought legal recourse because courts declined to hear their cases and rarely convicted perpetrators.

Coercion in Population Control: There were no reports of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization.

Discrimination: While the law provides that women enjoy the same rights as men, women experienced discrimination in employment. According to the government commissioner on gender policy, women on average received 30 percent lower salaries than men. The Ministry of Health maintained a list of 50 occupations that remain prohibited for women.

Birth Registration: Either birth in the country or to Ukrainian parents conveys citizenship. A child born to stateless parents residing permanently in the country is a citizen. The law requires that parents register a child within a month of birth, and failure to register sometimes resulted in denial of public services.

Registration of children born in Crimea or Russia-controlled areas in Donbas remained difficult. Authorities required hospital paperwork to register births. Russia-backed “authorities” routinely kept such paperwork if parents registered children in territories under their control, making it difficult for the child to obtain a Ukrainian birth certificate. In addition authorities did not recognize documents issued by Russian occupation authorities in Crimea or “authorities” in territories controlled by Russia-led forces. Persons living in Crimea and parts of Russia-controlled Donbas had to turn to Ukrainian courts with birth or death documents issued by occupational authorities in order to receive Ukrainian documents. The courts were obliged to make rulings in 24 hours; these decisions were then carried out by the registry office. Due to the lack of judges in local courts, Ukrainians living in regions occupied by Russia and Russia-led forces faced serious difficulty obtaining Ukrainian documents.

Child Abuse: Penalties for child abuse range from three years to life, depending on severity. The law criminalizes sexual relations between adults and persons younger than 16; violations are punishable by imprisonment of up to five years. A January 11 amendment to the criminal code qualifies sexual relations with a person younger than 14 as rape.

Human rights groups noted authorities lacked the capability to detect violence against children and refer victims for assistance. Preventive services remained underdeveloped. There were also instances of forced labor involving children (see section 7.c.).

Authorities did not take effective measures to protect children from abuse and violence and to prevent such problems. The ombudsman for human rights noted the imperfection of mechanisms to protect children who survived or witnessed violence, particularly violence committed by their parents. According to the law, parents were the legal representatives of their children, even if they perpetrated violence against them. There is no procedure for appointing a temporary legal representative for a child during the investigation of alleged parental violence.

According to press reports, on May 27, police officers in Zhytomyr Oblast, while visiting the home of local residents, learned that a child was missing. Police uncovered that a few months earlier, the stepfather had hit a child, who fell and died as a result. Both spouses then burnt the body. Authorities detained the parents detained on charges of first-degree murder and removed two other children from the family and placed them in a rehabilitation center.

Early and Forced Marriage: The minimum age for marriage is 18. A court may grant a child as young as 16 permission to marry if it finds marriage to be in the child’s interest. Romani rights groups reported early marriages involving girls younger than 18 were common in the Romani community.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: The law prohibits the commercial sexual exploitation of children, the sale of children, offering or procuring a child for child prostitution, and practices related to child pornography. The minimum prison sentence for child rape is eight years. Molesting a child younger than 16 is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years. The same offense committed against a child younger than 14 is punishable by imprisonment for five to eight years. The age of consent is 16.

Sexual exploitation of children, however, remained significantly underreported. Commercial sexual exploitation of children remained a serious problem.

Domestic and foreign law enforcement officials reported that a significant amount of child pornography on the internet continued to originate in the country. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that children from socially disadvantaged families and those in state custody continued to be at high risk of trafficking, including for commercial sexual exploitation and the production of pornography. For example, on September 4, the Pechersk District Court in Kyiv authorized the arrest of a Kyiv resident who allegedly produced and disseminated pornography of his two children. An investigation was underway as of October.

Displaced Children: The majority of IDP children were from Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. According to the Ministry of Social Policy, authorities registered more than 240,000 children as IDPs. Human rights groups believed this number was low.

Institutionalized Children: The child welfare system continued to rely on long-term residential care for children at social risk or without parental care, although the number of residential-care institutions continued to drop. Government policies to address the abandonment of children reduced the number of children deprived of parental care. A government strategy for 2017-2026 calls for the transformation of the institutionalized child-care system into one that provides a family-based or family-like environment for children.

Human rights groups and media outlets reported unsafe, inhuman, and sometimes life-threatening conditions in some institutions. Officials of several state-run institutions and orphanages were allegedly complicit or willfully negligent in the sex and labor trafficking of girls and boys under their care.

On August 15, press outlets reported that 20 children between the ages of 10 and 17 from the Batiovo Orphanage in Zakarpattia Oblast reported physical violence and sexual abuse. Local police started an investigation.

International Child Abductions: The country is a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at HYPERLINK “https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/International-Parental-Child-Abduction/for-providers/legal-reports-and-data/reported-cases.html”https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/International-Parental-Child-Abduction/for-providers/legal-reports-and-data/reported-cases.html.

According to census data and international Jewish groups, an estimated 103,600 Jews lived in the country, constituting approximately 0.2 percent of the population. According to the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities (VAAD), there were approximately 300,000 persons of Jewish ancestry in the country, although the number might be higher. Before the conflict in eastern Ukraine, according to VAAD, approximately 30,000 Jews lived in the Donbas region. Jewish groups estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 Jews lived in Crimea before Russia’s attempted annexation.

According to the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group (NMRMG), as in 2018, no cases of suspected anti-Semitic violence were recorded as of October 1. The last recorded anti-Semitic violence against individuals occurred in 2016. The NMRMG recorded approximately 10 cases of anti-Semitic vandalism as of October 1, compared with 11 incidents during the same period in 2018. According to the NMRMG, the drop in violence and anti-Semitic vandalism was due to better police work and prosecution of those committing anti-Semitic acts.

Graffiti swastikas continued to appear in Kyiv, Lviv, Poltava, and other cities. According to press reports, on September 15, perpetrators vandalized a memorial to more than 55,000 Jews murdered in Bohdanivka in Mykolaiv Oblast. Jewish organizations expressed concern about the continued existence of Krakivsky Market and new construction atop a historic Jewish cemetery in Lviv. There were several anti-Semitic incidents targeting the Babyn Yar memorial reported during the year.

In line with the country’s 2015 decommunization and denazification law, authorities continued to rename communist-era streets, bridges, and monuments. Some were renamed in honor of 20th century Ukrainian nationalists, some of whom were associated with anti-Semitism.

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/.

The law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities. The government did not effectively enforce these provisions. The law requires the government to provide access to public venues, health services, information, communications, transportation, and the judicial system and opportunities for involvement in public, educational, cultural, and sporting activities for persons with disabilities. The law also requires employers to take into account the individual needs of employees with disabilities. The government generally did not enforce these laws.

Advocacy groups maintained that, despite the legal requirements, most public buildings remained inaccessible to persons with disabilities. Access to employment, education, health care, transportation, and financial services remained difficult (see section 7.d.).

Patients in mental-health facilities remained at risk of abuse, and many psychiatric hospitals continued to use outdated methods and treatments. According to February press reports, patients of a psychiatric institution in Bilopillia in Sumy Oblast complained about cruel and humiliating treatment by staff who allegedly beat and verbally abused them and left them naked for several days. The facility’s administration reportedly forced patients to work on the institution’s cattle farm. The local prosecutor’s office opened an investigation.

Law enforcement generally took appropriate measures to punish those responsible for violence and abuses against persons with disabilities.

By law employers must set aside 4 percent of employment opportunities for persons with disabilities. NGOs noted that many of those employed to satisfy the requirement received nominal salaries but did not actually perform work at their companies.

A law adopted in 2017 guaranteed every child with a disability the right to study at regular secondary schools. It called for the creation of inclusive groups in preschool facilities, secondary and vocational schools, and colleges. According to the president’s commissioner for the rights of children, 12,000 children with disabilities went to regular schools within the program of inclusive education.

Persons with disabilities in Russia-controlled areas in the east of the country suffered from a lack of appropriate care.

Mistreatment of members of minority groups and harassment of foreigners of non-Slavic appearance remained problematic. According to the Ethnic Minorities’ Rights Monitoring Group at the Congress of Ethnic Communities of Ukraine, as of October 1, the number of xenophobic incidents (attacks, vandalism, and “public expressions of xenophobia”) totaled 61, compared with 89 during the same period in 2018. Human rights organizations stated the requirement to prove actual intent, including proof of premeditation, to secure a conviction made it difficult to apply the laws against offenses motivated by racial, national, or religious hatred. Police and prosecutors continued to prosecute racially motivated crimes under laws against hooliganism or related offenses.

There were reports of societal violence against Roma. For example, according to press reports, on October 24, an unknown assailant in Zaporizhzhia attacked Romani rights activist Anzhelika Belova with a knife. According to press reports, the attacker followed her home from a supermarket into her apartment building, where he stabbed her. Belova survived, and police arrested the alleged perpetrator. An investigation was under way.

There were reports of attacks on Romani settlements. In one such case, there was an arson attack on a Romani camp on the outskirts of Ivano-Frankivsk on March 25. Ten men dressed in black attacked the settlement and hurled Molotov cocktails at the camp. The ensuing fire damaged two homes. When police arrived, Romani residents refused to file a complaint.

There were multiple reports that members of some radical groups disrupted gatherings related to the rights of Roma. In one example, human rights groups reported that on May 27, a man carrying an ax, two knives, and other weapons attempted to disrupt a briefing of human rights activists about violence against members of the Romani community. He broke into the room and started verbally insulting Romani individuals present. When a press center guard intervened, he threatened those present with two knives and pepper spray. Police responded and removed the perpetrator.

Human rights activists were concerned about the lack of accountability in cases of attacks on Roma documented in 2018. For example, on August 14, a Lviv district court found two high school students guilty of hooliganism for participating in an attack on a Romani camp that resulted in the killing of a man in June 2018. The court sentenced them to four-and-a-half years of prison. The court did not consider racial motivations or hate crime provisions.

In April the Kyiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office appealed a November 2018 decision of the Holosiivsky District Court in Kyiv dropped charges against C14 leader Serhiy Mazur, the alleged perpetrator in another violent attack against a Romani settlement in Kyiv in April 2018. Court hearings have been postponed six times. Human rights NGOs voiced concerns that impunity for past attacks fueled more violence.

Roma continued to face governmental and societal discrimination and significant barriers accessing education, health care, social services, and employment. According to Council of Europe experts, 60 percent of Roma were unemployed, 40 percent had no documents, and only 1 percent had a university degree. According to the Romani women’s foundation, Chirikli, local authorities erected a number of barriers to prevent issuing national identification documents to Roma. Authorities hampered access to education for persons who lacked documents and segregated Romani children into special schools or lower-quality classrooms.

During the year many Roma fled settlements in areas controlled by Russia-led forces and moved elsewhere in the country. According to Chirikli, approximately 10,000 Roma were among the most vulnerable members of the country’s IDP population. Because many Roma lacked documents, obtaining IDP assistance, medical care, and education was especially difficult.

There were reports that police used laws on human trafficking or prostitution as a pretext to target LGBTI persons. For example, on April 20, police in Dnipro raided a gay nightclub. According to the LGBTI rights organization Nash Mir, at around 1 a.m., 20 to 25 police officers burst into the nightclub, forced all those present to lie down on the floor for three hours, and seized all mobile phones and the club’s equipment. Officers reportedly behaved in an aggressive and homophobic way, expressed insults, made jokes related to sexual orientation, and forced two foreigners, who were in the club, to sing loudly the anthem of Ukraine. While the purported grounds for the raid were the prevention of human trafficking, the published police report about the raid contained no evidence of human trafficking but claimed that the club’s owners took money from patrons in exchange for “creating the conditions for disorderly sexual intercourse.” Nash Mir called the police actions “obviously homophobic and illegal.”

There was societal violence against LGBTI persons often perpetrated by members of violent radical groups, and authorities often did not adequately investigate these cases or hold perpetrators to account. The HRMMU noted that attacks against members of the LGBTI community and other minorities were rarely classified under criminal provisions pertaining to hate crimes, which carried heavier penalties. Crimes and discrimination against LGBTI persons remained underreported. For example, according to press reports, on June 23, four unknown men beat two participants in the Kyiv Pride March who were heading home after the event, spraying them with pepper spray, kicking them, and insulting them.

According to the Nash Mir, radical groups consistently tried to disrupt LGBTI events with violence or threats of violence. For example, on April 11, members of radical groups Tradition and Order and Katechon attacked participants of the European Lesbian Conference in Kyiv. Perpetrators broke into the premises and sprayed tear gas, injuring 10 persons. Police intervened and detained the attackers; the attackers were subsequently released, and no charges were filed.

Although leading politicians and ministers condemned attacks on LGBTI gatherings and individuals, officials sometimes made public statements that were homophobic or that called for violence against LGBTI persons. For example, Sumy deputy mayor Maksym Halytsky posted on a social network a picture of a concentration camp with the caption “before long the so-called prides will look like this.” The Prosecutor General’s Office initiated criminal proceedings on charges of “deliberate actions to incite national, racial, or religious hatred, to humiliate national honor and dignity, or to offend the feelings of citizens in the light of their beliefs.”

The labor code prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. No law, however, prohibits such discrimination in other areas, and discrimination was reportedly widespread in employment, housing, education, and other sectors.

Transgender persons reported difficulties obtaining official documents reflecting their gender identity, which resulted in discrimination in health care, education, and other areas.

During the year the HRMMU reported that in the Russia-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, social stigma and intolerance based on sexual orientation and gender identity have become more acute, reportedly due to the application of laws criminalizing the “propaganda of same-sex relationships.”

Stigma and discrimination in health-care centers were barriers to HIV-positive individuals’ receiving medical services. UNICEF reported that children with HIV/AIDS were at high risk of abandonment, social stigma, and discrimination. Authorities prevented many children infected with HIV/AIDS from attending kindergartens or schools. Persons with HIV/AIDS faced discrimination in housing and employment.