An open appeal to the International Committee of the Red Cross: is silence a principled stance?

The text of the appeal in French has been published on HEIDI.NEWS

Russian aggression and criminal policies against Ukrainians have completely shattered any remaining illusions about humanity during wartime. Instead of the rule of law, the law of the strongest is being actively imposed, and the basic conventions of international humanitarian law, along with the actions (or inaction) of the ICRC, are increasingly being criticized.

For decades, the ICRC has tried to build a reputation as a humanitarian institution that does not interfere in political processes, but instead protects human dignity where everything else has been destroyed.

To achieve this, the ICRC created a system of confidential dialogue with the parties to a conflict. The argument was that this approach was the only way to exert influence on violators while still maintaining access to prisoners and other protected persons.

That's why the issues raised today are critically important: is there any justification for silence when a state that is a party to the Geneva Conventions is deliberately, openly and systematically destroying the very foundation of humanity?

The constant torture, inhumane treatment and extrajudicial executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians, their detention in terrible conditions with the simultaneous refusal of the ICRC to grant access to them, the horrific terrorist attack in Olenivka, the use of gas weapons, the ecocide resulting from the blowing up of the Kakhovka dam, the constant shelling of peaceful Ukrainian cities and a total of tens of thousands of war crimes committed by Russians.

The shocking number of violations of the rules of war has long proven that there is a conscious, systematic criminal policy by the Russians, aimed at destroying the identity of an entire people in the middle of Europe in the 21st century. Something similar already happened in the 1930s and '40s, didn't it? But besides shock, hatred, and the attempt to hold them accountable, what other reaction unites all these atrocities?

The answer may seem less obvious to many, but it is no less tragic. It is the silence of the ICRC. And this has been the case since the occupation of parts of Ukraine, including Crimea, in 2014, when the civilian population in the occupied territories had no real protection (and the truth is, it still does not). From 2022 to 2025, war crimes became so widespread, they exposed state policy.

When a Humanitarian Mandate Collides with a Criminal Policy

Today, the key question is whether silence can be justified when a state that signed the Geneva Conventions is openly executing prisoners, torturing civilians and destroying the foundation of humanity.

Ukraine is not facing isolated crimes, but a systematic policy. According to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, at least 322 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been executed by Russians since the start of the full-scale invasion. As of December 2025, the UN has verified 96 cases of extrajudicial executions of prisoners who were already protected under international law. Videos of the executions of Ukrainians regularly appear in the public domain, but there has been no public reaction from the ICRC.

Captivity as a Sentence

Thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians are being held in terrible conditions. They are subjected to torture, denied medical care and forced to give false testimonies before visits by ICRC delegates, otherwise, they will face new torture. Russia has deliberately failed to establish a single official prisoner-of-war camp, in direct violation of the Third Geneva Convention. There is also no national information bureau that is supposed to keep records of prisoners. As a result, the world has no clear accounting of how many Ukrainians are being held in Russian torture chambers.

Ukrainian organizations speak of hundreds of places of detention where people are mostly held without any legal basis. Each of these stories is evidence that, in Russia's hands, the Geneva Conventions have been reduced to empty words. And now, as Russia withdraws from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture, the ICRC has not only the right, but the duty to finally break its silence.

Manipulation Instead of Transparency

The ICRC's annual reports, which are supposed to be a tool for transparency, tend to create confusion instead. In the 2022–2024 documents, information about visits to prisoners in Ukraine and Russia is combined into joint sections, avoiding specifics. For example, the 2024 report states that 55 visits were made to 17 places of detention "mostly in Ukraine," where more than 13,000 people were held. But it remains unclear how many visits took place in Russia and how many in Ukraine. This looks like an attempt to hide the actual lack of access to Ukrainian prisoners in the Russian Federation.

Such manipulations seem especially alarming in a situation where it is not about formal indicators, but about the fates of thousands of people who are daily at risk of torture and death.

Ukrainian human rights activists have already presented the so-called "Moscow Conventions" – a collection of 137 articles that describe the real experience of captivity. This is an unofficial document created as an alternative to the Geneva Conventions, which Russia is flagrantly violating. It serves as a reminder that the silencing of crimes provides fertile ground for the emergence of new "rules," where torture and executions cease to be crimes and become the "norm."

Every day of silence adds a new page to this tragic collection. And every day without a public reaction from the ICRC brings the world closer to accepting impunity as the norm.

Confidential Dialogue or Justifying Inaction?

The ICRC insists that its basic tool is a confidential dialogue with the violator. But if a state has been blocking access for years, ignoring appeals, executing prisoners, and torture has become systematic, can one be limited to closed-door conversations? Doesn't such diplomacy become a convenient excuse for inaction?

The ICRC's own internal documents provide for a much wider range of actions. For example, there is a guidance document from 2005, "ICRC Action in the Event of Violations of International Humanitarian Law and Other Fundamental Norms."

It outlines a whole range of both confidential and public responses. And it turns out that the ICRC can and should use them in cases where, for example, confidential dialogue is not effective. In the context of Russian aggression, all the prerequisites for this have long been present. They are worth looking into to understand what specific response mechanisms the ICRC has chosen for itself.

Humanitarian Mobilization

If confidential dialogue does not yield results, the ICRC has the right to involve third parties: governments, international organizations, influential individuals. The key is that such actors have the ability to exert non-public influence on the violator. This mechanism allows for external pressure on the violating state in the interests of the victims, while maintaining the general format of confidentiality. For this reason, people cannot track the use of this tool.

Public Statement on the Quality of Dialogue

This tool allows for an official declaration that the bilateral confidential dialogue has not achieved the desired results, albeit without providing specific accusations. A public statement is essentially a consequence of the failure of confidential dialogue and humanitarian mobilization. Such a statement is intended to increase the effectiveness of negotiations or to prevent the false impression that the ICRC's silence implies consent. Moreover, even this form of public response allows the Committee to maintain neutrality without resorting to direct accusations.

Over more than eleven years of war, we have not seen such a statement. Therefore, the long-standing silence of the ICRC gives rise to questions, as the Committee has repeatedly used this tool in the past in other conflicts. Do we have the impression that the ICRC is satisfied with the level of confidential dialogue with Russia? And this is despite the obvious ineffectiveness of that dialogue – full access has not been granted, and torture has not ceased. There are already court rulings that recognize that the Russian Federation uses a systematic practice of torture in the occupied territories of Ukraine. For example, the ECHR ruling in the case of "Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia."

Public Condemnation

This is the most radical method, one might say a "last resort," but (you will be surprised) it is also provided for in the ICRC's internal rules. Public condemnation is used when violations are serious and widespread, occur repeatedly, are confirmed by reliable sources, and confidential measures have not yielded results. Such a step is considered the only remaining means of influencing the situation.

If the ICRC were to use it, the Ukrainian case would not be the only one in the ICRC's history. For example, in 1992, during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the ICRC publicly reported on mass arrests, deportations, torture and cruelty, recognizing this as an element of a policy of forced displacement. In 1998, during the Kosovo crisis, the ICRC published a special statement in which it placed responsibility on the Serbian authorities for the situation regarding the protection of the civilian population. At the same time, the organization called on Albanian formations to stop the killings and enter into dialogue.

These examples demonstrate the ICRC's ability to act publicly when non-public dialogue is not working or when the situation is so critical that it requires urgent intervention. But for some reason, in the case of the largest number of such clear, unconcealed crimes on the European continent since the Second World War, no public condemnation has been issued by the ICRC for more than 11 years.

Why Silence is Ominous

Impunity breeds new aggression. Feeling a lack of consequences, the Kremlin is becoming increasingly bold in its hostility not only toward Ukraine but also toward the entire world. And then the issue goes far beyond the Ukrainian context – it is about the future of the international order, which is already under threat.

Under such conditions, the silence we "hear" from the ICRC is no longer a tool. Unfortunately, it has become a position. And it is this very position that endangers not only the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians but also the authority of the international humanitarian order itself. Ukrainians have proven their dignity even in captivity. Therefore, the time for action, courage and bravery, the time for Geneva to speak out loud, has long since arrived.

Gyunduz Mamedov – Ukrainian lawyer, PhD in Law; Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine (2019–2022); initiated systematic and coordinated investigations of international crimes in Ukraine; member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Mykola Forsenko – Ukrainian lawyer; PhD in Law; Professor, Consultant in public international law, member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine