The policy of denying asylum to Ukrainian refugees under the pretext of “safe regions” in Ukraine ominously echoes the Nazi practice of the 1930s–1940s, when the fiction of “organized ghettos” and “reservations” justified the segregation, deportation, and extermination of Jewish populations. Ghettos like those in Warsaw or Łódź were presented as “safe” zones under Nazi control but served as instruments of isolation, repression, and preparation for the “Final Solution.” Neutral countries such as Switzerland were complicit, refusing Jewish refugees entry under formal pretexts, thereby legitimizing Nazi crimes.

Today, Norway, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Canada, by invoking the concept of “safe regions,” ignore the legal vacuum created by derogation and internal apartheid in Ukraine. This policy turns refugees from war victims into “voluntarily returned persons,” absolving states of responsibility for their fate.

Moreover, this policy is part of a deliberate erosion of international law. Funding Ukraine while it operates under derogation and repressive laws creates double standards and indirectly softens the image of Russia as the aggressor that launched the war. This so-called “filtration humanism” is simply a modern form of fascist practice: legal segregation, fake promises of protection, and forced displacement with no right of return or reparations.

1. Derogation and Internal Legal Apartheid in Ukraine

Since 2015, in the eastern regions of Ukraine, and since 24 February 2022 throughout the entire country, Ukraine has officially implemented a regime of “derogation” (a suspension of obligations to protect human rights).

The derogation regime is formally recorded in the note of 10 March 2022 (C.N.58.2022.TREATIES-IV.4) and Law No. 2111-IX. The Council of Europe and the United Nations were officially notified and fully aware of the derogation’s scope and consequences — yet they deliberately chose not to ensure that this information shaped the work of international refugee protection systems. This politically motivated silence gives states a convenient cover to hide the reality of Ukraine’s suspended rights and to justify denials of protection under the false label of “safe regions.” By withholding what they know, these institutions do not merely fail in their duty — they become passive enablers of unlawful deportations and systematic discrimination.

Such inaction falls under the definition of aiding or assisting an internationally wrongful act within the meaning of Article 16 of the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, adopted by the UN International Law Commission and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2001 as reflecting customary international law.

As of 29 June 2025, Ukraine continues to officially restrict:

• Article 5 ECHR — the right to liberty and security of person

• Article 6 ECHR — the right to a fair trial

• Article 8 ECHR — the right to respect for private and family life

• Article 10 ECHR — freedom of expression

• Article 11 ECHR — freedom of peaceful assembly and association

• Article 13 ECHR — the right to an effective remedy

• Article 14 ECHR — prohibition of discrimination

• Protocol No. 4, Article 2 ECHR — freedom of movement and the right to leave the country

• Protocol No. 7, Article 1 ECHR — procedural safeguards in expulsion and deportation

• Article 9 ICCPR — liberty and security of person

• Article 12 ICCPR — freedom of movement

• Article 13 ICCPR — protection against expulsion

• Article 14 ICCPR — the right to a fair trial

• Article 16 ICCPR — the right to recognition as a person before the law

• Article 17 ICCPR — the right to privacy

• Article 26 ICCPR — equality before the law and protection against discrimination

The ongoing derogation clearly shows that Ukraine is unable to guarantee fundamental rights across its entire territory — including western regions often labelled as “safe” (such as Lviv or Zakarpattia). The fact that all of Ukraine’s airspace has officially remained closed to civil aviation since 24 February 2022 — under international aviation warnings called NOTAMs (Notices to Air Missions), for example NOTAM A0221/22 — makes this clear. Major global insurers and reinsurers — such as Lloyd’s, Munich Re, Swiss Re, AIG and Allianz — continue to refuse standard coverage for flights over Ukraine because the entire country remains officially classified as a high-risk war zone.

Controversial Forced Mobilization (enabled under national draft laws and Criminal Code Article  336, with 3–5 years of prison for refusal) functions inside a regime where almost every core constitutional safeguard is officially suspended under Ukraine’s declared derogation.

While Article  65 Costitution of Ukraine says defending the Fatherland is every citizen’s duty, that duty presumes citizens are part of a sovereign people — yet the ethnic Ukrainian majority has been stripped of any recognized collective status as such. Article  17 clearly places national defense in the hands of the Armed Forces on behalf of the people — not on forcibly seized civilians who legally have no collective subject status.

Meanwhile, the same regime:

• ignores Article  3 (human dignity, life and freedom as the highest values) when people are openly abducted in streets and near bus stops;

• violates Article  21 (rights are inalienable);

• breaches Article  22 (rights must not be narrowed or abolished) — yet mass derogation has frozen nearly all guarantees;

• breaks Article  24 (equal rights) by privileging small recognized “indigenous peoples” while excluding the titular ethnic majority;

• violates Article  27 (state must protect life and security) amid forced disappearances and intimidation;

• ignores Article  28 (ban on torture and inhuman treatment);

• suppresses Article  32 (no arbitrary interference with private life);

• cancels Article  33 (freedom of movement) through blanket travel bans and border closures imposed by decrees rather than valid laws — which contradicts Article 64 (limits must be by law only and justified);

• undermines Article  35 (freedom of conscience and religion) through state pressure on churches and forced chaplaincy control;

• obstructs Article  55 (right to legal protection and judicial appeal);

• empties Article  64 itself — restrictions are enforced by orders instead of proper parliamentary acts;

• and mocks Article  68 (duty to respect the Constitution) — since only the “duty to defend” is enforced while core protections are left suspended.

In practice, nearly the entire constitutional framework — civil, personal, religious, procedural — is on indefinite hold, except for the one obligation to fight. And this duty is imposed even on those who legally no longer qualify as the people meant to hold sovereign power under Article  5, because they have been erased as a collective subject.

The result: a system that cancels protection, erases national identity, forcibly drafts its own disenfranchised majority as expendable manpower — and still claims “safe regions” exist to justify deportations. When missile strikes continue to kill civilians in so-called “safe regions,” this completely destroys the fiction of “safety.”

For example, on 6 June 2025, a deadly strike on Lutsk in Volyn Oblast, right on the border with Poland, killed two people and injured more than 30; missiles hit residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure. Less than a year before that, on 4 September 2024, a missile attack on Lviv killed seven people, including three sisters — aged seven, eighteen, and twenty-one — and their mother; only the father survived. Fifty-three people were injured, including children with moderate injuries.

This contradiction exposes the “safe region” narrative as a legal fraud built on mass derogation, selective apartheid and brute force, and the facts above are not isolated incidents but have become the new normal in Ukraine’s western regions — as shown by Russia’s largest air attack yet on 29 June 2025, with 477 drones and 60 missiles hitting cities like Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia, Kremenchuk and Mykolaiv, causing strikes on civilian infrastructure, casualties, fires, and even a missile strike on a passenger train in Dnipro that killed 21 and wounded over 300, proving that nowhere in Ukraine is safe from bombardment, destruction and forced displacement.

In parallel, Ukrainian legislation creates an internal legal apartheid:

• Law No. 1616-IX (2021) “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” recognizes Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks as indigenous, granting them collective rights, reparations, and international representation. Ethnic Ukrainians — the titular majority — are not recognized as indigenous and are denied equivalent collective rights.

• Law No. 2215-IX (2022) repealed USSR-era acts that had affirmed Ukrainians’ status as the bearers of state power. The Constitution (Article 5) names the “people” as the source of sovereignty, but this is not legally defined and dissolves into the undefined category of “all citizens.” Ethnic Ukrainians therefore have no recognized collective status — no right to reparations, no protection against discrimination, and no legal recognition as an historical people, an indigenous people, or any other distinct collective subject.

• The result: Small groups receive privileged collective status, while the titular majority is left without any form of legally recognized collective identity or rights — whether as a historical people, an indigenous group, or a national minority — creating a legal mechanism for their displacement and exclusion from collective protections altogether. This echoes how the Nuremberg Laws (1935) formally left Jews as citizens but removed their collective rights — transforming them into a rightless, segregated population within their own country.

The absence of consular protection and the silence of Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirm the systematic neglect of the ethnic majority’s rights. Private initiatives are forced to replace state functions, defending citizens from repression.

Legal qualification: This combination of derogation and institutionalized apartheid does not merely breach the non-refoulement principle (Article  33, 1951 Refugee Convention) or Article  3 ECHR (ban on inhuman treatment). It directly creates conditions that match the definition of genocide (Genocide Convention, Article  II) — by deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group stripped of collective rights and protections.

It also fits crimes against humanity (Rome Statute, Article  7) — through systematic persecution, forced displacement, denial of identity, and coercive measures targeting civilians as part of a widespread or systematic policy.

By continuing to fund this regime and deny real asylum, donor states risk complicity under Article  III(e) of the Genocide Convention (complicity in genocide) and Article  25(3)(d) of the Rome Statute (contributing to crimes against humanity).

Returning people to such a regime is not only a deportation into repression — it is a material contribution to maintaining a system of demographic destruction.

Historical parallel: At the Évian Conference in July 1938, 32 countries — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and others — publicly refused to open their borders to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.

They cited excuses like “economic burdens,” “social stability,” or claimed that each refugee could find “safe resettlement elsewhere.” While the Dominican Republic promised a token settlement plan, most states, including major Western democracies, did nothing meaningful to lift quotas or create safe escape routes.

This polite collective refusal created the legal vacuum the Nazis exploited: the fiction of “internal resettlement” in ghettos paved the way for forced deportations and industrial extermination.

Today, the same pattern reappears: states label parts of Ukraine “safe,” ignore mass derogation and internal apartheid, block real asylum, and sustain a regime that systematically destroys an ethnic majority’s collective rights. The legal lie of “internal solutions” repeats — only the language and forms of paperwork have changed.

 

2. Violation of international law: complicity in repression

The systematic refusal to grant full refugee status and the practice of returning or pressuring Ukrainian nationals to return to Ukraine — despite the ongoing derogation of fundamental rights, forced mobilization, and institutionalized legal apartheid — violate multiple binding international norms:

• Article 33 of the 1951 Geneva Convention (non-refoulement) — prohibits expelling any person to a territory where their life or freedom would be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

Grounds: Ukraine’s derogation regime suspends basic civil and political rights; forced conscription, repression of dissent, and discrimination based on ethnic identity directly engage these risks.

• Article 3 ECHR — absolute prohibition of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Grounds: The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) consistently holds that deporting someone into foreseeable risks of arbitrary detention, torture, or cruel conditions violates Article 3 (e.g., Saadi v. Italy (No. 37201/06, 2008). Documented practices in Ukraine include arbitrary detention, forced abductions during mobilization raids, and inhuman treatment of draft evaders (Amnesty International 2024).

• Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture (1984) — prohibits extradition or return of any person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing they would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

Grounds: Systematic forced mobilization under threat of imprisonment, widespread reports of torture and mistreatment of detainees, and the derogation of fair trial guarantees show a real risk of torture or cruel treatment for returnees.

• Article 16 of the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ILC 2001) — establishes that a state which aids or assists another state in committing an internationally wrongful act bears international responsibility if it knows the circumstances.

Grounds: By continuing to fund Ukraine’s state budget — including military recruitment agencies and repressive structures — without requiring restoration of suspended rights or repeal of apartheid laws (Law No. 1616-IX, Law No. 2215-IX), donor states knowingly enable systemic violations of fundamental rights.

• Article 25(3)(d) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court — criminalizes contribution to crimes against humanity by intentionally facilitating the commission of such crimes by a group acting with a common purpose.

Grounds: Forced displacement, systematic persecution of an ethnic majority stripped of collective status, mass mobilization under coercion, and the creation of conditions of life calculated to destroy a national group are prosecutable under Articles 6 (genocide) and 7 (crimes against humanity). States that refuse protection and finance the root policies share complicity.

Legal qualification: Returning Ukrainian nationals to such a regime, or withholding full refugee protection, constitutes not only a breach of non-refoulement and Article 3 ECHR, but active legal complicity in systematic repression and persecution. By providing unconditional financial and logistical support while ignoring derogation and apartheid, donor states expose themselves to international responsibility under Article 16 of the ILC Articles and risk falling within the scope of complicity under Article 25(3)(d) of the Rome Statute.

 

3. Evidence of Systematic Violations

Canada

• Fact: Canada’s refugee system — run by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) — explicitly applies the Internal Flight Alternative (IFA) doctrine. Many Ukrainian asylum seekers are rejected on the grounds that they can “safely relocate” to western or central oblasts — like Lviv, Zakarpattia, or Ivano-Frankivsk — which IRCC policy and IRB case law claim are “sufficiently safe and accessible.”

• Argument: In reality, regions like Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk are remote mountain areas with resort-level housing costs far higher than average EU rents — yet neither the Ukrainian state nor Canadian authorities provide any guaranteed humanitarian shelter there. This claim exposes either a basic ignorance of Ukraine’s geography and economic reality or a knowing misuse of this narrative to deny refugees protection.

This approach also ignores Ukraine’s official derogation, which suspends fundamental rights nationwide, and the fact that these so-called “safe” western regions are also heavily militarized border zones under martial law. By law, frontier oblasts like Zakarpattia are ringed by military checkpoints and special security regimes that block unauthorized crossings and tightly control movement. Anyone without local registration or special clearance can be turned away or detained. People fleeing conflict cannot freely relocate there — and no state housing or support exists. Using “internal safety” as a deportation excuse when these zones are sealed, militarized, and all core rights are suspended.

• Historical Parallel: In 1939, Canada refused entry to 907 Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis, claiming they could “seek refuge elsewhere.” Over 250 were murdered after forced return. Today, designating parts of Ukraine “safe enough” for return — while ignoring closed borders, martial law, and systematic rights suspensions — repeats the same cynical logic behind a modern humanitarian mask.

Norway

• Fact: Since September 2024, Norway’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security announced that it would stop granting automatic collective protection to Ukrainians from regions it now labels “safe” — including western and central areas such as Lviv, Zakarpattia, Rivne, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Volyn, and even the Kyiv region. Instead, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) demands that people from these zones prove an individual threat to qualify for protection — an almost impossible burden when the entire country is under an official derogation and martial control. Norwegian authorities defend this policy by citing local housing shortages, integration “costs,” and the need for “manageable migration.”

• Argument: Norway’s refusal exposes the hypocrisy behind its self-image as a humanitarian safe haven. By hiding behind administrative excuses while funding Ukraine’s militarized regime without human rights guarantees, Norway shows that political convenience and cost-cutting take precedence over binding international obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. It trades real protection for bureaucratic obstacles — forcing Ukrainians to prove “individual danger” while the entire state system is designed to deny them collective rights, suppress free movement, and trap them in a war zone they cannot safely flee.

• Historical Parallel: In the 1940s, Nazi-occupied Norway enforced so-called “legal orders” to round up and deport Jewish residents — even as some locals collaborated or looked away. Today, Norway’s updated version replaces SS orders with migration quotas and policy memos — but the moral result is the same: people fleeing systemic violence and collective persecution are cynically filtered, pushed back, or left with nowhere to go. What once was done with lists and camps is now done with border bureaucracy — a modern filtration system in disguise.

Switzerland

• Fact: According to the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), Switzerland’s Parliament decided in December 2024 to restrict eligibility for the S protection status for Ukrainians. Now, temporary protection is granted only to those arriving directly from territories under occupation or active Russian attack. Ukrainians fleeing from regions formally “under government control” and “not under open conflict” — such as parts of western Ukraine — face losing S status altogether and being transferred to the much more restrictive F status, which allows deportation at any time.

This decision hits tens of thousands who fled to Switzerland since March 2022 under the S regime, trusting that Swiss neutrality and tradition of asylum would protect them. Critics highlight that labelling regions like Lviv or Kyiv “safe” while they face regular missile and drone strikes is legally and morally indefensible (SWI swissinfo.ch, 17 Jan 2025).

• Argument: Switzerland’s policy of “differentiated safety” between refugees of the same war openly contradicts the principle of equal treatment under international refugee law. By shrinking status rights instead of demanding that Ukraine lift its nationwide derogation and forced mobilization, Swiss authorities hide behind the old fiction of “safe zones” — zones which in reality are closed by military checkpoints and targeted by missiles.

This approach turns Swiss neutrality into selective neutrality: it offers symbolic sanctuary while quietly deciding who deserves protection and who should be pushed back into a militarized legal vacuum. It shifts the burden onto the weakest — families and individuals who fled the same war but now face deportation or downgrading.

When a country calls itself a neutral guardian of human rights but turns away civilians on the basis of a fake geographic safety map — while paying billions into the same regime that created the refugee wave — it crosses the line from neutrality to complicity.

• Historical Parallel: During World War II, Switzerland sealed its borders to thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi-controlled Europe, claiming it needed to maintain neutrality and internal stability. This moral coldness enabled the Nazi system of ghettos and deportations — pushing desperate families back to extermination under the polite justification of “security limits.”

Today’s selective border logic repeats that same moral failure: Switzerland creates an illusion of refuge but applies bureaucratic filters to decide whose suffering counts. Where once barbed wire and closed alpine passes blocked refugees, now it is legal loopholes and rebranded “protection status F” that do the same work — a modern filtration gate disguised as administrative neutrality.

When neutrality becomes a cover for filtering victims back to repression, it is not neutrality — it is a calculated collaboration with injustice.

United Kingdom

• Fact: According to The Guardian (27 June 2025), Ukrainians — including families with children and vulnerable people — are being refused asylum by the UK Home Office on the grounds that it is “safe” to return to Ukraine. Many are told they can relocate to other areas such as Kyiv —  the capital that still faces daily missile and drone strikes — or to western regions like Lviv, despite clear evidence of ongoing bombardments, forced mobilization raids, electricity blackouts, and widespread political and religious persecution. Law firm Sterling Law reports weekly rejections and highlights that many applicants remain trapped in legal limbo on short-term visas, with no secure status, no work rights, and no clear path to permanent protection.

• Argument: This policy ignores the reality that Ukraine is under an official derogation regime which suspends core civil rights nationwide. Declaring Kyiv or Lviv “safe” disregards daily air raids, closed airspace, and international aviation bans that treat the entire country as an active war risk. Moreover, Ukraine’s legal apartheid excludes its ethnic majority from any collective protection — making these regions places of heightened risk of forced conscription, arbitrary detention, or persecution. By pushing refugees back under the false pretext of “safe relocation,” the UK violates its binding obligation under Article  33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention (non-refoulement) and breaches the absolute prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment under Article  3 ECHR. The non-refoulement principle imposes a non-derogable duty to admit and protect all persons at risk, without any numeric or political limit — states have no discretion to cap the number of refugees if return would expose them to persecution or inhuman treatment. By endorsing this legal fiction while continuing to finance Ukraine without binding human rights guarantees, the UK undermines the core purpose of the Refugee Convention and systematically breaches its duty under international law.

• Historical Parallel: In the 1930s, the United Kingdom strictly limited Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany through restrictive migration quotas and bureaucratic barriers, forcing thousands to remain trapped under persecution. This passive complicity helped legitimize the Nazi policy of “internal solutions” — ghettos and deportations that escalated into genocide. Today, the UK’s practice of rejecting Ukrainian refugees under the excuse of “internal relocation” — despite evidence of indiscriminate missile strikes, suspended rights and martial law — echoes the same cynical logic: appearing humane while quietly denying real sanctuary. This moral failure risks enabling modern systems of repression by pretending victims have “somewhere else to go.”

4. Conclusion

There are no truly safe regions anywhere in Ukraine: constant shelling, closed borders, forced displacement, and the official derogation regime eliminate any real guarantees of basic rights. This affects all population groups and makes forced return a direct threat to life, freedom, and dignity.

Donor states — Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and others — by financing Ukraine’s discriminatory system without any human rights conditions directly provoke these refugee flows. The majority do not flee only from war but from repression, dictatorship, and lawlessness inside the country, which are sustained by this unconditional foreign aid. Meanwhile, the same states deny protection under the false label of “safe regions.” This double standard violates core international obligations and means that these states have neither any moral nor any legal right to refuse protection to those who flee.

By sponsoring Ukraine’s discriminatory regime and ignoring the total derogation of rights, these states act as indirect accomplices in the destruction of Ukraine’s ethnic majority as a collective group — fully matching the definition of genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention and falling under Article III(e) (complicity in genocide). Under international law, states that enable or tolerate such conditions must be held responsible for complicity.

Finally, the very use of “temporary protection” as a separate status exclusively for Ukrainians — while other groups receive full refugee status — constitutes direct discrimination by nationality, prohibited under Article 3 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, Article 26 ICCPR, and Article 14 ECHR. This shows that temporary protection, as currently applied, is not a humanitarian tool but an administrative filter for selective exclusion.

The author of this report — and the Voice of Ukrainians project — warned the public two years ago that Ukrainians risk being turned into Europe’s new stateless minority, deprived of recognition as a people and used as expendable human material. This report confirms that these warnings are now documented facts. For the full legal basis, see Evidence of Systemic Genocide of the Ukrainian People.