On July 10, 2017, Gunduz Mamedov, Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and Arkadiy Bushchenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU), signed the Memorandum of Cooperation.

The joint efforts of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Union will be directed at documenting war crimes and human rights violations in the conditions of the Crimean occupation, involving leading Ukrainian and foreign scholars and practitioners in obtaining consultations and conducting measures for raising awareness in the field of international humanitarian law and law of human rights.

The document was signed, because primarily of the fact that in January this year the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office initiated criminal proceedings on the ground of a criminal offense stipulated in Art. 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, namely the violation of the laws and customs of war, which are stipulated by international treaties ratified by Ukraine. In turn, UHHRU lawyers and attorneys are involved in the protection of human rights in international courts for years.