How has Russia tightened its control over occupied Crimea? Since illegally occupying Crimea in 2014, Russia has systematically detained people who oppose its rule, fabricated criminal cases against them, and sent them to pretrial detention centers and prisons across the peninsula and beyond. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this system expanded further, with Ukrainian civilians from newly occupied territories also being transferred to detention facilities in Crimea.

The Kyiv Independent’s War Crimes Investigations Unit spent months tracing this network through firsthand accounts from survivors and relatives, interviews with lawyers and witnesses, leaked databases, and open-source intelligence. The investigation identifies detention center staff and senior officials, documents the role of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and reveals how Crimea has been transformed into a vast prison system—one that Russia plans to expand even further.

Watch here.