OSCE

In July 2025, forty-one OSCE participating States, in cooperation with Ukraine, invoked the OSCE Moscow Mechanism to examine the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) by the Russian Federation. This activation reaffirmed the mechanism’s continuing importance as an instrument for addressing serious violations of international law. Embedded within the OSCE framework, the Moscow Mechanism allows participating States to establish independent expert missions and task them to assist in the resolution of a specific human dimension problem on their own territory or in other OSCE participating States. Since the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, the mechanism has been invoked five times in relation to the conflict, reflecting widespread international concern over Russia’s conduct. Posts about the previous reports can be found on EJILTalk here, here and here. The 2025 expert mission specifically focused on Ukrainian POWs and soldiers hors de combat. The mission presented its report to the OSCE Permanent Council on 25 September 2025 and the report became public on the same day (see…