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A delegation of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) carried out an ad hoc visit to Ukraine from 26 May to 6 June 2025. It was the CPT’s second visit to Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale military aggression by the Russian Federation in February 2022. The previous visit took place in October 2023.
The aim of the 2025 ad hoc visit was to examine the treatment and conditions of detention of persons hospitalised and treated against their will in psychiatric hospitals, and of those persons accommodated in social care homes (“internats” and “pensions”) for disabled and elderly persons. In this context, the CPT also assessed the implementation of its previous recommendations on these issues, made in the reports on the 2017 periodic and 2019 ad hoc visits.
For this purpose, the delegation visited psychiatric hospitals in Lviv (Kulparkiv Hospital), Orlivka (Sarny) and Hlevakha (Kyiv), as well as Hrushivskyi “Internat” (Lviv region), Vinnytsia “Pension” for the elderly and disabled, and Baraboi “Internat” (Odesa region).
In the course of the visit, the delegation had consultations with Ihor Kuzin, Deputy Minister of Health, Iryna Postolovska, Deputy Minister of Social Policy, and senior officials from the aforementioned Ministries. In addition, talks were held with Artem Volodin, Director of the Department for the Implementation of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) of the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman), as well as with representatives of non-governmental organisations.
At the end of the visit, the delegation presented its preliminary observations to the Ukrainian authorities.
The visit was carried out by the following members of the CPT: Victor Zaharia (Head of delegation), Dovilė Juodkaitė, Alexander Minchev and Ceyhun Qaracayev.
They were supported by Borys Wódz (Head of Division) and Monica Martinez of the CPT Secretariat, and assisted by an expert, Andres Lehtmets, Head of the Psychiatry Clinic of Tartu University Hospital (Estonia).
Source, text and photo – the CPT
