Ukrainian human rights defenders and former Kremlin prisoners visit Syria on the anniversary of the fall of the Assad regime

On 5–8 December, leaders of Ukrainian civil society – human rights defender and former prisoner of war Maksym Butkevych, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and head of the Centre for Civil Liberties Oleksandra Matviichuk, Crimean Tatar activist and former Kremlin prisoner Leniie Umerova, and Nataliya Gumenyuk, journalist and head of the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL), which initiated the visit – travelled to Syria on a solidarity mission. The trip coincided with the anniversary of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and aimed to support Syrian civil society and lay the groundwork for joint efforts to hold Russia accountable for crimes committed in both countries.

During the visit, the Ukrainian delegation visited Sednaya Prison, where the regime detained and tortured tens of thousands of people, as well as mass burial sites and the devastated suburbs of Damascus. Ukrainian human rights defenders spoke with former prisoners of the regime and survivors of bombings and chemical attacks. They also met representatives of the Syrian government, including the head of the newly created Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management and former head of the volunteer organisation the White Helmets, Raed Al Saleh, who visited Ukraine in 2023 on a solidarity mission.

At a meeting with the President of the National Commission for Transitional Justice, Abdulbaset Abdullatif, the Ukrainians discussed not only the challenges but also shared solutions – how to build a justice system capable of investigating hundreds of thousands of crimes, and how to create a sustainable system of support for victims. The Ukrainian delegation spoke at city-wide celebrations and met with representatives of Syrian business. They also plan to visit Douma, the city where chemical weapons were used in 2013, as well as Aleppo.

A separate event during the visit was a workshop organised by the PIJL, bringing together Syrian and Ukrainian human rights defenders. It took place on 6 December at the premises of the civil society coalition Madaniya, with the participation of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. The discussion focused on strengthening efforts to ensure accountability for crimes committed by the Russian leadership and military in both countries, and on how civil society can cooperate with authorities and law-enforcement during the transformation and democratisation of state institutions. 

“Diplomatic relations between countries are grounded in pragmatism, and that is normal. Yet it is the role of civil society to remind their governments of shared values – and shared threats. What connects us with Syria is not only a tragic past, such as Russian war crimes. It is also the experience of resilience and the work of building a just future: achieving justice and rebuilding a country after massive destruction. When I first came to free Syria in April this year, I wanted to return together with other Ukrainians. And I truly became convinced that whether we speak of former prisoners or human rights defenders, we understand one another from the first word,” said Nataliya Gumenyuk, head of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, who has covered events in Syria since 2012.

“This is my first time in Syria, and it is likely the most important of my trips in quite a long time. There is a great difference between knowing what happened and being present. Syrians who survived crimes against humanity all spoke about the importance of justice and of holding the leaders of the Assad and Putin regimes accountable. This must be one of the crucial tasks of a new Syria – and our duty is to support it,” added human rights defender Oleksandra Matviichuk.

During their time in Russian captivity, both Leniie Umerova and Maksym Butkevych encountered Russian guards who boasted that they had previously fought in Syria.

“In captivity I was held by Russians who had fought in Syria, so this trip is particularly meaningful for me. Russia commits in our homeland the very same crimes it committed here. I was shocked by the utterly destroyed districts of Jobar and Yarmouk, from which the entire population had been forcibly displaced, where even the smallest objects were wiped out. This is especially painful for me as a Crimean Tatar. I saw an incredible number of parallels in which Russia acted as the executioner,” said Leniie Umerova.

“In Syrian society, as in Ukrainian society, there is a huge demand for justice. This is not the only thing that unites us. In some cases, the perpetrators were the same people. A year after the revolution and the liberation of Syria, I also saw that restoring justice is possible when there is respect for the diversity inherent in both our societies. Diversity is an important component of the extraordinary resilience that so impresses foreign observers in Ukrainian society – and which deeply impressed me in Syrian society during my stay here,” shared human rights defender and former prisoner of war Maksym Butkevych. He added that the fall of Assad was one of the first major pieces of news he learned after his release in a prisoner exchange at the end of 2024. In autumn of last year, he could not have imagined that he would one day visit Syria himself – rather than his Russian captors.

On 8 December, Syria celebrates liberation from the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, whose dynasty ruled the country for more than 60 years. In spring 2011, Syrians began protests against the regime after teenagers in Daraa were detained for writing anti-government slogans. The regime launched brutal repression, which escalated into a civil war in which the Russian Federation supported Assad. More than 10 million Syrians were forced to flee the country; according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, over 600,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands remain missing. In September 2025, Ukraine and Syria restored diplomatic relations.

In March 2022, the Public Interest Journalism Lab founded The Reckoning Project, an initiative to document war crimes, with the participation of Syrian lawyers who had worked on legal processes in Syria. In 2023, to mark the tenth anniversary of the chemical attacks in Ghouta, the Public Interest Journalism Lab hosted a visit of leading Syrian civil society representatives to Ukraine. During that visit, they travelled to Bucha, met with families of missing persons, and spoke with evacuated Mariupol medics.