Standing on the shoulders of Ukraine’s dissidents: protecting the rights of Ukraine’s human rights defenders

In February 2025, as Russian cyberattacks crippled Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, Liudmyla Yankina was struggling to register a new human rights organisation, Civis Fortis. The symbolism wasn’t lost on her. Even the act of creating civil society protection required protection itself.

From business to human rights

Liudmyla Yankina never planned on becoming a human rights defender. Just over a decade ago, she was building a successful career in sales, marketing and customer relationship management in Kyiv, living between Kyiv and her hometown, Luhansk. But everything changed in 2014, when war began and Luhansk was occupied by Russian military forces.

“I evacuated with my mother to Kyiv,” she recalls. “I had to start my life again. Then, when there were local elections, I realised I couldn’t vote. As an internally displaced person, my constitutional right to vote was violated.”

Rather than accept this injustice, Liudmyla approached it like a business project. She identified the problem, built partnerships, found donors, and launched a reform campaign that brought together over 150 specialised experts. It took five years, but she succeeded. She also became involved in civic activism, defending the rights of women, other activists and representatives of LGBTQI community.

Protecting those who protect Ukraine’s democracy

Today, as co-founder and leader of Civis Fortis (the Foundation for Civil Society Protection), Liudmyla is protecting the rights of Ukraine’s civic activists, journalists and human rights defenders, who are fighting every day for the democratic future of their country.

“Our mission is to support them to move forward, so they can continue their vital activities,” she explains. “We need to protect those who are working every day to protect our country’s democracy. When institutions stay silent, civil society speaks out. And we are protecting it.”                 

She explains that Civis Fortis’ team of 15 has two primary areas of work.

First, it provides support to civil society defenders facing persecution for their work within Ukraine, including activists protecting cultural monuments or nature reserves, or defending women’s rights, who can face considerable opposition from corporate interests and the authorities.

Secondly, the organisation is supporting civil detainees held in Russian captivity, and is working with those who have been released from captivity.

“We estimate there are over 30,000 Ukrainian civilians held in Russian prisons or unofficial torture chambers, although no one knows the exact figure. In the occupied territories, families are afraid to report arrests,” she says. “Many prisoners are journalists, human rights defenders, and activists, who are targeted because of their work.”

Civis Fortis’ work to protect activists in Russian prisons requires navigating impossible situations, but this is not new to Liudmyla. This summer, she coordinated emergency medical treatment for Kostiantyn Davydenko, an activist from Donbas, who was captured by the Russians in 2018 and ‘sentenced’ to seven years in a strict regime colony.

“He needed urgent medical attention while in prison, and we had to get him to a clinic inside Russia and find a way to pay for his treatment,” she says. The logistics of this assistance required a network she cannot name for obvious security reasons. “Maybe after the war, one day…” she says.

Davydenko was finally released in a prisoner exchange during the summer of 2025. But not every story has a hopeful ending.

Viktoria Roshchyna’s is a case in point. Viktoria, a Ukrainian journalist, was tortured to death in Russian captivity, despite Liudmyla and her colleagues searching for her for over a year.

“She was killed, and her body was brought back under the name of an ‘unknown man’,” Liudmyla says. “Even in death, Russia denied her basic human respect.”

Rebuilding lives

Liudmyla relates that for individuals released from Russian prisons, the challenges of adapting to life in today’s Ukraine are immense. Many have spent years in captivity where they were subjected to terrible ill treatment and torture.

“They have to start their lives from scratch, and we have to help them start from zero,” she says. “They need huge support to reintegrate into society. They exist in survival mode in prison, and in many cases their cognitive capabilities shut down. When they are released, they return to a Ukraine they barely know. It’s a new world that’s been transformed by digital innovation and the challenges of today. We have mobile banking, government apps, delivery services. All those technologies didn’t exist a few years ago. We’re a country at war, with constant bombing, shelling and air raid sirens.”

Civis Fortis is currently supporting over 40 people through various stages of reintegration. Working with a network of other Ukrainian organisations, they help these former hostages obtain ID documents, get access to health care and housing, and to access psycho-social support, to find a job or requalify. Most people have to start completely new lives far from friends and family, as their former homes are in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine.

The Civis Fortis team advocates for the state to provide comprehensive and holistic support to civilian hostages at the same level as veterans, who have also endured torture and human rights violations while in Russian prisons.

Democracy under pressure

Civis Fortis’ work goes beyond the cases of these vulnerable individuals. The team is also working to protect democratic institutions within Ukraine itself. They were active participants in the recent ‘cardboard revolution’ last July, when the authorities tried to roll back on the powers of key anti-corruption agencies.

Liudmyla believes that defending and protecting democracy in Ukraine is a constant and never-ending task.

“We have to be constantly alert,” she says.

“I always say, we’re not ‘lucky’ to have democracy in Ukraine today as some people comment,” she continues. “We’ve worked for our democracy. We’ve defended it. We’ve had revolutions. We’ve paid for our freedom of speech – it cost us the head of journalist Georgiy Gongadze who was tortured to death when he confronted former President Kuchma. We’ve paid for our democratic freedom with our blood.”

She has a personal motivation for her work too. “Many of my friends and colleagues have died in this war,” she admits quietly. “I have lost my own home. It’s up to me and others like me to do this work.”

The shoulders of democracy

Asked about her heroes, Liudmyla names the Ukrainian dissidents of old, many of whom spent decades languishing in Soviet gulags.

“As a human rights defender, I believe I’m standing on the shoulders of these dissidents,” she says. “They started this democracy movement, and many paid with their lives, with their freedom and with their health.”

Liudmyla believes she and her colleagues are continuing this tradition. “Today, Ukraine’s activists need a shoulder they can rely on and to protect them. That shoulder is us. Together we are protecting Ukraine’s future democratic society,” she says.

The European Endowment for Democracy

Civis Fortis was supported thanks to the contribution of the European Commission to the European Endowment for Democracy (EED), an independent, grant-making organisation, established in 2013 by the European Union and EU member states as an autonomous International Trust Fund to foster democracy in the European Neighbourhood, the Western Balkans, Turkey and beyond.

EED supports civil society organisations, pro-democracy movements, civic and political activists, and independent media platforms and journalists working towards a pluralistic, democratic political system.

The EED was established by the EU as an independent, complementary mechanism to provide fast and flexible technical and financial support to democratisation and human rights promotion in the European Neighbourhood.

This story was first published by the European Endowment for Democracy (EED)