In April 2026, news emerged that the Crimean gauleiter Sergei Aksyonov, “signed a decree” establishing a “commission for the development and implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in the Republic of Crimea.” This news might have passed unnoticed: creating yet another bureaucratic structure on a popular topic doesn’t require much ingenuity. However, in this case, it is something much more than the emergence of another agency of the occupation “authority.”
Aksyonov’s “decree” should be viewed in light of the occupying state’s broader initiatives to implement artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to address the evolving needs of its own repressive apparatus, such as citizen surveillance. Ultimately, the occupying “head of the republic” is not acting on his own initiative, but in accordance with the Russia’s overall imperialist policy on AI.
Back in February 2026, the Kremlin dictator ordered the formation of a “commission for the development of AI technologies” under his leadership. The focus of this “commission” becomes clear when looking at its composition, which included Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov and FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov. The stated goal of the all-Russian commission is “to improve the effectiveness of the formation and implementation of state policy in the field of AI technology development and its implementation in the economy, social sphere, and public administration.”
The stated goal of the Crimean commission was “to improve legal regulation in the field of AI, to ensure coordinated actions between Crimea’s executive bodies and enterprises, institutions, and organizations in the development, implementation, advancement, and use of AI technologies, including autonomous systems.”
It’s hardly surprising that the occupying power is showing interest in developing AI, as this is a global trend. The question is, for what purposes do the occupiers plan to use AI?
Our Association has repeatedly written about the use by Russia of cutting-edge technologies in propaganda, education, and weapons development. Strengthening these measures through the creation of “coordinating bodies” is not surprising. The use of AI will allow the occupiers to enhance their information gathering efforts on citizens, quickly processing vast amounts of information on any semblance of opposition activity, including the creation of memes about the Russian dictator.
The use of AI to violate citizens’ rights has become commonplace in Russia. However, the creation of a commission to develop these technologies in Crimea directly concerns Ukraine, as it is taking place on its internationally recognized territory, temporarily occupied by Russian troops.
Let us recall that Ukraine is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, which obligates it to ensure respect for fundamental human rights throughout its territory, including occupied territories. While it is impossible to demand that Ukraine fully respect all human rights in territories it does not control, it remains obliged to do everything feasible to prevent human rights violations in such occupied territories. Surveillance of citizens is a violation in itself, and it also creates opportunities for other violations.
The situation becomes even more complex when considering Ukraine’s intention to join the European Union. Such accession requires, among other things, recognition of EU law and the alignment of Ukrainian legislation with it. Among the European legislation that Ukraine must implement, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act that entered into force in 2024. The main goal of this law is to make AI safe, lawful, and ethical.
Among other things, AI Act introduces a gradation of technologies based on the level of danger they pose to citizens’ rights. Technologies specifically designed to violate citizens’ rights, including surveillance, incitement to dangerous behavior, classification of individuals based on social ratings, and other totalitarian practices that could be implemented using AI, are considered unacceptable and completely prohibited.
High-risk technologies (which may be permitted in some cases but are subject to strict regulation) include AI systems in the fields of medicine, transportation, communications, employment, justice, and banking. Such technologies are subject to mandatory registration and oversight. Low-risk technologies include chatbots, image generators, and other systems for which there is a requirement to inform citizens that they are interacting with AI.
Ukraine will be required to introduce such a gradation. Some steps in this direction have already been taken. For example, the Ministry of Digital Transformation has prepared a White Paper on AI regulation in Ukraine, which is largely consistent with the EU Law on Artificial Intelligence. However, Ukraine has no practical ability to ban or restrict technologies that could be used to restrict citizens’ rights in the occupied territories, including Crimea.
Several provisions of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act can be identified that may be violated or have already been violated in Crimea. Article 5 of the Act prohibits the placing on the market, implementation, or use of AI systems intended for manipulative, exploitative, or social control or surveillance practices that are inherently inconsistent with the fundamental values of the Union. These include, for example, social rating practices.
The EU Artificial Intelligence Act specifically prohibits any classification of citizens, in particular based on the danger level, as well as biometric categorization, including for the purpose of deducing or determining their racial or national origin, political views, or religious beliefs.
Let’s return to the Crimean “commission.” It is known that it will request “necessary documents, materials, and information” from aggressor’s “authorities”, as well as prepare proposals to ensure the development of this area, attracting the necessary specialists.
Thus, the commission is being created not so much for the development of AI per se, but rather to ensure its functioning through bureaucratic means. While Ukraine is moving toward a more legally sound and responsible use of AI for the benefit of citizens, the Crimean “authorities” are providing legal conditions for the use of dangerous AI technologies to violate citizens’ rights.
The most obvious and widespread of these violations is the use of AI to spy on citizens, which has become an Russian established practice. Since 2017, Russian authorities have been consistently integrating video surveillance systems with facial recognition technology throughout the territory they control, including occupied Crimea.
The use of AI makes it possible to identify and prosecute individuals suspected of disloyalty. Crimean residents were the first to experience these innovations: since 2014, checkpoints at the entrance to the peninsula have become focal points for collecting biometric data. Today, Crimea operates a comprehensive system of filtration centers and checkpoints where personal belongings and the contents of devices are inspected.
Another form of AI-based surveillance involves collecting and analyzing data exchanged between citizens via the government-controlled messaging app “MAX”, which provides aggressor’s punishers with a convenient tool for monitoring content and communications. The occupiers are also not forgetting “Telegram”, which is also monitored by Russian authorities.
To increase the effectiveness of such activities, mass collection of personal data is carried out under various pretexts. Data obtained during passport applications, property registration, medical procedures, training, and other activities provides fertile ground for AI systems that require large amounts of data.
It is noteworthy that after 2022, mass protests in the mainland Ukrainian territories seized by Russia were suppressed with extreme vigour, which can be attributed to the “cumulative effect” of the facial recognition system combined with repressive legislation. Continuing and intensifying efforts to suppress any resistance is clearly the primary goal of the “Crimean commission” on AI.
The deployment of AI surveillance systems in occupied territory is not only a technological threat, but also a violation of international humanitarian law, namely the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which directly regulates the conduct of the occupying power.
Thus, Article 27 of the Convention guarantees citizens of the occupied territory respect for their honour, right to family, religious beliefs and practices, customs, and traditions. Mass automated surveillance, which allows for the identification of every individual, tracking their movements, contacts, and statements, is incompatible with this obligation, as it renders the very existence of privacy impossible, without which the protection of honour, dignity, the right to family life, and other rights remains a fiction.
Article 31 of the Convention, which prohibits any physical or moral coercion, in particular for the purpose of obtaining information from protected persons, is also worth mentioning. Coercing Crimean residents to perform actions aimed at collecting information (from forced passportization to pressure to identify the aggressor’s state messenger) constitutes precisely such coercion.
While AI systems are merely surveillance tools for loyal citizens, they become instruments of repression for persecuted individuals and groups. Furthermore, AI can be trained to focus on members of specific groups, implementing profiling procedures. Profiling itself is a neutral technology, but if occupation authorities are increasingly focusing on specific groups, it can focus on those groups specifically.
High-risk groups include ethnic (Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians), religious (for example, believers of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Jehovah’s Witnesses) groups subject to persecution in occupied Crimea.
Automated monitoring of messaging apps, social media, and facial recognition systems make it possible to identify activists and anyone else posing a threat to the occupiers faster than any previous-generation surveillance system. This danger also affects those who show insufficient loyalty, such as those who evade military service in the occupying army or simply maintain tacit allegiance to Ukraine.
We previously wrote that Crimea’s “gray zone” conditions are becoming particularly attractive for particularly dangerous AI experiments, including those from third-party jurisdictions. At the same time, establishing locations for processing AI models requires the creation of data centers, which consume significant amounts of energy.
Moreover, Russia itself, in a recent official appeal to the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee No. 1802, accused the civilized countries of the world of a “political campaign to discredit fossil fuels” and emphasized that “the demand for gas, oil and coal is not only maintained, but also growing against the backdrop of increasing energy consumption, including due to the introduction of energy-intensive technologies of AI.”
The aggressor’s attention to “energy-intensive technologies” is not only worthy of evaluation in terms of the Kremlin’s traditional weaponization of oil and gas, but, specifically in the Crimean context, it demonstrates the occupiers’ desire to secure certain guaranteed energy resources for the formation of an appropriate AI infrastructure in the region, which, given the peninsula’s chronic fuel regime, is a “commission.”
Thus, the decree establishing a commission for AI development in Crimea is not a routine bureaucratic event. It should be viewed as part of the occupying state’s systemic strategy aimed at technologically consolidating control over the occupied territory and extending Russia’s totalitarian practices to Crimea. These practices will include mass surveillance, biometric identification, and the unauthorized processing of personal data.
These practices are the direct opposite of what Ukraine aspires to. While AI will be implemented by Ukraine based on EU legislation, which provides for the protection of individuals’ rights from violations using artificial intelligence, the situation in Crimea is the opposite: AI is being deliberately used to violate their rights. The use of AI will enable propaganda and surveillance to scale to previously unimaginable levels.
This development can only be stopped by fully restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, including Crimea. Until then, Ukraine remains responsible for monitoring potential violations in Crimea using AI and making efforts to bring those responsible to justice.
Furthermore, the aggressor’s attempts to establish AI infrastructure on the peninsula in the form of data centers and similar facilities, given the Russia’s militaristic and repressive objectives of AI processing and use, that we have repeatedly described, makes such a logistical and personnel system on the occupied peninsula a legitimate military target for the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
