Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to support the work of local non-governmental organisations, journalists and lawyers operating in occupied Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.

We are concerned by the crackdown on the right to freedom of expression in illegally annexed Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. The British Government provides financial support to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which works to report and reduce human rights violations and abuses in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. We also support the work of Global Rights Compliance, which builds the capacity and resources of human rights defenders in order to identify human rights violations in Crimea.

During my recent visit to Ukraine, I met representatives from several Crimean non-governmental organisations to discuss the challenges they face as a result of Russia's continued attacks on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. I made clear the United Kingdom's condemnation of these attacks.