Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help support the human rights of people in Russia opposing the war in Ukraine.

We continue to call on the Russian Government to comply with its international commitments on respecting human rights.

With international partners, the UK has invoked the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) Moscow Mechanism. At the OSCE ministerial on 1 December, the Foreign Secretary referred to the reports of the Moscow Mechanism, which have detailed the atrocities of Russia's armed forces in Ukraine, including torture, executing civilians, unlawful detention, enforced disappearances and countless other breaches of international humanitarian law. We are taking forward the Moscow Mechanism's recommendations: we have helped to secure a UNHRC special rapporteur and we stand in solidarity with human rights defenders.

We continue to attend the trials of human rights defenders in Russia, whilst holding human rights violators to account through sanctions regimes.