Right of Reply: CrimeaWatch Formally Notifies All 40 Documented Entities

Beginning August 31, 2026, CrimeaWatch formally contacted all 40 organizations currently documented in its Entities section — every law firm, media outlet, advocacy group, and civic organization whose institutional conduct is recorded on this site in connection with the Public Integrity Council’s Crimea-recognition methodology. Each organization received the full text of its published profile and five calendar days to respond before that record is treated as final.

This is not a courtesy extended at our discretion. It is methodology, applied without exception, to every entity this site names.

Why CrimeaWatch Contacts Subjects Before Treating a Profile as Final#

CrimeaWatch publishes findings from public records — official registers, court decisions, asset declarations, organizational filings, and documented votes. Publication does not wait on an entity’s permission, and it will not be withdrawn because an entity would prefer silence on the matter. What publication does wait on, in every case, is the documented subject’s opportunity to respond before the profile is closed to further comment.

The standard is simple and non-negotiable: every entity named on this site is offered the chance to dispute a specific fact with documentation, to add context the record lacks, or to state a position for the public to weigh alongside the evidence. What an entity does with that opportunity is its own decision. Declining to respond does not alter the underlying facts, and it will not be treated as if it did. Silence is not evidence of innocence; it is recorded as what it is — silence, on a specific date, in response to a specific request.

What Each Entity Received#

Every one of the 40 organizations was sent a formal notice containing:

• The full text of its CrimeaWatch profile and a direct link to the published page.
• A summary of the specific institutional conduct documented — in most cases, the organization’s employment or toleration of an individual serving on the Public Integrity Council during the period the Council’s Crimea-Russia equivalence methodology was adopted or applied.
• An explicit invitation to identify any factual inaccuracy, supported by documentation; to supply additional context; or to submit a statement for publication alongside the profile.
• A fixed deadline of five calendar days from the date the notice was sent.
• An explicit statement of consequence: a substantive response will be published in full next to the profile it concerns; the absence of a response by the deadline will be noted on the profile in equally plain terms; and a response received after the deadline will still be added as a dated update, not suppressed for arriving late.

Notices were issued in English, the site’s sole published language, with a courtesy Ukrainian translation produced by AI and explicitly labeled as such in the notice itself. The English text governs in every case. For a small number of organizations, no current, verifiable contact address could be confirmed through public sources; those cases will be noted individually on the relevant profiles rather than silently treated as non-response.

The 40 Entities Contacted#

Law Firms and Bar Associations#

Media Organizations#

Advocacy, Civil-Society, and Research Organizations#

Other Institutions#

What Happens Next#

Each five-day window will close on its own schedule, measured from the date the individual notice was sent. As each deadline passes, the corresponding profile will be updated: with the entity’s response in full, where one was received; with a plain statement of non-response, where none was; or with a dated addendum, where a response arrives late. No profile will be left to imply an outcome that did not occur.

This notification round applies to every entity currently documented on CrimeaWatch. It does not apply retroactively to entities added after this date, nor does it substitute for the same process being run again as new entities and individuals are added to this site. The underlying research continues on both tracks: further compositions of the Public Integrity Council, and the individual conclusions the Council issued against specific judges and candidates.

All profiles on this site are based on publicly available sources: official registers, asset declarations, court decisions, organizational records, and media coverage. Source links are provided within each profile. Entities named on this site are contacted for comment before their profile is treated as final; this post documents that process for the current round of 40 entities.