Ukraine's Crimea envoy Tamila Tasheva has accused Russia of torturing and abducting people on the annexed Black Sea peninsula.
"The Russians are persecuting human rights activists and journalists in Crimea, they are dragging civilians into dark cellars and torturing them there. They are making people disappear," Tasheva told the RND German media group in Berlin.
"The Russians have turned Crimea into a huge military base and are using it as a launching pad for attacks against Ukraine," she said.
The poor human rights situation in Crimea has also been denounced in reports by the Council of Europe and other organizations.
In February 2014, following the overthrow of then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was loyal to Moscow, Russia began deploying soldiers without national insignia, so-called green men, to the peninsula.
It was only later that Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted that they were Russian soldiers. Putin sealed the annexation on March 18, 2014.
Tasheva is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's representative for Crimea. She said that the government in Moscow had illegally settled around 800,000 Russians in Crimea since 2014, compared to a population of 2.3 million people before the annexation.
"The courts in Crimea are now also mainly staffed by Russians," she said. Crimea also serves as a model for the occupation of other territories in Ukraine after the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
There are "very, very difficult times" in Ukraine, said Tasheva in view of the Russian advance.
"Germany is the second largest supplier of military aid, but unfortunately that is still not enough. It would be important, for example, to stop Russia's military supply to Crimea via the Kerch Bridge."
"We need Taurus cruise missiles as well as other systems. But we understand that this is a difficult political discussion in Germany."