The English Law Definition

“Controlling or coercive behaviour” by individuals of other people became a crime in England in 2015. Among examples of what such Coercive Control behaviour involves in English law include the following, which also apply to how Russia acts in occupied parts of Ukraine towards Ukraine and Ukrainians: isolating a person from their friends and family; depriving them of their basic needs; monitoring a person via online communication tools or using spyware; using digital systems such as smart devices or social media to coerce, control, or upset the victim including posting triggering material; taking control over aspects of their everyday life; depriving them of access to support services, such as specialist support or medical services; forcing the victim to take part in criminal activity … to encourage self-blame and prevent disclosure to authorities; economic abuse including coerced debt; controlling the ability to go to school or place of study; taking wages, benefits or allowances; threatening to hurt or kill; threatening to harm a child; threatening to reveal or publish private information; threatening to hurt or physically harming a family pet; assault; sexual assault or threats of sexual assault; reproductive coercion; limiting access to family, friends and finances; withholding and/or destruction of the victim’s immigration documents, e.g. passports and visas; and threatening to place the victim in an institution against the victim’s will.

Source: Coercive Control Techniques

The author maps England’s 2015 Coercive Control statute — designed for domestic abuse cases — onto Russia’s behaviour in occupied Ukraine, and every single criterion fits. Isolation, deprivation of basic needs, monitoring via digital tools, economic abuse, destruction of immigration documents, reproductive coercion, threatening to kill. This is not metaphor. English law already criminalises at the individual level exactly what Russia does at state level. The legal grounding transforms the domestic abuse analogy from rhetorical device into juridical argument.

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