On July 28, 2016, the European Court of Human Rights declared the complaints of three Ukrainian homeowners regarding the shelling of their homes during the hostilities in Eastern Ukraine inadmissible due to lack of evidence. According to the press release, “armed pro-Russian groups started to seize official buildings in the east of Ukraine,” which prompted the Ukrainian government to respond with an “anti-terrorist” operation, during which the applicants’ houses were damaged or completely destroyed. As evidence of this, they presented copies of their passports and photographs of the destroyed house in one case, as well as a report on the general situation on the region in another. The Court noted that “if an applicant did not produce any evidence of title to property or of residence, his or her complaints were bound to fail,” and found that no such evidence had been produced by any of the three complaining homeowners, even though they had been legally represented. It further pointed out that “the applicants [had not] made any submissions as to the reasons for which they had failed to submit any relevant documents . . . in support of their Convention claims,” and stressed that not even proof of attempts “to obtain at least fragmentary documentary evidence” had been provided. While acknowledging that the Court will “in certain exceptional circumstances beyond the applicants’ control – such as in this case where there is a situation of ongoing conflict – [] take a more lenient approach as to the evidence to be submitted to it in support of individual applications,” it “concluded that the applicants’ complaints had not been sufficiently substantiated and declared the applications manifestly ill-founded.”