The Ukrainian Helsinki Group was founded on November 9, 1976, as the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights to monitor human rights in Ukraine. The group was active until 1981 when all members were jailed.

Petro Grigorenko or Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko was a high-ranking Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, who in his fifties became a dissident and a writer, one of the founders of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union.