The chief investigator into Euromaidan-related crimes has warned that failings in legislation on in absentia trials could result in any convictions against former President Viktor Yanukovych being quashed.   Such warnings have been made since the law was passed and Serhiy Horbatyuk is not alone in suspecting that there are some who find it convenient to retain doubts about the legitimacy of any trial and conviction. 

An analysis of the selection of Supreme Court judges in retrospective by Luba Zimanova Beardsley, member of the Strategic Group of Advisors for support of the reforms.

Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko has acknowledged that blogger Vsevolod Filimonenko is a ‘provocateur’, yet rejects any suggestion that the prosecution of Vitaliy Shabunin over an incident involving Filimonenko constitutes persecution of Shabunin, a well-known anti-corruption activist.  His view was not shared from the outset by many civic and media organizations in Ukraine and western observers, and the first court hearing on February 9 only heightened deep scepticism over this prosecution.

Almost three years after Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzyna was shot dead near his home in Kyiv, two men have gone on trial, charged with his murder. If Buzyna was a highly controversial figure, so too is ‘C 14’, the far-right organization that the suspects – Andriy Medvedko and Denis Polishchuk – are linked with.

The ‘trial’ has begun of Andriy Zakhtei, one of the four Ukrainians seized by the FSB in Russian-occupied Crimea in August 2016 and accused of involvement in a supposed ‘Ukrainian Crimea saboteur plot’.  It appears that the entire ‘trial’ will be held behind closed doors, enabling Russia’s FSB to conceal the lack of a credible story, not to mention evidence .

Having Ukrainian symbols on his bike was excuse enough for Ihor Movenko to be savagely beaten up in Russian-occupied Crimea.  He is now facing a five-year prison sentence because he tried to get his assailant prosecuted.  Human rights activists believe that Russia is promoting any form of hatred towards pro-Ukrainian Crimeans, with the ‘courts’ there to provide whatever sentence is demanded.

A ‘prosecutor’ in Russian-occupied Crimea has proven unable to tell five Crimean Tatars on trial which country they are alleged to have acted illegally in, and how they did so.   This is not the first time that the prosecutor has been stumped for an answer, though that has not prevented two of the men -  Ali Asanov and Mustafa Degermendzhy -  being held either in custody or under house arrest for almost three years. 

A second ‘judge’ in Russian-occupied Crimea has sentenced Volodymyr Balukh to three years and seven months’ imprisonment on overtly falsified charges after an identical sentence had to be revoked. The second ‘trial’ was just as flawed as the first, leaving no doubt that Balukh is being persecuted for the Ukrainian flag he continued to fly over his home after Russia’s invasion and for his unwavering opposition to Russian occupation.

It is four years since Maidan’s Revolution of Dignity, and two since a draft bill first gave hope to Ukraine’s victims of grave miscarriages of justice and their families.  Hope remains, but also frustration, since Draft Law No. 2033a continues to gather dust, despite a Council of Europe positive assessment and the fact that yet another man, who was almost certainly innocent, has died in prison, betrayed to the end by Ukraine’s justice system – and its politicians.

There are increasing concerns that the haste to make an arrest over the high-profile murder of lawyer and rights activist Iryna Nozdrovska will result in the person now in custody simply being acquitted when the case gets to court.  This is hopefully not the intention, but there were already serious doubts about the prosecution’s assertion that the case was solved, and the new information from Nozdrovska’s  daughter and her lawyers are only compounding them. 

‘Separatists’ and Russian soldiers who commit crimes in the Donbas military zone get much lighter sentences than Ukrainian soldiers, and this has nothing to do with any difference in the gravity of their crimes.  A prominent specialist in criminal law warns that the Ukrainian authorities are failing to ensure that justice is served in Donbas, despite apparently obvious solutions to some of the main problems. 

A court in Russian-occupied Crimea has sentenced internationally-known academic Dmytro Shtyblikov to five years’ maximum security imprisonment on wildly implausible ‘sabotage’ charges.  Shtyblikov had been prevented from seeing an independent lawyer for over a year, and there are very strong grounds for believing that physical or psychological pressure was used to get him to ‘confess’.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine [NABU] predicts that its work will be totally paralyzed already in November if President Petro Poroshenko signs the Law on Judicial Reform in its present form

If Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signs a law just passed by the Verkhovna Rada, the Special Investigations Department will be forced to terminate all investigations into unsolved crimes committed during Euromaidan, however serious.  The adopted amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code [CPC] would have similar consequences for corruption and other criminal investigations, including that hanging over Andriy Lozovy, the MP who proposed the amendment. 

The High Court in Russian-occupied Crimea has balked at the scale of falsification in the conviction and 3.7 year sentence passed on Ukrainian activist Volodymyr Balukh and ordered a retrial.  46-year-old Balukh, however, remains in custody ten months after his arrest on openly fabricated charges

There were violent scenes in Odesa on Monday evening following the sensational acquittal of 20 pro-Russian activists who had been charged over the fatal disturbances in Odesa on May 2, 2014.  The outrage from some quarters, and the prosecutor’s stated intention to appeal the ruling cannot hide the brutal truth that a guilty verdict, given the charges laid, would have been a travesty of justice

The changes, proposed by President Poroshenko, would be a serious step backwards away from the greater court transparency achieved since Maidan

Ukrainian civic activists staged a clever protest action in Kyiv on September 13 in a final attempt to prevent 30 judges who received negative assessments from the Public Integrity Council from being appointed to the Supreme Court

The Kyiv Court of Appeal has revoked the conviction of Rafael Lusvarghi , a Brazilian national who played an active role in the Kremlin-backed fighting against Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas

Civic organizations are warning that there can be no hope of real reform of the Supreme Court if the results announced by the High Qualification Commission of Judges for Ukraine’s first ever competition for 120 Supreme Court judges are accepted