While still not simply ratifying the Rome Statute, Ukraine has, for the second time, accepted the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction to investigate possible war crimes committed since Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea and the military conflict in Donbas. .

Russia’s Investigative Committee has claimed that “the situation in the south-east of Ukraine is nothing less than genocide of the Russian-speaking population” and that, therefore, in accordance with international law “it cannot stand on the side-line”.

50 years ago Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus, Viacheslav Chornovil and others demonstrated their opposition to tyranny and to politically motivated arrests. That opposition is needed again. Please help show Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia and the Russian authorities that they are not forgotten

The clashes on Monday were over highly divisive amendments to the Constitution, but it is not, as has been claimed, the Constitution that is bloodstained, but those far-right politicians and their supporters willing to use violence, including a grenade and firearms. at a crowded demonstration

The Presidents of France, Germany and Russia marked the first anniversary of the Ilovaisk Massacre in which Russian President Vladimir Putin played a fatal role by backing “a new ceasefire”. Perhaps it would have been undiplomatic to mention Putin’s murderous treachery, but wise to keep it in mind.

During Friday’s march in Heidenau against a new shelter for migrants, some of the German neo-Nazis carried the flag of the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’.

Russian journalist Pavel Kanygin calls them “Donbosses” – the Kremlin-backed militant leaders of the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ whose leadership of “terrorists” (his word) armed and funded from Moscow has enabled them to amass millions.

Spare a thought on Independence Day for those Ukrainians in Crimea for whom bringing flowers to Taras Shevchenko or waving a Ukrainian flag is once again, like in Soviet times, an act of courage.

Five police cars were deployed on Aug 11 against two Ukrainians and a Ukrainian flag in Russian-occupied Crimea. Officers from Russia’s ‘Centre for Countering Extremism’ swooped on Veldar Shukurdzhiyev, an activist from the Ukrainian Cultural Centre and Iryna Kopylova, as they took photographs of themselves holding a Ukrainian flag near the monument to Lenin

The arson attack on four OSCE armoured vehicles in Donetsk on Saturday night came days after the second of two ‘protests’ in which very professional placards, some in English, demanded that the OSCE monitors “open their eyes”. The protests were widely reported on Russian television, unlike the many Special Monitoring Mission [SMM] reports of late that have noted militant infringements of the Minsk agreement.

If you believe media reports, ethnic Romanians in Ukraine’s Bukovyna are now also demanding autonomy. The road from a cheap fake to a feature in the International Business Times, quoting a “report’ was swift, cheap and dangerously effective

In the footsteps of French pro-Russian politicians, members of the far-right Jobbik party have been invited to visit Russian-occupied Crimea for yet another propaganda stunt

Sevastopol marathon swimmer Oleg Sofianyk has decided to stay in mainland Ukraine after being summoned for questioning about another Ukrainian, Yury Ilchenko who is in detention, seemingly for an article opposing Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

A new project launched in Moscow in support of so-called political prisoners in Ukraine has been endorsed by a number of far-right and / or pro-Russian politicians from EU countries and Israel.. Most are also known for their involvement in ‘observing’ the so-called Crimean referendum and illegal elections organized by the Kremlin-backed militants in Donbas

Ukraine’s Justice Ministry has used a law likely to be condemned by the European Court of Human Rights as justification for another decision which is certain to be “struck down” by that same court

In Soviet times it was Holodomor, the Terror and Gulag that many western visitors to the USSR chose not to see, this time French politicians particularly betrayed Crimean Tatars and all others suffering persecution in Russian-occupied Crimea

A fake anti-Semitic demonstration in Lviv on Wednesday was ugly and dangerous, not least because it highlighted the ease with which such stunts can be orchestrated and the inability of the authorities in a democratic country to intervene. The local media fortunately reacted with some inconvenient questions and close attention to money changing hands.

According to a recent survey, only 15.3% of Ukrainians would be willing to hand Donbas over to Russia in exchange for peace. The figure willing to give up Crimea was higher – 33%, but still much lower than the 50.6% against.

Western leaders putting pressure on Ukraine to accede to Russian demands and offer the so-called ‘Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics’ autonomy would be well-advised to notice all the other parts of Ukraine which, according to Russian media, are also demanding self-rule.

Alexander Zakharchenko, the Kremlin-backed militant leader of the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ has certainly not suffered like the people of Donbas from the military conflict unleashed in April 2014. Quite the contrary, judging by the luxury and palatial homes that he is enjoying.