Four of the 18 members of the ‘delegation’ which Russia is hoping will be ‘triumphantly reinstated’ in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] on 24 June are under personal sanctions for their role in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine

"We call on PACE and the Committee of Ministers to demonstrate unity in upholding the values and principles on which the Council of Europe is based and fully keep sanctions in place until Russia meets the conditions for which these sanctions were imposed." - an appeal endorsed by a large number of international NGOs

Russia’s reinstatement in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will send a message to all the political prisoners held in occupied Crimea and Russia, to the families of victims of torture, killings and abductions that their rights and their suffering are of less worth than ‘improving relations with Moscow’

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s capitulation to Russian demands will likely result in a Russian delegation including supposed ‘deputies’ from illegally annexed Ukrainian Crimea

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has replaced the Deputy Justice Minister Serhiy Petukhov as head of an official delegation after the latter publicly insisted that Andriy Bohdan, the man chosen to head the President’s Administration is prohibited by law because of his role under Yanukovych from holding public office

Although the High Council of Justice’s dismissal of Judge Larisa Tsokol purportedly has nothing to do with her refusal to place former Georgian President and Ukrainian opposition politician Mikheil Saakashvili under house arrest, there seem very real grounds for concern

A Levada Centre poll published on 11 June 2019 has found the highest support for Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts “becoming a part of the Russian Federation since March – April 2014

On the same day that Russia challenged the jurisdiction of a second UN tribunal whose orders it is flouting, the Council of Europe’s Rules Committee adopted a draft resolution which could open the door to removing the sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea

The mumber of examples of gross violations by Russia of international human rights standards in the occupied territory of Crimea and in the area of armed conflict in the Donbas is growing.

Andriy Bohdan, the newly-appointed head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Administration is a man prohibited from holding public office because of his links with the Yanukovych regime, yet the Supreme Court has refused to examine a complaint over the illegality of the appointment

Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed Andriy Bohdan Head of his Administration despite reported warnings over such an appointment because of Bohdan’s immediate past as lawyer to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and, more importantly, because Bohdan is prohibited from holding public office because of his role during the regime of former President

The claim that Poroshenko essentially ‘provoked’ Russia’s attack on three naval boats in November 2018 is already startling. It becomes quite surreal coming, as it does, from Andriy Portnov, a person suspected of having tried to help Russia’s operation to seize Crimea

The threat to stop social payments may be an understandable reaction to Russia’s new act of aggression in offering its citizenship to Ukrainians in its proxy Donbas ‘republics’, but it is one that is likely to backfire

The SBU’s reaction to a reputable opinion poll is even more baffling since similar research carried out in 2014 may have played a major role in restraining Russia’s plans for seizing control of even more parts of Ukraine

Moscow could checkmate itself through its attempts to deny the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) over Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian naval vessels and their crew

It is five years since riots and a tragic fire in Odesa that Russia has used for a toxic propaganda narrative about a fictitious ‘massacre’. It is a narrative that Russia has spent a lot of money fostering, but one that the Ukrainian authorities have failed to properly counter

Analogies with the issue of passports to South Ossetians and Abkhazians as the excuse for Russia’s war against Georgia in 2008 are not only inevitable, but seemingly deliberate

President-Elect Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have received a record number of votes, although what almost three quarters of the population voted for remains largely unclear

Three of the judges involved in the controversial ruling finding the nationalisation of PrivatBank unlawful have previously been accused of corruption and / or suspect rulings. Nor is this the only court ruling that has aroused concern in the context of the presidential elections

Mustafa Dzhemilev is convinced that Putin knows that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was a bad mistake. For the moment, however, he’s still on propaganda drives with the one for the fifth anniversary, unfortunately, aided by Germany’s Siemens