While those targeted were very probably ‘pro-Ukrainian’, possibly members of ‘Right Sector’, the Interior Minister’s adviser Anton Herashchenko and the Security Council seen worryingly quick to attribute blame

Hardly a day goes by in Ukraine these days without headlines about some terrorist incident or about the country’s security forces breaking up a would-be plot or capturing a cache of weapons or explosives

Concern is mounting after attacks in both Odessa and Kherson targeted pro-Ukraine volunteer organizations. They follow other terrorist attacks, with the main targets in Odessa and Kharkiv.

The full video clip of what the Kremlin-backed militants in the Luhansk oblast call a ‘court’ has been posted on the Internet. In it a man is sentenced to death, supposedly for attempted rape and group rape, with the ‘sentence’ being passed by the audience through a show of hands.

Interview given by Donetsk resident Irina Dovgan whose photo was published by New York Times tied to a post being attacked and abused by supporters of the Kremlin-backed militants

As feared, the Kremlin-backed militants demonstrated their contempt for human dignity and international law on Ukraine’s Independence Day by forcing around 50 captured soldiers to walk through a corridor of armed militants

The self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic has introduced its own ‘criminal code’, based on that of the Russian Federation. It includes the death penalty for particularly grave crimes as "the highest degree of social protection"

Moscow’s undeclared, yet ever more aggressive war against Ukraine was launched because Ukrainians had upheld their right to European integration. Ukraine’s parliament must not sabotage that integration through appallingly repressive laws.

A draft bill passed on Aug 12 will, if signed by the President, allow the Prosecutor to authorize searches, detention, wiretapping and other activities linked with criminal investigation.

Donetsk journalist Viktoria Ishchenko reports that her parents have been seized by members of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Iryna and Valery Ishchenko are accusd of “complicity”, though complicity in what is not clear.

Anna Mokrousova explains that if before people were seized to dig trenches for the militants or to try to get information, now they’re being taken hostage in huge numbers for possible exchange.

Militants from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic are preventing people from fleeing the fighting into Ukraine, leaving only the road towards the Russian border open, They are also deliberately causing huge queues in order to create the impression that people are fleeing in their masses to Russia

The funeral has taken place of four members, two deacons and the sons of the Pastor of he Slovyansk evangelical Church of the Transformation tortured and killed by Kremlin-backed militants from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

Since Russian pro-Kremlin media are already suggesting that Ukraine brought down the Malaysian airliner, the following is a reminder of the first, damning, reports which came from the Kremlin-backed militants and Russian TV LifeNews

Faced with the murder by Kremlin-backed militants of four members of a Slovyansk evangelical church, Russia’s state-owned ‘Voice of Russia’ radio could have stayed silent. It opted for a far more cynical approach. Against all evidence, it reports that the men were murdered by the Ukrainian army for helping ‘insurgents’.

A Polish Roman Catholic priest from Horlivka, Father Viktor Wąsowicz has been taken hostage by the Kremlin-backed militants whom certain EU leaders are joining Russia in insisting that Ukraine holds peace negotiations with.

150 children from two school orphanages have become hostages to the Kremlin-backed militants and are again in danger of being taken, against their will, to Russia.

Father Tkhon has been released and is in a safe place after being held by militants from the so-called ‘Russian Orthodox Army’. According to Pastor Sergey Kosyak Father Tikhon is in a very bad state both physically and mentally

A priest from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Yury Ivanov was abducted on July 8, and Father Tikhon remains a hostage of the so-called ‘Russian Orthodox Army’

The latest explosion occurred at around 13.00 on July 7 near Novobakhmutovka, damaging the railway bridge over the road from Slovyansk through Donetsk to Mariupol