Paris-Kharkiv, 19 July 2016. After a three-day seminar on documenting human rights violations held for Ukrainian lawyers and human rights defenders in Kharkiv from 4 to 6 July 2016, our organisations express their concern on the prevalent climate of impunity for crimes committed since the beginning of the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

Oleksandr Rafalsky has spent 15 years in Ukrainian prisons and faces dying there unless Ukraine finally acknowledges that a grave miscarriage of justice has been committed. In desperation, his mother, together with the relatives of other life prisoners, are planning a hunger strike vigil outside parliament.

A young man is serving a life sentence, another 12 years for a crime that almost certainly neither had anything to do with. The police and prosecutor needed to find somebody to be able to say they’d ‘solved’ the crime, and the younger proved ‘malleable’

Long prison sentences based solely on ‘confessions’ tortured out of people. Prosecutors who demand long sentences and judges who oblige despite all evidence pointing to the defendant’s innocence. If this sounds familiar, it should, but not only because of Russia’s treatment of its Ukrainian hostages over the last two years.

Any talk about easing sanctions against Russia for partial compliance must seem particularly insulting to the wives of two Ukrainian military officers - Oleksandr Korinkov and Serhiy Glondar - taken prisoner during the siege of Debaltseve in February 2015, four days after a supposed ceasefire agreed by Vladimir Putin in Minsk

Instead of releasing Vladimir Zhemchugov, the so-called ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ has charged him with ’sabotage’ and put him in prison, which, in his state, could kill him. This is the latest example of a disturbing trend where the Kremlin-backed militants claim that all its hostages are ‘criminals’.

The news that UN anti-torture monitors had been forced to suspend a visit to Ukraine due to obstruction from Ukraine’s SBU [Security Service] has elicited outrage and consternation. The feeble excuses issued only compound the suspicion that the SBU has a lot to hide.

The United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has suspended its visit to Ukraine after being denied access to places in several parts of the country where it suspects people are being deprived of their liberty by the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU.

A Ukrainian volunteer fighter from Makiyivka who is on Ukraine’s list for exchange has been ‘sentenced’ to 30 years in the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [DNR]. The Kremlin-backed militants have ‘convicted’ Yevhen Chudnetsov of “an attempt to violently seize power on the republic’s territory”.

Pastor Oleksandr Khomchenko from Donetsk was tortured by Kremlin-backed militants who staged three fake executions by firing squad. He was probably not killed because of the likely publicity, but saw other prisoners being killed and a pit with bodies

Oleksandr Kostenko, a recognized political prisoner, is in prison in Russia where his lawyer says that he is still being deprived of badly needed medical care, including for his arm broken during torture by FSB officers

A brief description of 264 cases of the KHPG Strategic Litigations Center is given

Yevhen Kostenko is facing criminal charges for allegedly ‘insulting’ the judge involved in the surreal trial in Russian-occupied Crimea of his brother on charges over which Russia has no jurisdiction.

Pro-Russian militants, aggrieved at bloody killings allegedly ordered by militant leader Alexander Zakharchenko, have posted a harrowing video of a Ukrainian being savagely tortured by a Russian mercenary

The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Ukraine to pay Svitlana Pomilyayko 20 thousand EUR in damages after accepting that she had been subjected to torture while in police custody, and that the authorities had failed to properly investigate her complaints.

A spokesperson for the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’[‘DNR’] has claimed that the militants are not holding any civilians nor anybody illegally. All those in custody, Darya Morozova asserts, are ‘under investigation’, and could be sentenced to death.

In the trial and imprisonment in Russia of Maidan activist Oleksandr Kostenko, Russia has tried a person for an alleged offence it couldn’t prove, and over which it had no jurisdiction, while ignoring clear evidence that he had been tortured

A study has found that over 87% of Ukrainian soldiers and 50% of civilians taken prisoner by Kremlin-backedmilitants in Donbas have been subjected to torture or ill-treatment. In over 40% of the cases, key roles were played by mercenaries from the Russian Federation or people who identified themselves as Russian military personnel

The so-called ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [‘LNR’] has released a video on which a man ‘confesses’ to having carried out sabotage and intelligence activities for Ukraine’s military. Despite being severely disabled, with both arms amputated, he has clearly been badly beaten and finds it difficult to even speak

Oleksandr Kostenko, Ukrainian Maidan activist and Russian-held political prisoner was not only tortured into ‘confessing’ to legally absurd charges, but also into stating that he had been beaten up before being detained and went to the investigators to ‘confess’, rather than to the hospital with his broken arm and serious bruising