A trial which highlighted the total degradation of the justice system under former President Viktor Yanukovych has re-emerged in post-Maidan Ukraine, and thus far the authorities have failed the challenge it poses

The court currently preventing Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz from attending his own ‘trial’ has now refused to allow prominent Crimean Tatar rights lawyer Emil Kurbedinov to defend him. Nikolai Polozov, a Russian lawyer who is also representing Chiygoz, calls what he is seeing in Crimea “total lawlessness”.

Russia has long demonstrated that journalists, civic activists and all those who express independent views are at risk in Russian-occupied Crimea. On Thursday, there was a disturbing indication that the lawyers representing political prisoners may also be in danger.

A very young Ukrainian just sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment remains as chillingly anonymous as when his arrest in Russian-occupied Crimea was announced in May 2015. Russia claims that Maxim Filatov was a fighter in the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, though this remains in serious question as does everything else about the case.

Russia’s most openly lawless prosecution since occupying Crimea has descended to a new low with the refusal to allow Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz to even attend his own court hearings and the unfounded decision to separate the proceedings into two trials.

Yevhen Kostenko has been fined for showing disrespect to the judge who handed down a knowingly unjust sentence against his brother and Maidan activist Oleksandr Kostenko on May 15, 2015. The latter was sentenced to over 4 years’ imprisonment for an unproven offence during Euromaidan in Kyiv over which a court under Russian law had no jurisdiction

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.

Ruslan Kotsaba, a controversial blogger and Ukraine’s first Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in 5 years, has had his conviction and 3.5-year sentence for supposed obstruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces quashed. He was released in the courtroom after over 18 months held in detention

The renowned rights group has demolished the charges against 22-year-old Andriy Kolomiyets, but also points out that the main indictment is grotesque since a court under Russian law has no jurisdiction over events between Ukrainian nationals in Ukraine.

The Ivankiv District Court in Kyiv oblast court on June 10, 2016 convicted a 24-year-old man of violently raping a 16-year-old girl but decided that the fact of his military service in Donbas constituted an extenuating circumstance. The news came on the same day as an Aidar volunteer battalion fighter, facing very grave charges, was released from custody on the security of a number of MPs

The events on July 2 around the detention of former Aidar commander Valentyn Lykholit elicited widely divergent reactions and some worrying assumptions about what need not be considered in fighting ‘separatists’.

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.

Volodymyr Panasenko is serving a life sentence for a crime quite literally nobody believes he committed. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on the testimony of one man’s third and fourth ‘confessions’ which were totally retracted in court

The good news that a court in Russian-occupied Crimea had revoked a politically motivated sentence against Volodymyr Balukh was short-lived. The pro-Ukrainian activist has been tried on exactly the same absurd charges and received an identical sentence.

The Podilsky District Court in Kyiv has finally released world-renowned accordionist Ihor Zavadsky from custody almost two months after a rigged sentence was revoked over 4 years after he was first arrested

On June 13, a new court examination begins in the Podilsky District Court of the charges against virtuoso accordionist Ihor Zavadsky. The issue will be determined of whether he remains in custody

A Crimean court under Russian occupation has sent a chilling message to all Ukrainians in Crimea, as well as any in Russia by sentencing 22-year-old Ukrainian Andriy Kolomiyets to 10 years over an alleged offence that that almost certainly never happened, but over which no Russian court could have any jurisdiction

Another ’terrorism’ trial is about to begin of a Ukrainian arrested in occupied Crimea and held in custody for over a year. Maxim Filatov, who may be as young as 21, is alleged to be a fighter from the Azov Battalion. though this appears as questionable as everything else about the case.