Ukraine’s parliament has ignored warnings from human rights organizations and the Reanimation Package of Reforms and passed constitutional amendments and a bill on the judicial system which retain the old ways of exerting influence on judges

More evidence has emerged confirming that one of the charges brought by Russia against Ukrainian Maidan activist Andriy Kolomiyets is based on rigged evidence. The charge of ‘attempted murder’ by allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail and inflicting ‘physical pain’ on two Ukrainian Berkut officers in the capital of Ukraine in January 2014 remains too surreal to be either proven or disproven

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”.

If Ukraine’s SBU has evidence that Olga Sheveleva, Anastasia Leonova and Pavel Pyatakov were working for Russia’s FSB, they have not revealed it. Yet they are being held in detention on the ludicrous grounds that they could flee to Russia, where each can expect arrest for their opposition to the Putin regime and support for Ukraine

After 4 years imprisoned on fabricated sex-crime charges, Ihor Zavadsky should have been released after the court finally threw out a gravely flawed conviction and 13-year-sentence

Two Russians who initially admitted to being military intelligence officers after an attack on a Ukrainian military unit in the Luhansk oblast have been sentenced to 14 years imprisonment with confiscation of property.

It is 4 months since Anastasia Leonova was arrested in Kyiv and concern is mounting that the 33-year-old Kremlin critic is in detention on ‘terrorism’ charges because Ukraine’s SBU needed a Russian. Not just one, with the grounds for detaining 2 other Russians also questionable.

It is clear why the Russian media joined the defendant and his far-right friends in claiming that his 4.5 year sentence had been for destroying a portrait of the President, but why did the Ukrainian media so happily repeat the nonsense?

Andriy Kolomiyets, the 23-year-old Ukrainian facing trial in Russian-occupied Crimea for alleged actions during Euromaidan in Kyiv before annexation has given harrowing details of the torture used to extract a ‘confession’

As reward for ignoring their oath to serve Ukraine and collaboration with an occupying nation, Natalya Poklonskaya has designated ex-Berkut officers who took part in attempts to crush Euromaidan as ‘injured party’ in prosecutions over which Russian-occupied Crimea has absolutely no jurisdiction

A UN body’s recent call for a ‘fair trial’ in a prosecution which defies fundamental principles of law and jurisdiction is just one of the indications that the West doesn’t know what to do about Russia’s Crimean political prisoners and is doing next to nothing.

Ukraine’s Security Service have arrested Stanislav Krasnov, close friend of Crimean political prisoner Oleksandr Kostenko and himself wanted on politically motivated charges in Russian-occupied Crimea. The SBU accuse the former commander of the volunteer Krym Battalion and now leader of the Azov Crimea Civil Corps of spying for Russia’s FSB.

Amnesty International has named Ukrainian freelance journalist and blogger Ruslan Kotsaba a prisoner of conscience in its latest report. The NGO’s coverage of events in Donbas and Crimea can be disputed, but its assessment of Kotsaba’s ongoing imprisonment over contentious utterances but on even more dubious charges seems depressingly fair

In a surprise move on Feb 15, the Supreme Court in Russian-occupied Crimea sent the case against Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz and 5 other Crimean Tatars back for ‘further investigation’. This came on the same day that the Memorial Human Rights Centre condemned the trial and recognized Chiygoz, Ali Asanov and Mustafa Degermendzhy as political prisoners.

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.

Volodymyr Balukh has been convicted of ‘insulting a police officer’ after a prosecution and trial that were at once comically inept, and a clear message to any Crimeans taking a civic position – and displaying a Ukrainian flag

Full text of the interview with Andriy Bryhida for the newspaper "Evening Poltava"

The Jan 27 hearing in the trial in Russian-occupied Crimea of Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz and other Crimean Tatars ended within minutes on Wednesday, with the presence in the peninsula of a Council of Europe fact-finding delegation suggested as a likely reason. There certainly is a lot the Russian occupation regime has reason to conceal.

The trial is ending in Russian-occupied Crimea of a Ukrainian farmer accused of ‘publicly insulting a police officer’. The circumstances of this case, and previous run-ins over recent months give serious grounds for believing that Volodymyr Balukh is facing systematic persecution for taking an openly pro-Ukrainian stand

A sinister new trial is looming in Russian-occupied Crimea of a young Maidan activist accused of being a member of a non-existent ‘extremist’ group and trying to murder Berkut officers