Concern is high over a bill proposed by the President’s Administration which critics believe would in fact give Ukraine’s president even more power than that assumed by Viktor Yanukovych during his four years as head of state

The good news is excellent, the bad – simply surreal. While the two engineers in detention for over two years on bizarre spying charges have finally been released, the professor whose book sparked off the whole ‘case’ is still charged with spying. He is accused of disclosing ’state secrets’ in a textbook where all the relevant information was taken from the Internet.

More details have emerged of the secrecy behind the closed trial of Gennady Afanasyev whose testimony is the only ‘evidence’ in the ‘Crimean terrorist plot’ case and may be used to get renowned Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and left-wing activist Oleksandr Kolchenko 20 year sentences

The lawyer of Oleksandr Kolchenko, Crimean left-wing civic activist and opponent of Russian annexation, is trying to uphold her client’s right to retain his Ukrainian citizenship via the courts. Rights activists point out that no Crimean is obliged to prove to the court that s/he is remains a Ukrainian national.

Despite claims from the head of Ukraine’s Security Service, only two former Berkut officers are in detention on suspicion of involvement in the gunning down of protesters on Feb 20. A third, Dmytro Sadovnik, was released from custody and disappeared while another 13 remain unnamed and unaccounted for

48 deaths as well as the active attempts by the Russian propaganda machine to present the events as a ‘massacre’ have placed the investigation and all resulting prosecutions in the limelight. The first results could have been much better

It is a year since the savage beating in early Nov 30 of students on Maidan and there is understandable frustration at the lack of convictions over the repression, violence and killings during the following months, with even the judges who issued overtly wrongful rulings still in their jobs.

With rule already based on denunciations, violence, and intimidation, and with social unrest mounting, the military ‘three-man courts’ with the power to impose death sentences are another chilling reminder of the worst Soviet methods and clearly aimed at terrorising the population

A court has awarded three Dnipropetrovsk EuroMaidan activists 50 thousand UAH each in compensation for wrongful arrest and detention. The two judges who copy-pasted numerous detention orders have been found in breach of their oath

In a letter otherwise devoid of real content*, Russia’s Prosecutor General has inadvertently admitted that Oleg Sentsov and three other Crimean opponents of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea are Ukrainian citizens

Russia’s FSB have grossly miscast left-wing activist Oleksandr Kolchenko and renowned film director Oleg Sentsov as part of a supposed ultra-nationalist Right Sector ‘terrorist plot’ and are trying to deny their Ukrainian citizenship

In a case where 4 Crimeans are accused of plotting, but not committing, ‘terrorist crimes’, a Moscow court has refused to drop the ban prohibiting Oleg Sentsov’s lawyers from commenting on the trial. In the meantime Sentsov and three other opponents of Russian occupation of the Crimea have been added to Russia’s list of people considered to be implicated in “extremist activities or terrorism”

A Moscow court has yet again postponed the hearing into Nadiya Savchenko’s appeal against her forced psychiatric ‘assessment’ in the notorious Serbsky Institute until after the ‘assessment’ is likely to be concluded

The Memorial Human Rights Centre which the Kremlin is trying to close has declared Ukrainian officer Nadiya Savchenko a political prisoner. Russia’s Investigative Committee meanwhile is refusing to add proof of Savchenko’s innocence to the case, claiming that it has no ‘legal force’.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has refused to initiate criminal proceedings over the beating of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov by FSB officers in the Crimea

The law addresses the present impasse where the former president and others wanted on serious charges are in hiding in Russia and all assets frozen. It does, however, have dangers given Ukraine’s corrupt and notoriously politicized judiciary

Dmytro Sadovnyk, one of the men charged with involvement in the mass killing of peaceful protesters in February, has disappeared after his controversial release from custody on Sept 19

With Nadiya Savchenko first captured by Kremlin-backed militants and forcibly taken to Russia and with no credible evidence to back the charges against her, it is not difficult to understand why the investigators would like to hide

An employee of the prosecutor’s office has been arrested on suspicion of abetting, through his failure to act, the release of former MP Viktor Lozinsky from imprisonment

A Moscow court has extended until Jan 11 2015 the pre-trial detention of renowned Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko. This is despite a case so full of holes as to be reminiscent of the notorious show trials of Soviet times.