Among urgently needed steps towards judicial reform is one that requires relatively little effort, only the will to give justice a chance

Prominent Ukrainian human rights groups have issued an urgent appeal to Ukraine’s new leaders urging them to release Volodymyr Panasenko who has spent almost 13 years in prison although nobody has ever doubted that he is innocent

A Russian-controlled ‘court’ in Crimea has sentenced 22-year-old Dilyaver Gafarov to 10 years in a maximum security prison on a totally unproven charge of involvement in a formation that is legal in Ukraine and that has committed no crime.

Mykola Slyvotsky has spent 16 years in prison for two murders that he is adamant he did not commit

A court in Pavia, Italy has found Vitaly Markiv, a Ukrainian National Guard soldier, guilty of involvement in the death during the first months of the war in Donbas of 30-year-old Italian photojournalist, Andrea Rocchelli and sentenced him to 24 years’ imprisonment.

The rapidly increasing number of eyebrow-raising court rulings is a result of judicial reforms in Ukraine having been largely imitated, rather than properly carried out, a leading Ukrainian legal expert believes

32-year-old Kostyantin Davydenko has been convicted by the Russian-controlled Crimean High Court of supposed ‘spying’ after a totally secret ‘trial’ and nothing to substantiate the charges but a videoed ‘confession’ given while totally under FSB control

The trial is coming to an end in Italy of Vitaliy Markiv, a young man with dual Ukrainian and Italian citizenship,, who is accused of ‘involvement’ in the death by shelling of 30-year-old Italian photojournalist, Andrea Rocchell

Former MP Viktor Lozinsky’s criminal record for a high-profile killing in 2009 has been cancelled in the latest of a whole series of eyebrow-raising court rulings over his case

Two Ukrainians serving life sentences were released during a Supreme Court hearing on 17 April in what may have been a first for Ukraine.  The men have already served more than 18 years, so the move was undoubtedly welcome, but did not go far enough

The European Court of Human Rights has issued a crucial judgement slamming Ukraine’s treatment of people sentenced to life imprisonment and ordering the Ukrainian government to reform a system that gives life prisoners no hope of release

Apparently damning ‘evidence’ linking a murdered child with the young Roma man whose arrest for the killing led to appalling riots in the Odesa oblast may have been faked

Dmitry Dolgopolov and his common-law wife Anna Sukhonosova were accused of having gathered secret information for Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, and sentenced to 10 and 9 years, respectively

If post-Maidan hopes of a full overhaul of Ukraine’s judiciary always seemed dangerously optimistic, there was an expectation that judges who had taken part in persecuting Maidan activists would not be able to continue as though nothing had happened

Ukrainian political prisoner Volodymyr Balukh has been moved from a Crimean prison to Russia, with the gruelling journey to Russian Krasnodar likely to be dragged out for up to a month

A court in Russian-occupied Crimea has sentenced a man who killed his wife, dismembered her body and threw the parts in different rubbish bins to eight years’ imprisonment, 11 years less than a Crimean Tatar political prisoner imprisoned for his faith

Russia’s Justice Ministry has demanded that the de facto Crimean Bar Association expel Emil Kurbedinov, with this almost certainly leading to his being stripped of his licence. This is the latest of several attempts to silence Kurbedinov and other courageous lawyers in occupied Crimea

If the forensic medical expert is right, then the young man on trial for the murder of a child that led to shocking anti-Roma riots in the Odesa oblast could not have committed the crime

Sergei Tkach may have raped and killed over 100 young girls over 25 years, escaping capture because at least ten other men had been tortured into ‘confessing’ to individual crimes. Other Ukrainians are serving life sentences for other people’s crimes, with Ukraine’s legislators in no hurry to do anything about it.