Serhiy Kostakov spent more than 7 months remanded in custody. His repeated denial of the charges against him of damaging a car during the peaceful protest against the Tax Code in late November 2010 appears to be borne out by the police video of the impugned offence

Serhiy Kostakov had been held in custody since the beginning of December, probably longer than the likely sentence if convicted of the crime he is charged with. He is accused of having damaged a car during the peaceful protest against the Tax Code in late November 2010

The Court of Appeal has returned the criminal case over alleged damage to the granite stone on Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square] in the centre of Kyiv during the demonstrations against the draft Tax Code late last year to the Shevchenkivsky District Court in Kyiv

A recent Judgement by the Kharkiv District Administrative Court banning a peaceful gathering would be comical were the discrepancies with fundamental principles, articulated by the European Court of Human Rights not so serious

The Human Rights Ombudsperson is sending a representative to the next hearing into the case of Serhiy Kostakov who is accused of damaging a car during the peaceful protest against the Tax Code in late November 2010. There are only police witnesses in this worrying case and a video which the defendant has not been allowed to see

On Tuesday the Lviv District Administrative Court allowed an application from the Lviv City Council to ban all mass events in Lviv on 22 June, the seventieth anniversary of the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.

The latest court hearing has again been postponed to 11 July. Serhiy Kostakov has been held on remand since 1 December 2010 charged with damaging a car during the peaceful protest against the Tax Code

The Ombudsperson, Nina Karpachova has appealed to the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv asking that it chooses a form of preventive measure other than remand in custody against Serhiy Kostakov, one of the participants in the demonstrations against the Tax Code in late November last year

Around 60 civic organizations have written an appeal to the Council of Europe asking it to pay attention to the situation in Ukraine with the adoption (more exactly, failure to adopt) the Law on Civic Organizations

On 24 May this year the Kharkiv District Administrative Court rejected a claim filed against the unlawful actions and inaction by the police during the protest in Gorky Park in Kharkiv from late May to early June 2010

The journalists say that if their appeal against a ban on a peaceful gathering partly on the grounds of a SOVIET decree from 1988 imposed to stop them reminding Yanukovych of his promise to show his residence, Mezhyhirya, they will turn to the European Court of Human Rights

A study presented by the Dnipro Social Research Centre reports a deterioration in the human rights situation in the Dnipropetrovsk region

Serhiy Kostakov is accused of having damaged a car during the peaceful protest against the Tax Code in late November 2010O. The proof for such an offence is widely considered to be questionable, while the grounds for his remand in custody are quite unfathomable

Considering that a peaceful gathering timed to coincide with Journalist Day and intended to remind the President of a promise made on television a full year earlier and not kept, was banned by the court, the events were surely of public importance.

One year after Yanukovych’s promise to show journalists his reportedly sumptuous residence Mezhyhirya came to nothing, a peaceful protest near Mezhyhirya had been planned. On Saturday, the Village Head of Novi Petrivtsi obligingly for a court ban. The court proved equally obliging

The Khmelnytski City-District Court has convicted four Tax Code protesters of hooligan actions over a protest during which demonstrators damaged the doors of the Regional State Administration building

A march in protest at political repression, organized by the right-wing Svoboda [Freedom].Party took place in Lviv on 29 May

The European Neighbourhood Policy Country Report 2010 on Ukraine notes that “fundamental freedoms such as the freedom of the media and assembly and democratic standards appear to have deteriorated” and notes that the local elections were widely criticized by most independent experts

Over 200 organizations and trade unions supported Thursday’s protest action “Vpered!” [“Forward] outside parliament. Small and medium business owners say that the actions of the authorities are depriving them of their work and that they have no option but to protest

The Pechersky District Court in Kyiv has fined the organizer of last Saturday’s protest entitled Day of Rage, Oleksandr Danylyuk for "infringements of the rules on peaceful assembly"