Around six and a half thousand pieces of land in occupied Crimea could be forcibly sold in the near future, with the Ukrainian owners of most of them treated as ‘foreign nationals’ by the illegal Russian occupation regime

Rustem Useinov, a 66-year-old veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement, did not see his home and garden razed to the ground by Russian occupiers on 24 November, but only because he had become dangerously unwell and been taken to hospital

This number is likely to grow following a new illegal decree in force since March 2021 forcing Ukrainians to take Russian citizenship or risk losing their homes in Crimea.

The self-proclaimed and Russian-controlled ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [‘DPR’] have formalized seizure of Ukrainian state and municipal property, as well as the ‘nationalization’ of any unused property

The Danish company Grundfos appears to have both collaborated with Germany’s Siemens in producing water pumps for Russian-occupied Crimea and learned from the German company how to issue wide-eyed denials of any breach of EU sanctions

The self-proclaimed and Russian-controlled ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [DPR] is planning measures to force Ukrainians to obtain ‘passports’ for an entity which is not recognized even by Russia

This follows an illegal decree by Russian President Vladimir Putin calling Ukrainians ‘foreigners’ and prohibiting them from owning land in around 80% of Crimea

On 25 November, Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Court revoked a ruling against former MP Hennady Bobov over his failure to list an incredible 124 million UAH worth of his own and his wife’s assets

A major crisis has erupted in Ukraine following a 27 October Constitutional Court [CCU] judgement that has seriously obstructed Ukraine’s efforts to fight corruption and placed visa liberalization and other aspects of EU relations, as well as IMF funding, in jeopardy

A day after Ukraine’s Constitutional Court [CCU] issued a shocking judgement that seriously obstructs efforts to fight corruption, investigative journalists have reported a highly incriminating land purchase in 2018 which CCU President Oleksandr Tupytsky illegally concealed

Ukraine’s Constitutional Court appears to have again struck a blow against efforts to properly fight corruption

At least 14 people are reported to have been seized by Russian-controlled ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ militants over a strike by miners demanding pay arrears

When the coronavirus crisis reached Ukraine in early 2020, the country was already struggling to cope with the fallout from an undeclared war with Russia that was then entering its seventh year

The move was a condition for continued cooperation with the International Monetary Fund and widely advocated by, among others, human rights groups, but also very widely opposed

Ukraine’s legislators have refused to support a bill which would make it possible for people living in occupied territory to get their pensions without gruelling, and sometimes fatal, journeys to government-controlled areas.

The move has long been advocated by human rights groups, and made imperative by a recent European Court of Human Rights judgement against Ukraine, however the referendum the President is proposing could well produce a quite different result

NABU has reacted with outrage to another judgement issued by the CCU on 5 June, and positively accuses the Court of having legalized money embezzled from state enterprises and removed an effective method for countering corrupt setup

The threat to stop social payments may be an understandable reaction to Russia’s new act of aggression in offering its citizenship to Ukrainians in its proxy Donbas ‘republics’, but it is one that is likely to backfire

The so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [‘DPR’] are stealing apartments in Donbas and claiming this to be legal because the property owners did not respond to their ‘summons’.  In many of the cases, the apartments are owned by Ukrainians who left occupied territory and who would be in danger of imprisonment (or worse) if they returned

Three of the judges involved in the controversial ruling finding the nationalisation of PrivatBank unlawful have previously been accused of corruption and / or suspect rulings. Nor is this the only court ruling that has aroused concern in the context of the presidential elections