Crimean environmentalists warn that Moscow’s plans for a Crimean ‘Las Vegas’ could spell ecological disaster for the peninsula.

Four years after Kharkiv police stood back and let peaceful Gorky Park tree defenders be beaten up by unidentified men, a Ukrainian court has finally allowed the cassation appeal and quashed rulings which saw no grounds to question the police behaviour.

Two years ago Dnipropetrovsk environmentalist Volodymyr Honcharenko was murdered just days after publicly warning of a “chemical time bomb” with potentially horrific consequences for the region and beyond. Although he was almost certainly killed because of his work in revealing environmental dangers, there was terrifying little media coverage

That a draft law waiving the permit procedure needed for activities with impact on the environment was proposed by former president Viktor Yanukovych is no surprise. Why 270 MPs in post-Yanukovych Ukraine should have adopted this law on April 9 is much more baffling

A cement factory outside Kerch in the Crimea has a glowing environmental impact assessment. The first problem is that the document was, perplexingly, put together in Donetsk. The second - it’s wrong, and the third is that local residents are being prevented from even seeing it

It is exactly a year since a fatal attack silenced prominent environmentalist Volodymyr Honcharenko just four days after he had warned of a “chemical time bomb” with potentially devastating consequences for his native Dnipropetrovsk and beyond

A serious case of chemical poisoning has taken place in Krasnopolye, Dnipropetrovsk oblast, and once again it is environmentalists who are forced to sound the alarm.

Over the last five years nature reserve land in Ukraine has contracted to a catastrophic degree. Environmentalists say that this is because those in power are appropriating parts of it.

The environmental situation in the Donetk oblast is by far the worst in Ukraine, and promises from the local authorities that millions will be spent on improvements have been heard before

Not only have the real numbers of victims of the Chornobyl Disaster never been acknowledged, but the authorities have over the last year demonstrated the same will to conceal the truth and disregard for people’s safety as back in the days and months following 26 April 1986

Almost 8 months have passed since the murder of well-known Dnipropetrovsk environmentalist Volodymyr Honcharenko and there has been no progress in finding his killers. The dangerous scrap metal load he reported 4 days before his death has vanished, and the promised test results have not eventuated.

Three laws, including that submitted by the President’s representative in parliament, will, environmentalists warn, lead to a colossal increase “if not in corruption, then in lawlessness”

With 190 days already this year eliciting warnings about “unfavourable meteorological conditions” and a Metinvest nitrate steel plant in the centre of Mariupol, the residents’ concerns are hardly surprising.

Civic organizations who have been trying to defend the Bilychansk Forest for several years now are calling on media managers to stop putting pressure on journalists and censoring the issue

On Sunday thousands of residents of Mariupol (Donetsk oblast) took part in a demonstration against the environmental situation in the city. They were protesting over the constant smog and stench from factories which hits you as soon as you go outside.

Exactly 2 months have passed since Volodymyr Honcharenko, a prominent environmentalist from Dnipropetrovsk, was fatally injured in a brutal attack. .

As reported, the law recently adopted, allows the construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Khmelnytski Nuclear Power Plant despite the fact that consultation with neighbouring countries had not ended

Ukraine’s leaders’ faith in the power of committees is misguided. If they are still offered as a panacea for all Ukraine’s democratic aches and pains, then presumably those in the frontline of criticism have no other ammunition. Or hope they can make it to cover before being exposed.

They are calling on President Yanukovych to veto a law passed in breach of Ukrainian legislation and its international commitments under the Espoo Convention

The authorities have not only failed to investigate the hazardous chemical contamination which civic activist Volodymyr Honcharenko warned about 4 days before he was murdered, but have misled the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee leaving Ukrainian NGOs with no choice but to set the record straight