Two years after Mamuka Abashidze was abducted and forcibly deported to Georgia, the Sixth Court of Appeal in Kyiv has ruled that Ukraine’s Security Service acted illegally in banning him from the country

The Svyatoshynsky District Court in Kyiv has released under 24-hour house arrest Serhiy Tamtur, one of the five men accused of mass killing during the bloodiest day of Euromaidan

Ukraine’s Security Service have deported a former political prisoner to Belarus, less than two years after the Belarusian authorities helped Russia abduct Pavlo Hryb, a Ukrainian student in order to imprison him on politically motivated grounds.

A court of appeal in Odesa has found that the police failure to react adequately during anti-Roma riots in August 2016 was unlawful, and has awarded compensation to the families driven from their homes

Volodymyr Hrynyak is suspected of involvement in organizing the deliberate killing of Maidan protests on 18 February, 2014, making it baffling that he continues to hold high office

Concern about the proposed involvement of the far-right ‘National Militia’ paramilitaries as Ukrainian election observers has intensified following both their threats to use physical force “to prevent violations” and the involvement of the party they are linked with [National Corps] in violent scuffles at the weekend

Viktor Kraitor, the former head of the SBU [Security Service] in Khmelnytsky has again avoided detention, although he is facing serious charges over his role in the fatal shooting of local Maidan activists on 19 February 2014

“INTERPOL must not be headed by the representative of a country that flouts the rights of its own citizens and its international obligations; that annexes other countries’ territory and is taking part in several aggressive wars”.

Russian enforcement officers have carried out a second raid on a meeting of the human rights initiative Crimean Solidarity, with the actions of the masked men this time evidently aimed at instilling fear among all those present.  Two Crimean Tatar lawyers were issued ‘warnings’, as was one of the coordinators of Crimean Solidarity

This is reportedly the fourteenth attack since the summer of 2017 on Odesa activists and journalists known both for their pro-Ukrainian position, and for their opposition to corruption by local officials

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office has shifted from total denial of any part in handing journalist Yusuf Inan over to Turkey on July 12, to claims that this was an extradition in full accordance with Ukrainian law.  There are strong grounds for believing that the latter is also not true, and that Inan was given no chance to appeal against his enforced return to a country where he faces imprisonment on questionable charges

Handziuk, a well-known civic activist and assistant to the Mayor of Kherson, remains in the Kyiv hospital to which she was airlifted a day after sulphuric acid was hurled at her on July 31, leaving her with second and third degree burns over 30% of her upper body

Civic activist Kateryna Handziuk is in hospital after being sprayed with acid on 31 July by a young man who was lying in wait for her near her home.  Doctors report that she has burns to 30% of her face, head and upper part of the body.  This is the latest of several attacks on civic activists over recent months.  In most, if not all, cases, the culprits have not been found.

Gulsum Alieva is the latest of a number of Crimean civic activists and lawyers who are facing so-called ‘pre-criminal investigation checks, aimed at silencing dissident voices in occupied Crimea or forcing those targeted into exile

Anybody wondering how repressive regimes find the ‘judges’, ‘prosecutors’ and ‘police’ needed for politically-motivated arrests and trials, should look to Crimea under Russian occupation.  Although Moscow sent in Viktor Palagin and other Russians with a track record in repression to take up top posts in the FSB [security service], it also applied various ‘incentives’ to encourage Crimeans to switch allegiance.  One of the most corrupting of such incentives is housing. 

Human rights activists have publicly expressed outrage that Dmytro Rudenko is being considered for the post of head of the Vinnytsa Department of the State Bureau of Investigations.  The SBI is still being set up and staffed, but its main task will be to investigate crimes committed by high-level officials, making any appointment of people like Rudenko seem quite inconceivable.

Almost two years after violent anti-Roma riots in Loshchynivka (Odesa oblast) made world headlines, the police are ignoring hard evidence of who was to blame and essentially denying that there were riots at all

‘C14’, a neo-Nazi group involved over recent months in anti-Roma, homophobic and other attacks in Ukraine, has become one of the recipients of Ministry of Youth and Sport grants, together with an organization linked to the far-right Svoboda party.

Police in Ukraine are unacceptably passive both during violent confrontations provoked by members of certain far-right extremist groups, and in investigating unlawful activities. There is a disturbing failure to properly investigate and prosecute even in cases where serious injuries have been inflicted.  The resulting sense of impunity is among reasons suggested for an alarming rise in unlawful activities by certain far-right extremist organizations in a new report published by Freedom House Ukraine Far-right Extremism as a Threat to Ukrainian Democracy.

The news on 30 May that Arkady Babchenko had not been killed was greeted with incredulous joy and then a wide range of reactions, some apparently lacking in any logic