20 months after the deadly disturbances and fire in Odesa on May 2, 2014, Ukraine’s law enforcement bodies have not only failed to properly investigate the events and find those responsible, but are effectively sabotaging the investigation.

Criminal proceedings have been terminated over an attack on anti-corruption journalists investigating the luxury cars driven by members of the SBU, Ukraine’s security service. The SBU is supposed to fight corruption, but first set guards onto the journalists, then resorted to threats to try to prevent their program being broadcast.

A proper system of competition, perhaps involving professional organizations not directly selected by politicians, could result in candidates selected for their professional qualities, not political loyalty. Poroshenko’s reluctance to remove Shokin suggests there may be no other way

A system elaborately designed to ensure renewal of Ukraine’s seriously compromised prosecutor’s office has been effectively ignored by the Prosecutor General, with his office now trying to ensure that external controls over prosecutors will be withdrawn before they even began functioning.

Investigative journalists have turned their eye, cameras and calculators to the cars in which Interior Ministry officials come to work and found that police top management clearly think the law is only for others to obey.

The Ukrainian authorities’ failure to properly investigate the events of May 2, 2014 has now been compounded by failure to react adequately to a devastating report from an international panel. All of this is enabling Russia’s propaganda machine to continue spreading toxic lies about a ‘massacre’ that never took place.

Odesa’s Regional Prosecutor has been challenged to investigate allegations that could implicate one of his employees in the concealment of the weapon used by anti-Maidan activist Vitaly Budko [‘Botsman’] during the violent disturbances on May 2, 2014

Elected on a promise to reform Ukraine and fight corruption, reformers now fear Poroshenko has gone off course. The current imbroglio centers on Shokin, a Poroshenko ally and protector of the country’s corrupt old guard.

On the same day that the Head of the special department investigating Maidan crimes spoke of constant obstruction from current police officers, former Berkut officers and judges, a court has allowed Anatoly Logvinenko, an ex-Berkut officer accused of grave crimes, to remove his electronic bracelet

Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] has tried to get a program probing corruption within its ranks removed from air, just weeks after two of the journalists were assaulted outside the SBU offices in Kyiv. Since it failed, there is no need to speculate on the reasons – the luxury vehicles that SBU staff use to get to work, rather than the public transport claimed, can be seen – and valued

Two journalists and a number of protesters were detained on Friday Oct 2 near the Bohodukhiv Oil Depot in the Kharkiv oblast. Unlike the detention of journalists outside the SBU [Security Service] building in Kyiv which elicited a formal apology, the police version of events simply ignores the presence of journalists - and their rather incriminating video footage.

Two investigative journalists from the anti-corruption programme Skhemy: Corruption in Detail were accosted on Friday morning, Oct 2 outside Ukraine’s SBU or Security Service and told to confess to being spies.

An investigation is now underway after two Kharkiv police officers were videoed hitting and then trying to detain a black student who appeared to be simply waiting with a friend, also black, at a bus stop. Most disturbingly, the incident would have almost certainly ended differently had a passer-by not begun videoing the police behaviour and then felt compelled to intervene on the student’s behalf.

A foul racially-motivated attack has been reported against a 16-year-old young man in Kyiv with the duty police officer at the metro station nowhere to be seen

The civic initiative Euromaidan SOS has reacted swiftly to plans by the Interior Ministry to name a law enforcement unit after Nebesna Sotnya – those killed during the Euromaidan protests.

Ukrainian prosecutor Oleh Valendyuk should have been out of a job last fall, the victim of a lustration law meant to clear away members of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s team after his ouster at the hands of pro-European protesters. Instead, Valendyuk holds a higher position than ever: he is the top prosecutor in the capital, Kyiv.

A year after the tragic riots and fire in Odesa on May 2, 2014, a top police official is facing charges and civic investigators have upheld their right to information which is of clear public importance. A draft bill has also been tabled which could waive charges for people accused only of participation in riots, increasing the chances of finding the organizers and initiators

For the second time in the space of a few weeks, investigative journalists probing corruption within the Interior Ministry have come under attack. The film crew was from the same programme whose findings recently led to the top Traffic Police official losing his job

A brief description of the changes due to take place this year in the Ukrainian police force

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has just been forced to remove a second police associate after a damning report exposed fiddled records and the head of Ukraine’s traffic police living it up in style. Worryingly, he has promised only an ’internal inquiry’ into the extremely serious allegations.