A first court hearing is due on April 30 in connection with the Berkut riot police ambush of Automaidan activists in Jan 2014. Only one officer has been charged, although the names of those who took part in the beating up of activists and smashing of their cars are known. So too are their current positions in the police force

Not only have the ex-Berkut officers who beat up rights activist Konstantin Reutsky in January this year not been punished, but there are plans to award them for stopping a car with weapons, this giving the lies to claims that the men had been suspended pending an inquiry.

Civic and media organizations are demanding a full investigation into the incident on Thursday night when Luhansk human rights activist and correspondent for Informator.lg.ua, Kostyantyn Reulsky was beaten after he and two journalists were stopped by traffic police officers whom they believe to have been former Berkut officers.

Petro Fedchuk, ex-deputy head of the Kyiv Police on the run from prosecution for the violent dispersal of peaceful Maidan protesters may now be providing the same services to the Russian police. While others are also continuing to evade justice, some former Berkut officers are fighting side by side with Maidan activists defending Ukraine

Bitter déjà vu as the police of a Kyiv police station are accused of beating up an underage activist, keeping him in custody for what they claim was an attempt to destroy a Roshen chocolates kiosk, and long denying him access to a lawyer

For the first time in 18 years the government has adopted a package of proposals for reforming the Interior Ministry, and most importantly a Police Reform Development Strategy written by human rights activists

A former traffic police officer was sentenced on Wednesday, Dec 10 over his part in the overt persecution of AutoMaidan activists during the EuroMaidan protests. Both the prosecutor and the court, however, seemed intent on avoiding any evidence demonstrating that the orders came from much higher.

The recent appointment as Kyiv regional police head of Vadim Troyan, deputy commander of the Azov battalion and member of a neo-Nazi organization, is a serious and dangerous mistake.

“For the first time in the last 17 years a conceptual normative act has been adopted on police reform, and one that was drawn up by the human rights community!”.

Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday finally adopted Law №3541 which makes real reform of the Public Prosecutor’s Office possible. Considering that the reform was a condition of Ukraine’s joining the Council of Europe back in 1995, Ukraine’s legislators cannot be praised for fast work, but at least they got there.

The strategy is developed by experts of Law Enforcement Investigations Center and Kharkiv Human Rights Group, is discussed by the expert community in Kyiv and Lviv and approved at the meeting of the Expert Council under the Ministry of Interior on September 16 this year.

Poroshenko has signed into law bills which human rights organizations warn are an unwarranted restriction on people’s rights. The increase in the prosecutor’s powers could lead to criminal proceedings being questioned, if not in Ukraine, then in Strasbourg

Moscow’s undeclared, yet ever more aggressive war against Ukraine was launched because Ukrainians had upheld their right to European integration. Ukraine’s parliament must not sabotage that integration through appallingly repressive laws.

A draft bill passed on Aug 12 will, if signed by the President, allow the Prosecutor to authorize searches, detention, wiretapping and other activities linked with criminal investigation.

There are many ways to lose the information war. Inaction is one, especially when information, and even video footage are widely available which demonstrate the failure by police management and the emergency services to avert casualties during the clashes and fire on May 2.

Four Odessa police officers are reported to have been dismissed for beating up protesters outside a concert by the singer Ani Lorak in an Odessa night club. Around 200 police officers dispersed a group of around 100 protesters, using rubber batons

A positive precedent has been created in Kharkiv with a case thrown out after the lawyer demonstrated that the police had fabricated the evidence. Over 15 thousand people end up in prison each year because the police, wanting good ‘statistics’, go for people over possession of tiny amounts of narcotics or plant the drugs themselves

Ukraine’s SBU informs that it is revoking all agreements on cooperation with Russia’s FSB [Federation Security Service] and law enforcement agencies due to the latter’s role in aggression against Ukraine, including the military annexation of the Crimea and measures to destabilize the situation in the east of Ukraine

The acting Prosecutor General says the orders to gun down protesters on Institutska St on Feb 20 came from the president’s administration.

Yevhen Zakharov, head of KHPG, talks about civic involvement in the selection of new heads of police; as well as the proposed reinstatement of many of the police monitoring projects cut back in 2010