This overview of the human rights situation is the first section of the Ukrainian human rights organizations’ Report ‘Human Rights in Ukraine – 2015’ which is published each year by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union

Sergei Anisiforov, 45, gave up a successful career as a TV and film actor in Russia to participate in Ukraine’s Maidan. Now he is part of the Odessa Maidan self-defence forces, but he is also battling the Ukrainian Migration Service for the right to remain in the country legally

Si vous doutiez encore à quel point il est facile de tromper les téléspectateurs, le film « Les masques de la Révolution » de Paul M. Moreira en est une illustration bienvenue

The trial is ending in Russian-occupied Crimea of a Ukrainian farmer accused of ‘publicly insulting a police officer’. The circumstances of this case, and previous run-ins over recent months give serious grounds for believing that Volodymyr Balukh is facing systematic persecution for taking an openly pro-Ukrainian stand

Amid a deepening Kremlin crackdown on dissent, more than 200 Russians who have fallen afoul of the authorities in their country have fled to Ukraine since the beginning of 2014, according to the Ukrainian State Migration Service.

33-year-old Khaiser Dzhemiliev’s lawyer Nikolai Polozov reports that Russia has now formally rejected Ukraine’s application for Khaiser’s extradition, despite all legal grounds under bilateral agreements for returning the young man to Ukraine

The Crimean parliament in Russian-occupied Crimea has accused Ukraine of ‘genocide’ over the electricity blockade, ignoring the fact that it is Vladimir Putin who has ensured that Crimeans will long suffer critical shortages

Poland’s new government has just passed a highly contentious law on police surveillance and is set to give the current Justice Minister powers never before held in democratic Poland

Twelve-year-old Roma Saveliyev is one of the most captivating interviewees in Evgeny Afineevsky’s documentary Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, which has just been nominated for an Oscar.

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.

In the last two years, campaigns persecuting Ukrainians have become an entirely normalized and systemized form of Russian military aggression.

There is strong evidence that the draconian sentence against Ildar Dadin was in part because of his support for Ukraine, while Rafis Kashapov is serving a 3-year sentence for opposing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The list of those facing persecution in Russia for a pro-Ukrainian stand is rapidly increasing, and there can be no excuse for Ukraine’s authorities to send activists back.

35-year-old Vadim Tyumentsev from Tomsk is the latest Russian to receive a serious prison sentence for calls to peaceful protest and critical comments on the Internet regarding Russian military aggression in Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists

The grotesque 30-hour hearing of a man taken by force from hospital raises serious rights concerns and questions about the motives, which are only exacerbated by the events coinciding with the release from all restrictions of Yanukovych’s justice minister Olena Lukash

The FSB, or Russian Security Service, in Russian-occupied Crimea have tried to force a Crimean Tatar to collaborate with them using not only threats against the man’s wife and children, but also physical torture.

Unlike Russia, Ukraine is not denying Ukraine’s obligations under international law. Its leaders, however, would gain credibility if they stopped offering half-measures as though they had something to fear.

Vladimir Markin from the powerful federal Investigative Committee has appealed to Russians to "ignore" bad news about their country in the media, asserting that negative headlines can have a psychosomatic effect and increase the death rate.

The reports of plans to declare a so-called ‘Zaporizhya people’s republic’ and demands for ‘special status’ are disturbing both because of the obvious analogy with the Kremlin-backed ‘republics’ in Donbas, and due to the reported link with Viktor Medvedchuk, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin

All of Russia’s Crimean victims have had to confront varying forms of lawlessness, but none demonstrates contempt for the law quite so flagrantly as the criminal proceedings against Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz and other Crimean Tatars.

In the trial and imprisonment in Russia of Maidan activist Oleksandr Kostenko, Russia has tried a person for an alleged offence it couldn’t prove, and over which it had no jurisdiction, while ignoring clear evidence that he had been tortured