The Constitutional Court would seem for the third time to be claiming that the question of whether the controversial law which increased the status of the Russian language clashes with the Constitution does not fall within its jurisdiction

These are much publicized crimes which high-ranking officials – the President, Head of the SBU [Security Service] or Interior Minister – take under their personal control issuing urgent instructions to find the criminals

Highly worrying moves afoot in the Crimea suggest that concern back in November 2011 over the President’s quite staggering promotion of Anatoly Mohylyov to the post of Prime Minister of the Crimea was extremely well-founded

The trial of four men charged in connection with a series of bomb explosions in Dnipropetrovsk last year has been deferred until 12 March. While the judges say this is over protests, the sister (and lawyer) of one of the defendants believes it is to dull public interest in yet another profoundly worrying case

Not everyone was welcome to take part in President Yanukovych’s “Dialogue with the Country” on 22 February, with some of the methods for keeping people out comical, others simply worrying.

In a trial which has from the outset aroused profound concern, the prosecution has demanded very long sentences for three young men who all maintain that their multiple confession were beaten out of them.

With a decision to cancel two MPs’ mandates having already raised eyebrows, the Court has effectively handed city authorities carte blanche to demand unreasonably long advance notice of planned peaceful protests. The move seems likely to strengthen the worrying encroachments on freedom of peaceful assembly

The Ukrainian PEN Centre expresses its concern over a draft bill “On Publishing” which proposes, among other things, to abolish current norms which oblige the government to promote translation of foreign literary and scientific literature into Ukrainian.

“The loss of the channel which broadcast interesting literary, musical and artistic programmes, is a palpable blow, especially in conditions of an unconcealed assault on all things Ukrainian, starting with the State language itself ...

Olena Karas writes of yet another harrowing case where a person with serious illnesses has been held without proper treatment in SIZO [pre-trial detention centre] for a year.

The latest court hearing in the case of the young men charged over the Zaporizhya Church bomb in July 2010 will take place on 7 February. As the text mentions, it will be without one of the defendants lawyers whom the presiding judge has removed from the case. This is only one of a very large number of grounds for concern

Push has come to shove again in the Ukrainian parliament, where opposition lawmakers have been physically blocking the podium for a full day and say their protest over MPs’ "piano voting" (for absent colleagues) could go on indefinitely.

A Ukrainian court has yet again sentenced a man to life imprisonment without any proof that he committed the crime.

Three young men, two former sacristans of the Church and the elder brother of one of them have effectively become hostages of a promise made to the President to solve a crime within the week

Iryna Bekeshkina, Director of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, believes that Ukrainians see the judicial and law enforcement bodies as defending the authorities against them

Possible consequences of a published recording of a telephone conversation between Yulia Tymoshenko and her husband for the review of Tymoshenko’s case at the European Court, manipulation by politicians of public opinion

Analysis of cases, including those of Lutsenko v.Ukraine, Khodorkovsky v. Russia and Gusinsky v. Russia where the Court has decided whether encroachments of people’s rights were for motives other than those declared

Donetsk Memorial’s efforts to find out about compensation for the huge amounts the State pays in implementation of European Court of Human Rights judgements

Murder charges against imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are likely to be viewed with the same scepticism in the West as previous prosecutions. But then western TV channels aren’t so very helpful in covering such stories