By 289 votes, the RADA passed on its first reading, a bill that criminalises the promotion of homosexuality. I have written about it before in some detail. The accompanying note explaining this law when it was submitted was to combat HIV. Complete tosh of course. As the UN reports document, HIV transmission in Ukraine has […]
RADA passes criminalisation law regarding promotion of homosexuality
October 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Failing to wait for the fat lady to sing? Ukrainian elections
September 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment
There have been some rather presumptuous remarks about the Ukrainian elections by people who should probably know better. Firstly, the ICES observers have already stated that thus far, the Ukrainian election campaigns have been acceptable and generally meet the standards necessary - whilst at the same time stating those in Georgia have already failed to […]
What weight to give the on-line debate? Freedom of Speech - Freedom House “Freedom of the Net report” and Ukrainian elections
September 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
For the first time, Ukraine has been included in the Freedom House, Freedom of the Net report. Ukraine was ranked as being “Free”. And, well why wouldn’t it be? No bloggers have been arrested, there is no political interference that is noticeable, and no Internet applications are blocked by the government. Further, the Ukrainian forums are […]
Criminalisation of defamation - Ukraine
September 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Well, much has been written in the Ukrainian press, many horrified tweets from Ukrainian journalists on twitter, (at least amongst those I follow and those that follow me), and many paragraphs have been blogged about the passing at the first reading, of the law to re-criminalise defamation (libel and slander). I briefly mentioned it a […]
1st November 2012 - A date for the diary - Release of Lazarenko
September 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
1st November 2012 is a date for the politics watchers diary. No, I’m not talking about the Ukrainian parliamentary elections, they take place on 28th October, and unless there is a significant shift in public opinion over the next 6 weeks, the Party of Regions/Communist alliance will continue to hold the majority. Far more uncertain, […]
Migration, Immigration, Asylum, trafficking, readmissions and all those frameworks to deal with unwanted movement of people in and through Ukraine
September 18, 2012 by 1 Comment
This post has the potential to be something of a mish-mash. In fact it could appear to be bolted together with the crudeness of a 1970’s Lada compared to a smooth finish of a modern day Bentley. That is the way of things sometimes. As it happens, it ties together a number of random occurrences […]
An immigration conundrum - A Brit in Ukraine and the UKBA
September 2, 2012 by 8 Comments
Immigration is a very touchy subject in the UK. Well it is everywhere, but as the subject of this entry is the UK, UKBA website, UK immigration rules et al, that seemed like a solid starting sentence. On 9th July 2012, the immigration rules got much tougher. Hurrah and huzzah cry the voting masses of […]
Extradition, Ukraine and the “Putin 3 Plotters”
August 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
After this……. this doesn’t make much sense does it? Unless he didn’t make appeals to the ECfHR or seek asylum. That’s all!
Osmayev seeks asylum in Ukraine
August 23, 2012 by 2 Comments
Quite topically, I mentioned Adam Osmayev in a recent post relating to Russian opposition activists seeking asylum in Ukraine only a week ago. As is quite apparent, if you know anything about Mr Osmayev’s case, he is not really a standard asylum seeker. After all, not many asylum seekers in Ukraine have actually managed to […]
Russians seeking asylum in Ukraine
August 16, 2012 by 2 Comments
To be quite honest, Ukraine it not one of the nations that most would consider seeking asylum in. Those that do are normally en route to the EU via Ukraine and caught, or returned to Ukraine under the EU/Ukraine readmission agreement and thus forced to claim asylum in Ukraine rather than their intended destination, or […]