In July, four men attacked poet Serhiy Savin and busker Maksym Verba in Lviv, believing they were gay.
On Nov. 15, one of the attackers was sentenced to four years and one month in prison. It’s the first sentencing of its kind, according to the LGBTQ rights group Insight. Another attacker got a four-year suspended sentence. The two remaining men have not yet been convicted.
Ukrainian police are often reluctant to classify such attacks as hate crimes. Savin and Verba’s attackers had initially been charged with simple hooliganism. The charges were later modified to “hooliganism with a homophobic motive.”
Savin told Espresso TV that there are “thousands, if not millions of similar cases.”
Artur Korniienko is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent, currently on a leave to serve in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He previously reported on Ukrainian literature, art, music, film and social issues for the Kyiv Post, including the controversial Babyn Yar memorial and other development projects opposed by the community. In 2021, he ran a podcast about Ukrainian migrant workers for RFE/RL on the Vaclav Havel Fellowship in Prague. With a Master's in Journalism from the Ukrainian Catholic University, Korniienko had also worked as a freelance journalist and a TV correspondent.
The package focuses on restoring energy systems damaged by Russian attacks, repairing transport networks and border crossings, and supporting small enterprises.
According to the SBU, the two individuals, a 24-year-old former student of a Kyiv technical university and his father, were gathering classified documentation with the intent to illegally transfer it to Chinese intelligence.
Moscow's forces launched yet another mass aerial attack, deploying 18 missiles and about 400 drones, including 200 Shahed-type kamikaze models, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
At least two were killed and 22 injured in a Russian attack on Kyiv overnight on July 10. The assault comes a day after Russia launched its largest-ever drone and missile strike against Ukraine since the start of the full-scale war.
"With 2.3 billion euros in agreements signed, we aim to unlock up to 10 billion euros in investments to rebuild homes, reopen hospitals, revive businesses, and secure energy," Ursula von der Leyen said.
Dictator Alexander Lukashenko's regime often labels organizations that oppose its policies as terrorists or extremists in order to ban their activities.
A Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer was murdered on July 10 in the Holosiivskyi district of Kyiv, the SBU's press service told the Kyiv Independent after a reported shooting in the district.
The full content of the resumed shipments is not immediately clear, though officials told the U.S. media they include 155 mm artillery rounds and GMLRS guided rocket munitions.
