A tweet from RFE/RL's Brussels correspondent:
Some news on Ukraine and the the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence:
A little bit of popular culture...
A tweet from the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kyiv:
Good morning. We'll get the live blog rolling today with a couple of news items that were filed overnight by our desk in Washington:
Memorial Service Held In Kyiv In Honor Of Donetsk Airport Defenders
A requiem was held at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv on January 21 to honor the dead defenders of the Donetsk airport and all fallen combatants of hostilities.
Attending the memorial service in the Ukrainian capital were war veterans who defended the Donetsk airport from Russia-backed separatists, other combatants in the Donbas conflict, families of fallen soldiers, and volunteers.
The defense of the Sergei Prokofiev Donetsk International Airport lasted 242 days from May 26, 2014 to January 22, 2015 and ended after two of its terminals as well as the dispatcher tower were completely destroyed.
Its defense became an emblem of the fighting spirit of Ukrainians and its defenders, both regular soldiers and volunteer fighters, became known as "cyborgs," a moniker given to them by Russia-backed separatists for their resilience.
The airport defenders have been treated by many Ukrainians as heroes.
Ukraine’s military says 101 soldiers were killed and 440 wounded while defending the airport. Nine combatants are still missing.
Volunteers from the Right Sector, Dnipro-1, Karpatskiy Sich and other such formations also took part in defending the airport.
More than 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict in eastern Ukraine since it began in April 2014.
The Kremlin officially denies that it is a party to the war and describes the events in the Donbas as "an internal Ukrainian conflict."
The Donetsk airport was built ahead of the 2012 European soccer championship that Ukraine co-hosted with Poland. Its estimated cost was $860 million.
Ukrainian TV Channel To Take Dispute With Ultraright 'Hate' Group to European Human Rights Court
Ukraine's only nonprofit and independent television channel intends to seek recourse with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) regarding a Ukrainian Supreme Court decision on January 21 that ruled a right-wing nationalist group’s reputation had been impugned.
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that said Hromadske TV had damaged the reputation of the nationalist group C14 by describing it as "neo-Nazi."
C14, which a U.S. State Department human rights report says is a "nationalist hate group," had initiated the litigation.
The lawsuit was in response to a tweet by Hromadske in May 2018 regarding news that C14 had apprehended a Brazilian national who had fought with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
"Neo-Nazi group C14 has seized a former militant of the self-proclaimed 'Donetsk People’s Republic,' Brazilian Rafael Lusvarghi, and were going to hand him over to #Ukraine’s Security Service, one of the group members posted on Facebook," the social media post said.
A lower court in Kyiv on August 6 ordered Hromadske to refute its original description of the group by publishing the court's decision and pay $144 in court fees to C14.
The ruling shocked human rights groups both inside and outside of Ukraine.
“Now, Hromadske intends to challenge the Supreme Court's decision with the ECHR,” the TV station said on January 21.
In previous court appearances, C14's lawyer Viktor Moroz said his client "is a nationalist group but in no way is it a neo-Nazi [group]."
C14 was documented committing 40 acts of confrontation and violence during a one-year period starting from October 14, 2018, according to a monitoring report by Institute Respublica, a Ukrainian public advocacy group.
The report, published on January 20, stated that C14 had committed 25 acts "of a violent nature," including 10 incidents of violence toward people.