U.K. Ambassador To Ukraine Concerned About Mejlis Ban
British Ambassador to Ukraine Judith Gough has expressed concerns over a ruling by Russia's Supreme Court that upheld a ban on the Mejlis, the self-governing body of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine's occupied territory of Crimea.
Gough wrote on Twitter on September 30: "Concerned at Russian Supreme Court decision banning Crimean Tatar Mejlis in illegally annexed Crimea. Russia must respect human rights."
Russia's Supreme Court ruling on September 29 upheld the decision of a Moscow-backed Crimean court to ban the Mejlis.
Mejlis chairman Refat Chubarov told journalists in Kyiv on September 30 that the Russian court's ruling will be appealed at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry condemned the Russian Supreme Court's ruling, urging Russia to immediately lift its ban and end what it called "the oppression of the Crimean Tatar community in Crimea."
On April 26, more than two years after Russia seized and illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, Crimea's pro-Russian Supreme Court branded the Mejlis as an extremist organization and officially banned it.
The Mejlis had been legalized by the Ukrainian government in 1999.
With reporting by UNIAN
Group Ransacks Moscow Exhibition Of Photos From Eastern Ukraine
Dozens of people, some of them in military and traditional Cossack uniforms, have destroyed photos taken in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine that were on exhibit in Moscow.
The group of men and women entered the Sakharov Center in Moscow on September 29, carrying a large jar containing a red liquid with a label saying "Blood of Donbas Children Killed by Ukrainian Army."
They tore down all of the photos in the exhibition, which had been organized by the Center of Documentary Photography, demanding its closure and threatening to sue the organizers for "propagating extremism."
The photos were taken in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Ukrainian armed forces have been fighting Russia-backed separatists since April 2014.
On September 28, a man sprayed the photographs with red paint and called the photographers -- Alyaksandr Vasyukovich of Belarus and Ukraine's Serhiy Loyko -- "fascists."