Parliament passes bill on presidential impeachment:
By RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- Ukraine's parliament has adopted a bill spelling out procedures for a presidential impeachment.
The law was backed by 245 lawmakers at a second reading on September 10, immediately after the text was passed a first time.
Under the new legislation, parliament first initiates impeachment proceedings, which must be approved by the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, and then passed by three-quarters of lawmakers.
Ruslan Stefanchuk, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's representative to parliament, said the vote showed the president was committed to keeping his election pledge to clean up Ukrainian politics and tackle corruption.
However, opponents said the law was rushed through without proper consultation and that the text itself was so convoluted as to be meaningless.
"In fact, it is only a facade of reform that does not change anything," said Roman Lozinsky of the Holos (Voice) party.
Zelenskiy, a 41-year-old comedian-turned-politician who has pledged to "break the system" in Ukrainian politics, was elected in April.
His Servant of the People party then took a solid majority of 254 parliamentary seats in the 450-seat legislature following snap general elections in July.
Last week, lawmakers voted to strip members of the chamber of immunity from prosecution. (w/AP and Reuters)
Here's another news item, this time from the Crimea Desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
Ukraine Charges Retired Russian Soldier, Two Others In Crimean Tatar's Deadly Kidnapping
Ukrainian authorities say they have identified the suspected kidnappers of a Crimean Tatar activist who was abducted in broad daylight more than five years ago as he protested Moscow's seizure of Crimea -- and who turned up dead weeks later.
Ukrainian prosecutors alleged on September 10 that two members of a pro-Russian militia were acting on orders from a Russian military veteran when they abducted Reshat Ametov, 39, on a central square in the Crimean capital of Simferopol in March 2014 as he staged a one-man protest against Russia's military incursion.
Two weeks later, Ametov's body was discovered in a forest 60 kilometers east of Simferopol, and he is widely seen in Ukraine and among Crimean Tatars as an early martyr to the cause of opposing Russia's takeover.
"Thanks to the cooperation of the prosecutor's office, the police, and human rights organizations, the crime was solved today,” Hunduz Mamedov, Kyiv's top prosecutor for Crimea, said in a statement.
Kyiv’s police directorate responsible for Crimea identified the two suspected kidnappers as 44-year-old Oleksandyr Bahlyuk and 33-year-old Oleksandyr Rudenko.
They are accused of carrying out the abduction under the direction of 53-year-old Yevgeny Skripnik, described by Ukraine as a retired Russian serviceman who later took part in Russia-backed military operations against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has issued international warrants for the arrest of the three men, Ukrainian prosecutors said. They have been charged with aggravated kidnapping, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Ukrainian authorities conducted the investigation remotely, as they do not have access to Crimean territory, which Russia seized in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum deemed illegitimate by 100 members of the United Nations.
Video of Ametov’s abduction was published online weeks after the incident. It shows him being frog-marched into a car just meters in front of a man wearing a red armband typical of so-called "self-defense" units that coordinated with Russian forces in Crimea at the time.
It was the last time Ametov was known to have been seen alive.
In a statement in March, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine said it had "received information that indicates Crimean self-defense's involvement in Ametov's disappearance and killing."
The mission told RFE/RL at the time that its information was based on interviews with "a number of people," including Ametov's relatives and activists at pro-Ukrainian rallies at the time of his disappearance, as well as an analysis of the video of his abduction.
In 2017, then-President Petro Poroshenko posthumously awarded Ametov the nation's highest title -- Hero of Ukraine.
Here is today's map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)
A tweet from the new Ukrainian prime minister:
Here's more from Current Time on Sentsov's presser in Kyiv:
Ukraine's Sentsov, Kolchenko Hold First Presser After Release From Russian Custody
KYIV -- Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov and activist Oleksandr Kolchenko have thanked all those who supported them while they were in Russian custody.
Sentsov and Kolchenko spoke on September 10 at their first news conference in Kyiv following their released in a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
The two countries exchanged a total of 70 prisoners on September 7 -- the first major prisoner swap between the two countries since 2017.
Kolchenko and Sentsov were arrested in the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, after Russia seized the Ukrainian region. A Russian court in 2015 convicted them of planning to commit terrorist acts -- a charge considered by both men and their supporters as politically motivated.
"First of all I would like to express thanks to everyone who supported us and contributed to our liberation," Kolchenko told reporters.
Sentsov thanked those who "supported us and managed to save us," adding that Ukrainians who are still being held in Russia and eastern Ukraine, where government forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since April 2014, must not be forgotten.
"We have to remember that along with our people there in prisons in Russia there are many Russians who are fighting for themselves, for a free Russia and for our Ukraine," he said.
"They are our brothers and we must not divide them from us," Sentsov said.