Lutsenko also said he was outraged by "PR on blood" around the Handziuk case

NYT’s Andrew Kramer claims that “Four cases involving Paul J. Manafort have been effectively frozen by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor. Ukrainian officials are wary of offending President Trump.” How true is this?

What explains the tug-o-war between various enforcement agencies in Ukraine

What is known as of December 5

The pitfalls of Yanukovych's $1.5bn case

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Yuriy Lutsenko, leader of the Third Ukrainian Republic initiative and politically persecuted ex-Interior Minister in Yulia Tymoshenko’s Cabinet, is beaten and injured by Berkut riot police in the clashes on the night of January 10-11. Ten more people are injured, five taken to hospitals.

The over all climate of repressions in Ukraine has not been improved so far, Viola von Cramon, a member of the "Alliance '90/The Greens" group in the Bundestag, said in a comment to The Ukrainian Week.

Yuriy Lutsenko is going to create a new political project. The question is whether he will make the same mistakes as were made during the launch of People’s Self-Defence and whether the new organization will be constructed to serve the interests of Petro Poroshenko

After Yuriy Lutsenko`s pardon EU must not expect any real democratisation of Ukrainian political system, Tadeusz A. Olszański, expert at Center for Eastern Studies, Polish think-tank, says in his analytical report for the institution.

Ukraine does have political prisoners. This fact is acknowledged by everyone today except for supporters of the Party of Regions, the Communists and the most inveterate ideologues of the "everyone-in-politics-is-bad" position.

“Despite winning rare praise from the West for freeing an opponent from jail, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich is likely to resist extra pressure and the lure of trade deals to release his fiercest rival, ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko,” writes Reuters.

Freedom House welcomed the pardon of several former government officials in Ukraine and called on President Viktor Yanukovych to take similar action on Tymoshenko.

Yuriy Lutsenko`s pardon has only given Ukraine some time, Pawel Kowal, member of the European Parliament and Chair of EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, notes in his opinion for New Eastern Europe.

“The pardons are certainly good signs, but while they might halt the deterioration in relations with the EU, the talks on the EU trade deal remain at an impasse,” claims Business New Europe.

“Yuriy Lutsenko's pardon means very little for Ukraine’s democratic process, as the current ruling powers are determined to remain in that position,” writes Forbes.

EU will continue to monitor closely developments in Ukraine and the full implementation Foreign Affairs Council and EU-Ukraine Summit conclusions, Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Štefan Füle, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, said in a statement.

The European Court of Human Rights has yet to rule in Yuriy Lutsenko’s case

PACE Monitoring Committee Co-Rapporteurs have once again visited Ukraine where they were finally allowed to see Yuriy Lutsenko and talk to the Prosecutor General. In an interview with The Ukrainian Week, Mailis Reps, Co-Rapporteur of the Monitoring Committee and an Estonian MP, shares her impressions of a meeting with Lutsenko and others and adverse trends she spotted in Kyiv.

Yuriy Lutsenko told The Ukrainian Week about the manner in which Ukrainian courts interpret justice, why Orange politicians lost power and his future plans