Sons and father are still hardly accessible for each other. Anatol endeavours for help and allies inside and outside Ukraine. It is an exhausting fight: not only for the future of the children, but also against the mills of an arbitrary and dilapidated state apparatus.

Since the Maidan uprise, little has changed on the Soviet-styled system of lawlessness and legal nihilism. It is run by money, power and ideology. Reforms are taking place only on the surface.

Foremost, the arch-corrupt and dependent judiciary proves unreformable. It continues to be the instrument of rule and repression by influential oligarchs, bureaucrats and politicians - perverting every legally protected right.

It is a situation of anxiety and hope - in the midst of permanent crisis, stagnation and war ...

Challenging the rampant corruption and committing himself to peace in the East, Ukraine's new President Zelenskiy can also look forward to an overwhelming victory in the early parliamentary elections. He enjoys great trust of the people, granting him and his newly formed party "Servant of the People" unprecedented power. But although he now has free hand to transform the country, appointments to top government positions are slow and tough. In a video posted on the web, the President laments ubiquitous lying, bribery and theft outside his closest circle of associates.

In his own words: "I thought no one could be trusted, but it happened that more than no one could be trusted. That means there are absolutely no people you can trust. With the exception of our narrow circle, everyone steals. Everyone takes bribes, everyone lies and at the same time they smile. That is cynicism at the highest level ... I want everyone to be respected. Because for 30 years there is no team of the President of Ukraine, which would be recognized by the people in the street, be cheered and command respect."

President interviewing himself --> https://youtu.be/hKJ7gOZ70CU

This is the environment in which - according to the German government - child-repatriation procedures take place in compliance with the HCCA. In Zelenskiy's choice of words: The power apparatus of Chancellor Merkel shows the same "cynicism at the highest level" as the Soviet structures of Ukraine. On both sides, even in the eleventh year of their contractual relationship, there is not a single competent, honest and reliable official point of contact for the German applicants. The Central Authorities in Kyiv and Bonn, established for HCCA cases under the supervision of the Ministries of Justice, have remained pure bureaucratic dummies that prevent, rather than encourage, child repatriation - through inaction, inertia, avoidance and manipulation. Systematic lies, deception, falsification, procrastination, censorship and oppression continue. Unabatedly, German citizens in Ukraine are vulnerable to total corruption and arbitrariness - uninformed, unprepared, unsupported, unheard ...

These catastrophic conditions signal Merkel's ruthlessness, cold-bloodedness and callousness towards her own people. So does her momentous policy of random mass immigration and unlimited bailouts for Southern Europe, as much as the neglect of infrastructure, security, education, energy supply and future strategies. Breaching law, agreements and constitution has become the tool of choice - along with unprecedented mismanagement and plundering the national wealth. Merkel's rule lies like a tomb slab on Germany. As ever more citizens feel the impact on their everyday life, the run-down government coalition rushes from one electoral defeat to the next.

In similar ignorance and contempt for the people, Zelenskiy's predecessor and Merkel's friend Poroshenko just has fallen spectacularly...

After a long spurt and in the middle of Ukraine's presidential election campaign: More White Knights - the journalists Kossov, Court and Rudenko - come to rescue of Papa Anatol and his sons. The English-language weekly "Kyiv Post", the media flagship of the struggle for the rule of law and Western integration, reports in detail on Emil's and Elias's fate and the ongoing child-abduction policy of the Ukrainian state apparatus.

Child Abduction Report of "Kyiv Post" --> https://www.kyivpost.com/lifestyle/how-ukraine-is-failing-foreign-fathers.html

Skillfully and empathically, the report highlights all the grim aspects of abduction - affecting thousands of separated Ukrainian fathers, too:

• Deprivation, isolation and abuse of abducted children,
• forlornness of the left-behind fathers in the Byzantine labyrinths of the state bureaucracy,
• limitless corruption, lawlessness, arbitrariness, partiality and incompetence of the Soviet-minded judiciary and administration,
• deliberate procrastination of child-return and custody procedures,
• non-enforceability of any father-child contact rule.

It carries weight, as the "Kyiv Post" enjoys great respect and attention in academic, business and diplomatic environments.

+++

The same weekly issue recalls the broken promises of President Poroshenko, who seeks re-election. Ukraine's public and media unanimously attest to his utter failure in the fight against corruption and lawlessness. Emil's and Elias's tragedy is part of it.

So Poroshenko cannot use his advantage of incumbency as warlord, saviour of the fatherland and (pseudo-)European - and his commitment to "army, language, faith" catches only weak. He is going to lose the favour of the electorate - of all candidates, to the political novice and television comedian Zelenskiy, who has already won the presidency in the popular satirical series "Servant of the People", fighting the omnipresent corruption and the plunder of the country.

"Servant of the People" / 2nd episode on TV1+1 --> https://youtu.be/T9kL5XSMBxo?list=PLf89RI4CS7yff8v50N-tc2l8R5bcDqP0N

+++

Only two weeks ago, the Supreme Court has dismissed the new criminal law against illegal self-enrichment, which Western donors have made conditional on visa-free travel and financial assistance. The reasoning of the High Judges is far-fetched: The law violates the presumption of innocence of the defendants, and it reverses the burden of proof to their detriment. Thus, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) has to suspend numerous investigations against high-ranking officials.

Corruption report of "Kyiv Post" --> https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/nabu-on-constitution-courts-decision-cases-on-illicit-enrichment-will-be-closed.html

The act shows the persistence of total corruption, arbitrariness and lawlessness, as well as the brazen deal breaking and perfidiousness of the rulers in Kyiv and their cronies in the judiciary and administration. This affects all fields: from the unscrupulous self-enrichment of the ruling class to children's issues.

Under its shiny pro-European varnish, Ukraine's rotten system basically has not changed - and so has not its ruthless child-abduction policy. Neither has a single perpetrator of the Maidan massacre of 2014 been taken to account.

In particularly brutal way, Ukraine's child-abduction, child-retention and child-alienation policy claims a new victim: In the town of Bilhorod near Odessa, the Italian HCCA father Giovanni Arcangeli is attacked by unrecognized hitmen who pour highly aggressive acid over his head and face. Giovanni's little son Giulio has been kidnapped from Rome by his Ukrainian mother in spring 2017. The Police appear at the scene with great delay and take little interest in investigating the crime.

It is already the second assault on Giovanni, apparently ordered by the abductor mother. In spring 2018, when assailants broke his nose, the Ukrainian authorities have (expectedly) responded with indifference and inaction.

Giovanni has to undergo several operations in the hospital: with his head and face burned and his eyesight in danger. Under the conditions of the Ukrainian mafia state, the commitment to his beloved little Giulio may cost him health and physical integrity until the end of his life.

The ruthlessness and malice of the acid attack causes a public outcry. Ukrainian and Italian media report in detail.

Ukraina TV report --> https://www.facebook.com/batkomaepravo/videos/237006876988413/?t=21

InterTV studio discussion --> https://youtu.be/n00aDFzpoY

+++

Giulio's case proves that, even a decade after Ukrainian HCCA ratification, the countertactics of the Soviet power structures have not changed at all:

• The corrupt judiciary has procrastinated the child-return procedure for one and a half years.
• The authorities persistently have refused to search the disappeared child and hindered the exercise of paternal access-and-custody rights by their proven bureaucratic means.
• For exhausting the father, all his complaints and petitions have been met with maximum ignorance, arrogance and inaction by administration and judiciary as well as by the Parliament's Soviet-infiltrated Human-Rights Commission.

Hate crime following state crime: The government in Kyiv has a great responsibility for the violence ! The overt state complicity with the kidnappers has

• prevented Giovanni from returning with Giulio to his safe Italian homeland already in 2017 and exposed him to the infamous Odessa mob,
• deliberately abolished his parental and custody rights,
• encouraged criminal aggression by providing an environment of total impunity for the abductor party.

+++

The Odessan crime sends a strong signal to all foreign HCCA fathers: As long as they fight for the return of their children in the lawless space of ​​Ukraine, they are fair game on the show plate - with ubiquitous and all-time risk for their personal safety !

It is the logical continuation of Ukraine's child-abduction policy: seeking mental, physical and financial destruction of the fathers who are perceived as troublemakers and enemies. To the inhumane Soviet system, the immense damage inflicted on the abducted children and their development is worth no consideration.

In the light of Giovanni's and Giulio's tragedy, Anatol turns to Deputy Minister of Justice Hlushchenko with an appeal to restore the rule of law and international standards in child-protection affairs.

Thanks to political interference or not: In an unexpected ruling, it is just Kyiv's Court of Cassation - ill-famed for excessive corruption - to order the return of the British child Alexander Rodgers, who has been kidnapped to Ukraine by its mother in 2012. Such court decisions may occasionally occur for glossy outward appearance. However, their enforcement is generally left undone - until they are revoked later on. Unique and unprecedented in Alexander's case is the manner in which the Court denounces all action and omission by Ukrainian authorities during the routinely procrastinated and manipulated six-year child-return procedure.

The Court essentially states:

• Although the child's stay to Ukraine is manifestly unlawful, the lower Courts have invoked inadmissible and unreasonable exemptions for denying repatriation - such as (fictitious) harm to the child's welfare.
• Ukraine's authorities have disregarded the father's fundamental right to family and left him without means for their assertion.
• The return procedure has been willfully stalled through years, although the HCCA recommends a maximum duration of six weeks.

This exceptional judgment describes the standard situation of all foreign HCCA fathers in Ukraine where (not only) child affairs are fraught with Soviet ideology and legal nihilism. Unmentioned goes the fact that Ukraine has (habitually) ignored all British court orders in favour of Alexander's father Peter Rodgers.

Subsequently, Ukraine's corrupt Ministry of Justice refuses to execute the judgment and sabotages the child repatriation again in its proven way.

On the 67. anniversary of the Berlin Wall's erection, father Uwe is informed by the German authorities: The wall erected around his kidnapped daughter Sabina by Ukraine's Soviet-minded government, will last ! After more than five (!) years of severe procrastination and manipulation of the child-return procedure, the highly corrupt Supreme Court of Ukraine, chaired by Judge Luspenik, has rejected her repatriation.

The judges argue that the child is now well-accommodated to its new environment and - according to the local Child Service, which has never listened to Uwe - would be harmed if returned to Germany. Sabina's cloak-and-dagger abduction from her decent German home is brazenly labelled as "legal transfer" with her father's tacit consent and no violation of parental rights.

Not a word is said about

• Sabina's poor living conditions, years of disappearance and ongoing neglect by the abductor family, as well as
• the outright breach of all judicial and administrative HCCA provisions during the entire procedure.

This judgment is just another Soviet artefact off the shelf - filled with placeholders ('Person_1', 'Address_2' etc.) for permanent use.

+++

In the context of total corruption and lawlessness, the respected British weekly "Economist" characterizes the current events in Ukraine as "dark operetta". "Operetta-like" is what writer Bulgakov called society life in Kyiv in his famous novel "The White Guard" almost a century ago - during the short independence period after First World War. Half a decade after the Maidan uprise, corruption, violence, chaos and the wilful erosion of institutions are on the advance again. A system change may come, if ever, only along with a generation change in the corridors of power.

Thus, ten years after HCCA's ratification, Ukraine's infamous approach to cross-border child abduction remains unchanged:

• leave the child at sole disposal of the abductor mother,
• eliminate the father from the child's life,
• transform the return procedure into a custody case under illegal change of jurisdiction .

There is lie, fraud, falsification, manipulation and deprivation of rights - as far as the eye can see ...

In the darkest moments of child retention and betrayal by German government's fat cats, Kyiv's dedicated Patrol Police Officer Oleksandra - grown up herself without father - has introduced Anatol to Ukraine's news channel TV1+1. Subsequently, in the early summer, reporter Gonchareva has made the kidnapping tragedy a five-minute news program - with quick cuts and strong impressions of the children's plight. Being interviewed, abductor mother Iryna shows full delusion and fanatism. She denounces Anatol to be involved in the preparation of World War III - and insists that he will not see Emil and Elias before both are adult and make their own decisions.

TV1+1 news program --> https://youtu.be/z_oQqSNSkY0

The program causes a stir in Ukraine, as it touches on the ubiquitous sense of family - and as citizens are unaware of their government's perverse child-abduction policy. Several people express their regret to Anatol - or even offer active help.

+++

It is the hour of the White Knights, of editor Bezludna and her colleagues from the popular, government-critical channel InterTV: "You are a very good person, and we want to help you!" For Anatol, it is an unusually bright moment in Ukraine: no more malicious, corrupt, Soviet-minded government dragons, but a team of modern, creative and energetic young women with commitment to a healthy father-child relationship.

As result of a week-long research with local dates and interviews, InterTV goes live with its nationwide format "Concerning everybody": one and a half hours of studio discussion with involved parties, experts and Anatol as principal guest - accompanied by video inserts on the sad life of children and by information about the state's arbitrariness and infringement.

InterTV studio discussion --> https://youtu.be/z6_HdGqS_vM

According to all observers, Anatol can capture most of the audience - which is not natural in Ukraine's Soviet-matriarchal environment. The public echo is significant.

+++

In the wake of the media coverage, Anatol is received by Deputy Minister of Justice Hlushchenko to personally present his cause. Though still without tangible benefit, it is a remarkable gesture. After all, Ukraine's child-abduction policy is designed and conducted by the Ministry of Justice.

With Western diplomatic backing, Ukraine's Human Rights Commissioner Denisova joins Foreign Minister Klimkin's public appeals to Moscow to free several dozens of political prisoners of Ukrainian nationality. The human-rights campaign is focussed on the Crimean filmmaker Sentsov, now on hunger strike.

Such demands to Russia's President Putin would gain much more credibility, if Ukraine first released hundreds of political prisoners from its own territory: all the children abducted from abroad. Similar to Putin's prisoners, they are

• retained, locked up and isolated for political and ideological reasons in full denial of international law and human rights,
• deliberately separated from their closest relatives,
• banned from travelling.

Often they are exposed to poor medical, social and psychological conditions and subdued like private property to the abductors' will - without prospect of lawful procedures for restoring a sustainable state.

In Ukraine, no less than in Russia, arbitrary government guidelines are put above law and treaties - pushed through with a ruthlessness and severity that does not stop even at particularly vulnerable minors.

The Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, Melnyk, travels to Dusseldorf to personally protest to a group of opposition members of the Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) against the violation of sovereignty of his country. This group has just returned from a private information trip to Crimea - done via Moscow and on invitation by the Russian occupants.

Most remarkable:

• The Ukrainian government demands respect for international law in all Crimean and Donbas affairs. It is the same international law, however, which Ukraine violates by its rigorous and systematic child-abduction policy.

• Ukraine demands - and receives - massive assistance and subsidies from Western countries. Its nasty child abduction policy hits citizens of the same Western countries, children and parents, with the fist in the face.

• Lawful child repatriation endangers neither existence nor security nor stability of the state. All the more incomprehensible and infamous is Ukraine's total HCCA boycott.

In all matters of legal entry, stay and exit, Ukrainian arbitrariness and inconsistency continue to be striking. Ukraine masters the methods of expeditionary deportation, when its rulers take political interest in it. An impressive example is given by the recent deportation of the ex-governor of Odessa and ex-president of Georgia, Saakashvili , who has opposed in public the ongoing corruption within the central government.

Ex-Governor Saakashvili's deportation -> https://youtu.be/IVRYC9qPIRA

Anatol appeals to the Ambassador in a personal letter - which will remain unanswered. He also asks the involved NRW parliamentarians to stand up to Ukraine in favour of quick child return under international law.

The young, but experienced Ukrainian child and civic-rights movement "Batkomaepravo" under its chairmen Shvets and Gromova offers Anatol support and micro-control of action for Emil's and Elias's sake. In its founding declaration of 2015, it deplores a shameless system of perversion of law and discrimination to the detriment of affected children. The brazen HCCA sabotage by all state bodies is part of it.

Regarding the conditions in Ukrainian families after separation or divorce, Batkomaepravo notices what also foreign child-return applicants experience up close:

• It is nearly impossible for the father to be with the child in a place of his own choice.
• Administration and courts are totally biased in the mother's favour. They act like guillotines, chopping off elementary parental rights without mercy and in full contempt for the law. They negate the legal equality of father and mother in rights and obligations, as much as the father's necessity to participate in the child's education. Usually they grant the father only few weekly visiting hours - in the mother's presence, which usually produces great tension at the child's expense.
• Even the slightest rights of access and contact are not enforced by the authorities, if the mother refuses to comply. The system does not respond, when the rights of father and child in each other are violated. There are no enforcement procedures.
• Nobody is held accountable for the violation of law and rights.
• As typical for Ukraine, there are total corruption and bribery also in this sector of social life. Child-custody conflicts provide a profitable source of extra income for officials and judges on all levels.

On cooperation with Batkomaepravo and many others, Anatol gets even deeper insight into the catastrophic conditions in Ukraine. The rule of law and European civilization are absent. Instead, there is a toxic mixture of Soviet ideology and primitive Asiatic steppe instincts, which stipulate the mother's natural superiority in all child matters - while, in case of conflict, the father is considered as annoying, superfluous and due for disposal.

Anyone who has to deal face to face with narcissistic, domineering abductor mothers and cold-blooded, rotten woman officials in Ukraine's Soviet structures, can easily realize this error's dimension and impact. For Ukraine's ideological mother-only madness, Emil, Elias and countless other abducted, deprived and isolated children have to pay with the happiness of their childhood and with the healthy prospects for their entire lives.

In Germany, thousands of people have had to spend another Advent and Christmas season without their beloved children, grandchildren, nephews or cousins - in mourning and concern for their fate. For Emil and Elias, there has been no change for the better either in 2017. Both are missing again for half a year now.

Anatol's Christmas-Eve video message to the children --> https://youtu.be/LntBVgZjEHQ

All Ukrainian authorities in charge promote or tolerate the kidnappings. And the German government does not stop giving cover for Ukraine's criminal and inhumane behaviour. Abducted children and their parents left behind desperately need their government's responsibility, power and support. Instead they face official indolence, indifference and mass deception - enabled by Chancellor Merkel and her entourage clinging to power in the most meaningless, unpatriotic way.

If there was a politician prize for love of "alternative" truth in the field of international child abduction, plenty of candidates in the German state apparatus would unquestionably deserve it. A prize for love of real truth, however, would go to a single unchallenged - and unlikely - contender: Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Justice Petukhov. For he is the only official in this dirty abduction business having clearly admitted: Ukraine returns no kidnapped child to Germany - and breaches the Hague Convention all along !

The truth from the bandit's mouth: Deputy Minister of Justice Petukhov on television --> https://youtu.be/OygZDR_80kQ

The German government hides and denies this important fact until today. It continues to send its citizens without any preparation and support into child-return procedures that are materially and mentally ruinous and lead into nothing after long years. Those who deceive and lie to their own people are just as criminal as a cartographer who supplies falsified maps to his country's sailors on their way into the stormy sea.

For more than half a year, Anatol's urgent lawsuit on child abduction, abuse and mistreatment has been pending at Kyiv-Solomyanskiy's arch-corrupt District Court. The judge in charge Kitsyuk is still suspended after her big spring-time scandal concerning abuse of powers. The case has now been passed on to the (even colder and more Soviet) Presiding Judge Sheremetyeva. In a snap trial, she ignores all issues of child welfare and whereabouts and a pile of police protocols on access denial - and then dismisses the claim for formal reasons.

The reasoning is exemplary for Soviet-bureaucratic back-room counterfeits: Sheremetyeva alleges a second procedure of same content to be in place and calls it impermissible under Ukraine's rules. Expectedly, her judgment gives no detail of this (fictitious) second procedure.

Thus, the case falls due for appeal at Ukraine's infamous High Courts. From father's viewpoint, it is tantamount to further years of blockade. Since Emil's kidnapping, Anatol had to go through more than 30 Ukrainian court sessions on repatriation and custody rights, without the slightest improvement of the situation. Other foreign fathers have to suffer the same ordeal - because Ukraine's Soviet structures want it this way.

Rampant court corruption: Anatol's video message to the missing children --> https://youtu.be/j8EpURxasOs

+++++

Again, the German government's long-standing litany is compromised, according to which "Ukrainian court rulings deserve respect". The responsible bigwigs in Berlin and Bonn suppress the truth about the anti-child and anti-citizen excesses of Ukraine's bandit justice. All the more, they would never demand Ukraine's respect for German court judgments and arrest warrants - let alone for international treaties, basic human rights and the elementary rules of child protection. On both sides, indifference, incompetence and cynicism in all child-welfare matters are just appalling !

The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement comes into force. Thereby the lever which powerful Germany can apply to Kyiv's weak government has become even longer: The agreement requires the rule of law and respect for human rights in general - and compliance with the Hague Convention and child protection requirements in particular.

Neither in the long years of negotiations after Maidan Revolution in 2014 nor upon signing the agreement has Ukraine taken any effort to end its rigorous child-abduction and child-retention policies. In this field, violations of international law and human and children's rights unabatedly continue. Ukraine remains a safe haven for its citizens, who kidnap their own children from abroad.

A true Ukrainian national sport lies in eliminating foreign fathers from the lives and minds of their abducted children through official obstruction or repression. Parental victims from EU countries have repeatedly reported humiliation, discrimination and disregard by the Soviet-styled justice and administration - and that they are considered as troublemakers and enemies in this broken system. This is the experience Anatol and Uwe share as irreproachable (!) fathers for almost half a decade.

Especially perverse: By lifting the visa requirements, there is now freedom of travel for Ukrainian citizens in the Schengen area - while the arbitrary travel bans against EU children kidnapped to Ukraine persist !

In the way of an effective political and diplomatic initiative for Emil, Sabina and their German fellow sufferers stand arrogance, mendacity and political corruption of the bigwigs of Germany's Foreign Office and Federal Ministry of Justice.

+++++

With moral camouflage, Germany is run almost only by ideology and opportunism. The government vociferously supports Turkish journalists, Chinese dissidents, Burmese expellees, Polish opposition leaders, Ukrainian prisoners of war or friendly candidates in election campaigns of Western allies - but not the children in need of its own country !! Hungary is regularly pilloried for legally protecting its territory and its population against the mass influx of migrants on the Balkan route. For Ukraine's severe child-abduction crimes, however, there is carte blanche from Berlin.

Emil's abduction comes to its fourth anniversary. The child grows up in poor conditions: practically as half-orphan, isolated and locked up, underdeveloped and undercared for, without promotion and life perspective, without continuity and stability. Both his monthly aliments and his top-end German private health insurance remain untouched by the abductor mother.

Though being powerful donor, Germany is reluctant to oppose Ukraine's child-abduction and child-retention policies. Consequently, Soviet-minded justice and administration in Kyiv block any of Anatol's attempts to make the wall around his beloved son permeable. Meanwhile on his 42nd abduction-related Ukraine journey, he even cannot hand over of Emil's birthday presents.

Benevolent police officers have bluntly told Anatol about the views and practice of Ukrainian authorities:

• As foreigner in a family conflict, he stands on the same level of contempt as an illegal immigrant from sub-Saharan Africa.
• Only the (selfish) mother interests count, while child welfare and paternal rights are consistently ignored. This means that foreign fathers are massively discriminated against by gender and nationality !
• "Nobody will help you in this country!"

In Germany's renowned political television magazine "Report Mainz", the investigative journalist Anthes reveals the striking political aspects of Emil's and Sabina's abduction tragedies for the first time. Officially and in front of the camera, Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Justice Petukhov admits: There have been 33 child-return claims from Germany so far, and yet not a single kidnapped German child has been sent back. Thus: The repatriation quota is zero !

Furthermore:

• Both fathers Uwe and Anatol receive virtually no official help and remain like stateless people left to themselves. The German Embassy in Kyiv rejects Uwe in front of the camera and declines any comment.
• Ukrainian civil-rights campaigner and lawyer Pronin calls this kind of violation of international law an "absolute standard situation".
• German lawyer Weisker recalls file censorship and restricted access to information "in consideration of international relations". Both is tantamount to breach of duty and political opportunism of the German authorities , which do not support their fellow citizens in any way.

"REPORT Mainz" -> https://youtu.be/24aFwvO4RUE

Towards millions of television viewers, it is now unequivocally clarified: Ukraine is boycotting the Hague Convention completely - supported by the German policy of toleration and surrender ! This crucial fact and the related figures are hidden from the applicants as long as possible in order to let them run into the void.

Without further notice, Kyiv-Solomyanskiy's District Judge Kitsyuk does not show up for the court date for reviewing the inhumane, forceful father-son contact rules. This form of spontaneous "leave" is method of choice of the arch-corrupt judiciary to dodge the ongoing integrity checks.

In 2015, Kitsyuk has imposed the repressive 6-hour-per-month regime on Emil and Anatol (with habitual arbitrariness and no legal grounds). On top, she has been recently arrested by Kyiv's Patrol Police for reckless traffic obstruction, drunkenness and inappropriate public appearance.

• Judge Kitsyuk's scandals on Ukrainian television -> https://youtu.be/2QNoEPgsn-s*

The scandal throws a spotlight on the antisocial milieu dominating Ukraine's judicial system - and thus determining children's fates, too. It has its peer among those German officials who have turned away from their own people, cover the child theft of Ukraine (and other abductor states), deny any perversion of law and thereby flaunt their contempt for man.

It is Anatol's 40th journey to Ukraine since Emil's abduction in 2013.

In the light of Emil's critical situation, Munich's Prosecution Office renews the Interpol arrest warrant against Iryna.

Ukraine ignores it again - and even does not start a criminal investigation.

In an expertise on his country's child-abduction policy, Kyiv's renowned lawyer Pronin, member of the Parliamentary Anti-Corruption Council , concludes: Ukraine systematically violates international law and fundamental human rights - and makes child repatriation on legal ways impossible.

Furthermore:

• The Soviet-styled judiciary is neither independent nor law-abiding. Among the people, it is completely discredited.
• There is no effective control of judges who abuse their powers and pervert law.
• The numerous child abduction cases and the illegal and arbitrary administrative and judicial practice show legal nihilism and deep corruption on all state levels.

The expertise is a resounding slap in the face of Germany's government propagandists. Shamelessly and without any sense of responsibility, the Embassy, ​​the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Justice continue to pretend in their external communication that in Ukraine there are a functioning legal system, independence of courts and conformity with the Hague Convention.

Police sources in Kyiv confirm to Uwe and Anatol: Behind their back, the Ukrainian authorities have imposed travel bans on Emil and Sabina. Thus, without (most unlikely) consent of the abductor mothers, it is impossible to the children to vsit their fathers or spend their vacation in Germany.

It means: At first, the abductor mothers have set up an inner wall around the children, and then, in its notorious Soviet ways, Ukraine has added an outer wall. Such are the conditions as in the former communist internment system (GULAG): The children are detained, isolated, and moved from place to place like prisoners - without notification to close relatives.

The civil rights activists, who are committed to the rule of law and therefore to Emil's and Sabina's return to Germany, have investigated: Currently, more than 400 foreign children are illegally retained in Ukraine, with no prospect of repatriation.

++++++++++

Emil's and Sabina's fate reflect grand politics: Ukraine is practically incapable of reform and incompatible with EU. In 2014, the Maidan movement has swept the former hopefuls Petrenko, Yanchuk and Petukhov to the top of Kyiv's Ministry of Justice. Today, not only in the field of the Hague Convention, these bigwigs sign the same mendacious Soviet-bureaucratic decrees and declarations as their predecessors of the ancien regime. They are no longer recognized by their former allies: corrupted by the system, with some reform polish on the surface. They say "Europe" - and do "Soviet Union". The system clearly seeks to exhaust and to put off foreign fathers. Immediate threats to the kidnapped children's welfare and future are ignored.

In Kyiv, even unpolitical people aware of the situation are ashamed of the harm the Ukrainian state does to kidnapped children and their relatives left behind. On behalf of their country, they apologize to Uwe and Anatol.

In response to Anatol's help request, the Child-Affairs Chargee and Vice-President of the European Parliament McGuinness informs: Ukraine's Ministry of Justice officially insists that the child-return procedure was appropriate and Emil's stay in Kyiv legal and permanent.

There is not a single word about

• the systematic deception of foreign child-return applicants,
• the proven massive violations of international law at all administrative and judicial levels,
• the child's ongoing isolation and underdevelopment,
• the state-sponsored efforts of father-child alienation and
• the catastrophic conditions in the state apparatus.

Rule of lie instead of rule of law - this is Ukrainian reality even after the (unfinished) Maidan revolution.

Beyond its (usually empty) official phrases, the European Parliament does not show any willingness to intervene against the violation of European fundamental values manifested here. The Chairman of the Foreign-Relations Committee Brok plays a particularly negative role, leaving the child-rescue task undone for more than two years.

Thanks to advanced parental networking, the latest German-Ukrainian child-abduction case quickly becomes known: The toddler Sofia Z. has been displaced from Lower Bavaria to the Donetsk war zone. When applying for repatriation, the German officials do not inform Sofia's father Hubert at all about the boycott of the Hague Convention and the bleak legal situation in Ukraine. Instead, he meets obvious indifference and disinterest. Effective support is denied as in Emil's case, although Germany's government envoys and parliamentarians are highly present in the region for years.

A Soviet-style committee of 13 woman functionaries of Kyiv-Solomyanskiy's Children's Office - lead by the notorious man-haters Strelyuk, Cherkassova, Davydenko - rejects Anatol's claim for the abolition of all contact restrictions. After two Kafkaesque hearings, it is unanimously decided that the child's mother fulfills her duties, the well-being of the child is assured, and there is no reason for any change of the currnet regime. Even under Ukrainian conditions, incompetence, arbitrariness and Soviet-feminist bias of the committee are outstanding.

Particularly striking:

• As at Ukraine's courts, all inconvenient evidence is suppressed - foremost the socio-medical reports on Emil's critical condition and the numerous police protocols on denial of access.
• An independent medical examination of the children is refused without reasons given.
• Neither are Anatol's statements minuted nor his legal counsel admitted - so that there be neither testimony nor witness.

In pursuit of clean hands, the German embassy in Kyiv has helped to initiate this spectacle - even though the actors and their procedures are well-known and the zero result has been completely foreseeable. Again, Germany's and Ukraine's officials display their common disinterest in changing the status quo.

Father and sons remain forcefully separated - and have now sunk even deeper into the Ukrainian swamp of abuse and deprivation. By the ongoing state crime against the human right to family, they are further prevented from celebrating Christmas and birthdays together.

Kyiv's Mayor Klitchko ignores Anatol's petition against the abuse of powers in his municipal administration.

Kyiv-Solomyanskiy's District Court formally declares Anatol's second fatherhood: Elias Yelisey is Emil's brother born in 2014 in Kyiv, as the eleventh-hour offspring from marital end-time. For long, Iryna has kept his existence secret. Due to Iryna's total defiance, a paternity test has been done only by court order. Under Ukraine's habitual arbitrariness, the judgment is unexpectedly objective and humane: Every child has a right for knowing its biological father !

Remarkably, in contrast to Emil's case, the Ukrainian authorities do not restrict the contact between Elias and Anatol. Officially, both can be together whenever and wherever they want to. Nevertheless, Iryna denies access off Anatol's regular visits to Emil.

Elias has not gone through a brutal abduction odyssey - and therefore appears less hurt and troubled than Emil. Likewise, the father-son relationship is filled with warmth and mutual curiosity. Iryna and her mother respond with constantly high aggressiveness and massive intereference. Elias is just as exposed to the women's defiance, narcissism and paranoia as Emil. Under this insane dictatorship, the children lack stability, continuity and healthy opportunities for thriving. There are further lock-outs - protocoled by Police without consequences.

In spite of Anatol's repeated complaints against these oppressive conditions, Soviet-minded Children's Office does not step in. Now Anatol has to suffer twice with his beloved sons. In lawless Ukraine, his hands are tied.

+++++

Note:

Like Emil, Elias is permanently deprived of his rights and locked away. As, however, the frame is different from cross-border kidnapping, his case does not fall under the Hague Convention. Therefore its details are reported elsewhere.

Elias's chronicle --> https://www.facebook.com/nichtohneemil/

In Sabina's case, Kyiv's Court of Cassation has turned back father Uwe to the first instance - for flimsy reasons, being part of an obvious delaying tactic. There, after another strictly partisan hearing and selective taking of evidence, the child return is rejected.

Again and again, the Ukrainian child-abductor state applies its proven weapons - as in the parallel cases of the minors Erik Z. and Rodolfo P. from Italy:

• excessive procrastinating child-return procedures and systematically deceiving the HCCA applicants,
• tolerating and supporting forceful father-child separation and alienation,
• protecting of the abductor mothers from sanctions and prosecution,
• transfering de facto the sole custody right to the abductor mothers,
• severely manipulating court procedures and judgments - falsified evidence and assessments included -,
• exercising institutional violence and repression against the foreign fathers.

With the feared arbitrariness and incompetence, the Court of Cassation rejects Emil's repatriation in a fast-track procedure. The Soviet judiciary completely ignores the HCCA, the binding German court judgments and the total failure of the Ukrainian authorities during the two long years of child abduction.

In their bizarre brief inquiry, the Judges do not deal with the core issue - the illegality of Emil's retention in Ukraine. Instead they take interest only in the nationality of Iryna's second child (with unexplained paternity). It is the same law-evasive tactics as at the Court of Appeal: focussing trivialities in order to distract from the (unambiguous) essentials.

Thus Ukraine has routineously legalized Emil's kidnapping and posed once more as active child-abductor state outside the international law. So it has happened some days earlier in Sabina's case too: Without any reference to HCCA, the Court Of Appeal has rejected her return.

+++

Seeking help, Anatol turns again to Germany's Foreign Office and Parliament as well as to European Parliament. He renews his request to the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice in order to have returned Emil to Germany on the direct administrative way** according to HCCA article 18 - because Ukraine's judiciary has proven incapable and unwilling to do so.

A few days later, it is shown again how justified all concerns about judicial manipulation are: The Presiding Judge Chernushenko of Kyiv's Court of Appeal is arrested by anti-corruption investigators in the court building - holding high amounts of cash and written evidence of judgment manipulation. To such bandit Justice are Anatol, Uwe and their children subdued for two years !

After the Enforcement Agency has ignored the repatriation order for three months and Iryna has gone into hiding with Emil, the Soviet-style Kyiv Court of Appeal revokes it - under severe manipulation of facts.

In their verdict, the notoriously corrupt judges state that

• a child belongs to the mother and
• it is not proven that Emil is retained in Ukraine without his father's consent.

The former is ideology without legal base and the latter an infamous lie - by reinterpreting Anatol's temporary travel permit as consent to Emil's permanent chnage of residence. Significantly, both aspects have not been considered in the court hearing, but subsequently fabricated in the back room.

The bloodshed on Kyiv's Maidan Square begins, and Ukraine is on the brink of civil war. Terrified by these events, Anatol calls Iryna from Munich and appeals to her to make Emil and herself ready for departure - wherever she was.

Iryna refuses the appeal: Rather would she die in Ukraine than live in Germany. It is another shocking sign of her irresponsibility to the child.

Upon his application, Munich's District Court transfers to Anatol the sole right to determine residence and medical care for Emil. In the grounds, Judge Bogusch points inter alia to the abductor mother's extreme possessivity to the detriment of the child.

The Ukrainian authorities do not respond to the court ruling which is binding under the International Convention on the Protection of Children (CST). Instead they suspend the child-return procedure.

Anatol's notifications and help requests to the German authorities bounce off there like on a rubber wall.

With a heavy heart, Anatol submits an official child-return claim to Ukraine's Ministry of Justice via Germany's Federal Justice Agency (BfJ). It is based on the civilian Hague Convention on International Child Abduction (HCCA) of 1980, which has international legal status.

The Convention obliges the country of destination to immediately return an abducted child to the country of origin, which is assigned any custody settlement. In Emil's case, repatriation is absolutely mandatory, since

• the child is retained on Ukrainian territory without its father's consent,
• the child's father is in full possession of parental custody rights at the time of the kidnapping,
• the child, as properly registered inhabitant and citizen of Germany, has its habitual residence in Munich County and
• the return claim is filed within one year.

The BfJ states: Ukraine uses to cooperates well and to examine thoroughly, and observes the Convention "in principle". This will prove as deliberate deception - and opens the way into a deep political swamp of betrayal and corruption, arbitrariness and abuse of power, conspiracy and collaboration, falsification and censorship.

What is actually looming in Ukraine: a year-long show trial of Soviet style - with predetermined outcome.

The first of two times, Anatol travels to Kyiv to seek communication and a peaceful conflict settlement. Iryna and her mother Halyna, however, display themselves hard, dictatorial, irrational and completely unable to dialogue and compromise. Their claim: The child is theirs only !

Emil's external living conditions have drastically worsened: in a run-down poor socialist apartment block, along the main road, with smog and noise around the clock.

The mother is poor pensioner and Iryna without employment and regular income. Anatol starts to remit monthly alimonies for Emil.

At the end of the agreed travel time, Iryna announces that she will not return to Germany and instead live with Emil and her mother in Kyiv. Anatol's horror, protest and grief do not touch her at all.

For her justification, Iryna raises bizarre allegations that point to severe paranoia: Emil's well-being is threatened, the German healthcare system is corrupt and Germany is a nasty country.

Iryna leaves for Kyiv with Emil - ostensibly for a six-week visit to her mother. For this purpose, Anatol issues the boy a temporary travel permit.

But he is not aware of Iryna's second thaughts: For Emil, it will be a journey without return ...

Emil delights everyone through his cheerful, lively and open-minded nature. He is thriving in his new home in the family settlement of Haar in Munich County.

Iryna, however, denies any form of integration and turns ever more jealous and dominant, with a strong aversion to her new German environment.

Iryna shields off Emil to the outside world and suspects everyone of wanting to take him away from her. She rejects even the most basic medical check-ups and vaccinations with the utmost vehemence - claiming that German doctors harmed and killed children out of greed.

Emil is born as Iryna's and Anatol's son. In spite of its poor conditions, Iryna has chosen a dilapidated public hospital in Kyiv as place of birth. Food and medicine must be brought along, and a generous "patronage" payment to the birth doctor is due.

Family law forth, international law back ... What Anatol does not know yet - but Iryna all the better: It is the essential geographic condition, which will make the Ukrainian authorities always regard Emil as a purely native child.

This is the first act of the upcoming drama.

Offspring is underway ! After some "everyday-life training" in Germany and months of bureaucratic obstacle course, Iryna and Anatol marry in Kyiv.

Prior to wedding, they have opted for Munich as their center of life.

Hiking for days along the Lycian coastal path between Antalya and Marmaris has brought Iryna and Anatol firmly together.

It is the prelude to a moving relationship - with plenty of commuting between Germany and Ukraine under the restrictive Schengen visa regime.

Iryna and Anatol meet for the first time as hikers in the Crimean Mountains east of Yalta.

What connects them right away: love for nature, passion for travel and a sense of family.