1997: The last execution in Ukraine

ExecutedToday.com ^ | March 11, 2012 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

The last execution in Ukraine apparently took place on this date in 1997 — and bizarrely, nobody even seems sure of exactly who enjoyed this unwelcome distinction.

This was post-Soviet Ukraine under Leonid Kuchma, a man in no way renowned for his excessive regard for human dignity.

But Kuchma was keen on integrating with Europe, and that meant appeasing western Europe’s human rights sensibilities.

Ukraine joined the Council of Europe in 1995, a move that required it to abolish the death penalty. But executions — by means of the old Soviet method, a single gunshot to the back of the head — were ragingly popular during a decade of economic collapse and spiraling crime.

According to When the State No Longer Kills, which has an entire chapter devoted to the Ukrainian abolition experience, Ukraine’s annual count of reported murders shot up from 2,016 in 1988 to 4,896 by 1996, with 4,000-plus per annum every year from 1993 on....

[CheshireTheCat]

Okay, so this was true as of 2012. I don't know about as of today.

[BobL]

“1997: The last execution in Ukraine”

Tell that to the families of some of the Russian POWs in the videos that were made.

[Kazan]

That may true of legal executions. But, Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis have been committing genocide against ethnic Russians since we fomented the illegal coup that empowered them in 2014.