The attorney in the Loshchynivka murder case will once again appeal to the European Court

The attorney for Mykhailo Chobotar, who was sentenced to life in prison by the Primorsky District Court of Odesa for the murder of a young woman in the village of Loshchynivka — Andriy Leshchenko has decided to file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights due to delays in the consideration of the appeal.

Andriy Leshchenko informed Intent of this. 

The lawyer emphasized that a hearing was scheduled for June 25 but did not take place because the pretrial detention center failed to ensure Mykhailo Chobotar’s presence at the court hearing via videoconference.

“The court said they had notified the detention center of the need for Mykhailo to be present at the hearing, but the detention center claimed they had not received any such notification,” Andriy Leshchenko noted.

He also emphasized that the hearing had been postponed until November and that hearings have been held only once every six months. The previous postponement occurred in April 2026. Prior to that, the court had already postponed the case multiple times for various reasons. Most recently, on January 22, the hearing was postponed due to Andriy Leshchenko’s illness, and prior to that, on January 30, because the interpreter did not appear at the hearing, and Mykhailo Chobotar does not know Ukrainian well enough to proceed without him. 

Prior to that, hearings had been postponed throughout the year for various reasons. In July, Andriy Leshchenkofiled a motion to recusethe judges due to delays in the case, but the judges denied the motion. The attorney considered the court’s actions to be a deliberate attempt to drag out the proceedings, stemming from an unwillingness to reach a decision.

The review of attorney Andriy Leshchenko’s appeal against the verdict by which the Primorsky District Court ofOdessa convictedhis client, Mykhailo Chobotar, of the murder of a young woman in Loshchynivka, was transferred to the Mykolaiv Court of Appeals in December 2023, after the panel of judges at the Odesa Court of Appeals, which had been hearing the appeal on September 22,recused itself.

In November 2022, the European Court of HumanRights found thatUkraine had violated the European Convention on Human Rights due to the inadequate conditions of detentionof Mykhailo Chobotar, who was accused of murdering a young woman in the village of Loshchynivka, Izmail District, Odesa Oblast. 

Among other issues, the case involved the excessive length of pretrial detention and the lack of compensation for unlawful detention. As a result, attorney AndriyLeshchenko fileda motion to recuse two judges back in June 2023, but the panel refused to grant the motion. Attorney Serhiy Ivaniv filed a second motion to recuse the judges, but it was also denied.

On February 1, 2023, the Primorsky Court of Odesa found Mykhailo Chobotar guilty of murdering an eight-year-old girl in the village of Loshchynivka in the Izmail District of Odesa Oblast and sentenced him to life in prison.

Theprosecution insisted that they had proven that in August 2016, while intoxicated, the man raped the child and, in order to conceal the crime, decided to kill the girl. Taking out a screwdriver he had on him, he struck the victim several times on the head with the handle and stabbed her five times in the chest with the blade. As a result of her injuries, the girl died at the scene. Mykhailo Chobotar did not admit guilt during the court hearing.

Кирило Бойко