In a judgment handed down on 2 July 2026, the European Court of Human Rights held that Ukraine had violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to the death of the applicants’ ten-year-old son, who was struck and killed by a train near Irpin railway station in November 2016. The Court found that the authorities failed to take reasonable measures to address the known dangers posed by an unofficial pedestrian crossing that had been used by local residents for many years.
The Court also found that ‘the domestic investigation (…) was so flagrantly deficient that it raises issues of either manifest incompetence by the authorities or sabotage of the investigative work’. Despite the immediate opening of criminal proceedings, investigators failed to pursue essential lines of inquiry, secure key evidence, or properly involve the family.
The Court awarded the applicants €24,000 in non-pecuniary damages, €842 for pecuniary loss (the cost of a memorial at their son’s grave), and €6,000 in costs and expenses.
Prof. Philip Leach acted for Mr Sergiy Zayets and Ms Nataliya Zayets with Toby Collis, Jessica Gavron and Kate Levine of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre and Maxim Timofeev of the Ukrainian NGO, Regional Centre for Human Rights.
Read the full judgment here.