A date many Washington-based Ukraine watchers might want to pencil in their diaries:
From RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
Ukrainian Politician's Son Escapes Pretrial Detention After Injuring Pedestrian
KYIV -- A Ukrainian politician's son charged with hitting and seriously injuring a pedestrian while driving a car has avoided pretrial detention.
The Shevchenko district court in Kyiv ruled on August 30 that Nestor Shufrych Jr. will be under the supervision of his father Nestor Shufrych, who is a member of the Opposition bloc in the Ukrainian parliament.
Investigators say Nestor Shufrych Jr., 22, was speeding while driving his Bentley in Kyiv on August 26 and hitting a man who was crossing the street.
The man, identified as Oleksiy Melnychenko, 31, was hospitalized with skull injures and bone fractures.
Ukrainian officials or members of their families who are suspected of crimes or other wrongdoings often enjoy special treatment from authorities.
President Petro Poroshenko and Ukraine’s government have been under pressure from ordinary Ukrainians and Western governments to fight corruption.
Critics say corruption runs so deep in Ukraine that it hurts the country’s chances of throwing off the influence of Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backs separatists in eastern Ukraine.
From our news desk:
Ukraine To Deport 'Kidnapped' Russian State TV Journalist
Ukrainian authorities say they have expelled a Russian state TV journalist, despite condemnation from Russia and a pan-European security organization.
In a Facebook post late on August 30, Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) spokeswoman Olena Hitlyanska said Russian First Channel correspondent Anna Kurbatova had been sent back to Russia and banned from entering Ukraine for three years.
"Russian propagandist Anna Kurbatova, whose forcible expulsion has been decided, has crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border," Hitlanskaya said. "She has been banned from entering our state for three years."
When contacted by the media earlier,Gitlyanska had declined to answer questions about whether and how Kurbatova had been detained.
The same thing will happen to "anyone who allows themselves to discredit Ukraine," she wrote on Facebook.
The expulsion comes after First Channel said Kurbatova had been detained by the SBU in Kyiv and that her whereabouts were unknown.
First Channel said Kurbatova had previously received threats from people who did not like her reports.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the move was a "deliberate provocation" by Ukraine's security service and nationalist radicals.
Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, wrote on social media that the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) and its member states should condemn Ukraine's behavior.
The move was condemned by an official from the OSCE, which monitors the conflict in eastern Ukraine and counts both Ukraine and Russia as members.
"I call on #Ukraine not to arrest & deport journalists from other OSCE States #AnnaKurbatova," Harlem Desir, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, wrote on Twitter.
The chairman of the Russian Journalists' Union, Vsevolod Bogdanov, said earlier that his organization would urge the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other international organizations to help find Kurbatova, whom some Russian media reports described as having been kidnapped by the SBU.
Kyiv has banned more than a dozen Russian television channels since 2014, accusing them of spreading war propaganda.
On August 29, the SBU said it had barred two Spanish journalists over their coverage of the war eastern Ukraine -- a move media groups decried as an attack on free speech.
Russian-Ukrainian relations soured badly after protesters angry over the Ukrainian government's abandonment of a landmark deal with the European Union pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014.
Russia seized control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, after sending in troops, and backed separatists whose war against Kyiv's forces has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.