FIFTH SECTIONCASE OF POLTORATSKYY v. UKRAINE(Application no. 11551/13)   JUDGMENT STRASBOURG22 April 2021   This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.In the case of Poltoratskyy v. Ukraine,The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of: Mārtiņš Mits, President, Jovan Ilievski, Ivana Jelić, judges,and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,Having regard to:the application (no. 11551/13) against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a Ukrainian national, Mr Boryslav Yevgenovych Poltoratskyy (“the applicant”), on 21 August 2012;the decision to give notice to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”) of the complaints under Articles 3, 8 and 13 of the Convention and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;the Government’s statement that they were not in a position to provide observations on the admissibility and merits of the application;the applicant’s observations;Having deliberated in private on 25 March 2021,Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:INTRODUCTION1. The case concerns the alleged lack of any genuine prospect of the applicant’s release in view of his life-imprisonment sentence (Article 3); the restrictions on his right to family visits during his sentence (Article 8); and the lack of effective domestic remedies in respect of those grievances (Article 13).THE FACTS2. The applicant was born in 1976 and is serving a life sentence in Vinnytsya Prison no. 1. He had been granted legal aid and was represented by Mr Gennadiy Tokarev, a lawyer practising in Kharkiv.3. The Government were represented by their Agent, Mr Ivan Lishchyna.4. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant and not contested by the Government, may be summarised as follows.5. On 12 December 1995 the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Court (“the Ivano-Frankivsk Court”) found the applicant guilty of several counts of aggravated murder and robbery and sentenced him to the death penalty.6. On 22 February 1996 the Supreme Court upheld that verdict.7. On 2 June 2000 the Ivano-Frankivsk Court commuted the applicant’s death sentence to life imprisonment in compliance with the legislative amendments to that effect.8. The applicant’s parents have been visiting him in prison in accordance with the applicable legal rules.RELEVANT LEGAL FRAMEWORK9. Legal provisions pertaining to life imprisonment can be found in Petukhov v. Ukraine (no. 2) (no. 41216/13, §§ 75‑90, 12 March 2019).10. Legal provisions on visiting entitlement in prison can be found in Trosin v. Ukraine (no. 39758/05, §§ 26 and 29, 23 February 2012), Bigun v. Ukraine ([Committee], no. 30315/10, §§ 15-19, 21 March 2019), and Starishko v. Ukraine ([Committee], no. 61839/12, §§ 9 and 10, 15 October 2020).THE LAWALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 3 OF THE CONVENTION11. The applicant complained that his life sentence was incompatible with Article 3 of the Convention, which reads as follows:“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”Admissibility12. The Court notes that this complaint is neither manifestly ill-founded nor inadmissible on any other grounds listed in Article 35 of the Convention. It must therefore be declared admissible.Merits13. The applicant argued that the circumstances of his case were similar to those in Petukhov v. Ukraine (no. 2) (no. 41216/13, 12 March 2019), in which the Court had found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on account of the irreducible nature of the sentence of life imprisonment in Ukraine.14. Referring to the ongoing legislative process in relation to life sentence in Ukraine, the Government submitted that they were not in a position to provide observations on this case.15. The Court notes that, as rightly pointed out by the applicant, the circumstances of the present case disclose the same problem as that criticised by the Court in Petukhov (cited above, §§ 169-87). Like Mr Petukhov, the applicant in the present case is a life prisoner who is, for the time being, deprived of any genuine prospect of release.16. The applicant complained that the restrictions on his right to family visits during his sentence, which had been in effect until the legislative amendments of 2014, had been contrary to Article 8 of the Convention, which reads in its relevant parts as follows:“1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life ...2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”Admissibility18.

Article of the Convention at issue: Article 3
Outcome: violation