FIFTH SECTION      CASE OF URZHANOV v. UKRAINE (Application no. 24392/06)              JUDGMENT    STRASBOURG 14 December 2017   This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.In the case of Urzhanov v. Ukraine,The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of: André Potocki, President, Síofra O’Leary, Mārtiņš Mits, judges,and Liv Tigerstedt, Acting Deputy Section Registrar,Having deliberated in private on 23 November 2017,Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:PROCEDURE1. The case originated in an application against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 2 June 2006.2. The applicant was represented by Mr A.A. Kristenko, a lawyer practising in Kharkiv.3. The application was communicated to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”).THE FACTS4. The relevant details of the application are set out in the appended table.THE LAWI. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 3 OF THE CONVENTION5. The applicant complained of inadequate conditions of his detention. He relied on Article 3 of the Convention, which reads as follows:Article 3“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”6. The Government considered that the applicant had failed to exhaust the domestic remedies available to him under Ukrainian law before lodging his application with the Court, in that he had not raised the issue of conditions of detention before the prosecutor competent to supervise penitentiary establishments. They next maintained that the applicant had not applied to the domestic courts in order to challenge the conditions of his detention.7. The Court considers that, in the light of its findings in similar cases, the applicant’s complaint under Article 3 of the Convention about the conditions of his detention cannot be rejected for failure to exhaust domestic remedies (see, Yakovenko v. Ukraine, no. 15825/06, §§ 75-76, 25 October 2007).8. The Court notes that the applicant was kept in detention in poor conditions. The details of the applicant’s detention are indicated in the appended table. The Court refers to the principles established in its case‑law regarding inadequate conditions of detention (see, for instance, Muršić v. Croatia [GC], no. 7334/13, §§ 96‑101, ECHR 2016). It reiterates in particular that a serious lack of space in a prison cell weighs heavily as a factor to be taken into account for the purpose of establishing whether the detention conditions described are “degrading” from the point of view of Article 3 and may disclose a violation, both alone or taken together with other shortcomings (see Muršić, cited above, §§ 122 ‑141, and Ananyev and Others v. Russia, nos. 42525/07 and 60800/08, §§ 149‑159, 10 January 2012).9. In the leading case of Melnik v. Ukraine, (no. 72286/01, 28 March 2006), the Court already found a violation in respect of issues similar to those in the present case.10. Having examined all the material submitted to it, the Court has not found any fact or argument capable of persuading it to reach a different conclusion on the admissibility and merits of this complaint. Having regard to its case-law on the subject, the Court considers that in the instant case the applicant’s conditions of detention were inadequate.11. APPLICATION OF ARTICLE 41 OF THE CONVENTION12.

Outcome for Article 3: violation