Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is turning 42 on 13 July.  It will be his fourth birthday in a Russian prison, and must be his last. The Kremlin’s most famous Ukrainian hostage has been on hunger strike since 14 May and has made it clear that he will not give up until Russia releases him and other Ukrainian political prisoners

Ihor Kiyashko has been in Russian custody since 9 April 2018, with it likely that the FSB are using torture or other illegal methods to extract ‘confessions’ to ‘spying’.  It is difficult otherwise to explain why the far more serious espionage should have appeared only two months after his arrest, and why Kiyashko has been prevented from having an independent lawyer  

If Oleg Sentsov, Emir-Usein Kuku and Oleksandr Shumkov are on hunger strike for the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners, ignoring their demand helps only Russia (INFORMATION HERE about the other prisoners)

A Moscow court has fined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) after ruling that it had failed to comply with a Russian law regulating media outlets branded by the government as "foreign agents."

A court in Krasnodar has ordered Russia’s Finance Ministry to pay 4.5 million roubles in compensation for torturing five adolescents in a ‘corrective institution’, with two million of that sum awarded to the mother of 16-year-old Ukrainian, Vitaly Pop, who was savagely beaten to death

It has long been assumed that the persecution of Oleksandr Kostenko and Andriy Kolomiyets was in revenge for Moscow’s failure to prevent Euromaidan, with this only confirmed by the measures taken to make Kostenko’s last weeks in prison as hellish as possible.

With Russian lies failing to silence mounting international calls for the release of Oleg Sentsov and all Russia’s Ukrainian political prisoners, deception has been used to block access to Sentsov, and a provocateur deployed in an inept attempt to discredit the renowned Ukrainian filmmaker.

Russia’s FSB are preventing imprisoned Ukrainian student Pavlo Hryb from receiving vital medication, despite being fully informed of the rare blood circulation disease which the young man suffers from and the grave risk to his life posed by lack of proper medical care

Russia’s Investigative Committee has initiated new and serious criminal proceedings against Yuri Dmitriev after its first trial of the world-renowned historian and head of the Karelia branch of Memorial failed abysmally

Valentin Vyhivsky has been in Russian captivity since September 2014 because he responded to an acquaintance’s plea for money, purportedly needed for a relative’s cancer treatment.  The timing and manner in which Vyhivsky simply vanished after arriving in occupied Simferopol suggest that he may have been the victim of an FSB set-up, one of many such Ukrainian victims since Russia’s invasion of Crimea

Even according to Russia’s repressive legislation, Dmitry Kalinychev’s solitary pickets are legal, however the Kremlin has clearly ordered a crackdown on any protest during the World Cup, together with the removal of down-and-outs and slaughter of hundreds of stray dogs

A Russian court in Novorossiysk has sentenced Ukrainian Mykola Dadey to 18 months’ imprisonment for supposedly ‘encouraging participation in an extremist organization’.  The charges are linked to Facebook posts from 2015 when Dadey was in Ukraine where the organization he was seeking to help – the nationalist Right Sector -  is entirely legal . 

Russia has prevented Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Ludmila Denisova from visiting two recognized political prisoners, first Oleg Sentsov, and then Mykola Karpyuk.  The excuse given in Sentsov’s case is particularly cynical and of major concern since the renowned Ukrainian filmmaker has now been on hunger strike for well over a month

A rare moment of justice from a Russian court has proved all too fleeting. On 14 June, Karelia’s High Court overturned the acquittal in April of world-renowned historian Yuri Dmitriev and sent the ‘case’ back for retrial.

There are countless reasons why the 2018 World Cup should not provide its host country Russia with an image success, but one is extremely urgent.  Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov has now been on hunger strike for over a month and has made it clear he will not give up until all Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia and occupied Crimea are released . 

Russia’s Investigative Committee has completed its ‘investigation’ into surreal charges laid against 28-year-old Oleksandr Shumkov, who was almost certainly abducted to Russia and is now facing ’trial’ and a possible 6-year sentence for involvement in the perfectly legal Ukrainian organization Right Sector

The Moscow City Court has found Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko guilty of mystery ‘spying’ and sentenced him to twelve years in a maximum security prison

Russia’s political persecution of Ukrainians coincided with its invasion and annexation of Crimea, and has continued unabated. Oleg Sentsov’s indefinite hunger strike has renewed demands for his release, however he has vowed to continue until Russia release all political prisoners [LIST and DETAILS]

Oleksander Kolchenko, the already desperately thin Crimean civic activist imprisoned in the same Russian show trial as filmmaker Oleg Sentsov has declared a hunger strike, demanding that Russia free Sentsov

Russian Foreign Ministry and state-controlled media have begun pushing an alternative reality version of the gunning down in Kyiv of Arkady Babchenko, Russian journalist and outspoken critic of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin