Most detentions were made in Minsk, where black-clad security forces used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse thousands of demonstrators.

A third trial is due to begin on 24 November of Yury Dmitriev, world-renowned historian of the Soviet Terror and Russian political prisoner.

New plans are underway to further stifle Russian human rights organizations and other NGOs whom the authorities have labelled ‘foreign agents’

Viktor Shur has sent his daughter his latest works from the Russian prison colony where the 63-year-old Ukrainian is imprisoned on fabricated charges

There has been a significant decline in the number of Russians declaring pride in what the pollsters call the ‘reunification of Crimea’

Lukashenka is using ever more savage methods against Belarusians who want him to go, with 300 detained on 1 November, yet pensioners coming out on 2 November for their biggest demonstration so far

A Russian court has sentenced Pavel Rebrovsky to six years’ imprisonment after the young man found the courage to retract false testimony given under pressure and to reveal the truth about one of the FSB’s most cynical attacks on young people with opposition views.

Although there is nothing unusual in today’s Russia about political trials on fabricated charges, nor about the use of torture, this case stands out as young left-wing activists received up to 18 years for involvement in a ‘terrorist’ organization that never existed

Belarusian police detained more than 90 people during the latest rally to demand that authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka step down as a political standoff enters its 11th week

Since one Russian has already faced prosecution for reposting a text rightly stating that the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939, this new law seems set to stifle discussion about the Second World War

The timing of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s latest attempt to crush protests against his illegitimate rule in Belarus could not have been more appropriate

Iryna Slavina, chief editor of the independent website Koza.Press and target of numerous attempts to silence a courageously outspoken journalist and civic activist, set fire to herself outside the police headquarters in Nizhniy Novgorod on 2 October.

This is an effective death sentence for the 64-year-old historian and political prisoner, and one that was passed behind closed doors in the absence of his lawyer and with Dmitriev himself prevented from properly taking part

We believe, and hope you agree, that our voices should be heard in defence of the victims of persecution, rather than our silence helping the perpetrators

Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Shumkov is due to be released from a Russian prison on 24 December 2020, however the prison administration has asked for him to be placed under ‘administrative surveillance’ for a further eight years

When these protests first erupted seven weeks earlier following a flawed presidential election, few expected them to last

The ruling is a shocking travesty of justice and one that Ukraine should not ignore, as Russia is staging the same fatally flawed ‘trials’ in occupied Crimea

"No to Kremlin takeover of Belarus!" Belarusian protesters increasingly want the Kremlin to stay out of their affairs.

Russian state television journalists have been sent to fill the propaganda void after Belarusian journalists resigned or went on strike in protest, and there are reports of fighters in Donbas being recruited for work in Belarus as ‘volunteers’

A volunteer search group in Belarus has found the body of 29-year-old Kanstantsin Shyshmakou, the director of a military history museum in Vawkavysk who refused to sign a falsified electoral protocol claiming that Aleksandr Lukashenka had won the presidential elections