Like her husband Mykola Rudenko and all the members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Raisa Panisivna paid for her commitment to freedom and human rights with years of imprisonment in the political labour camps and forced exile.

It is six years today since Stepan Chubenko, who was just 16 and still at school, was seized, and then tortured and killed, by Russian-controlled militants in Donetsk

31-year-old Taras Matviyiv died as he had lived, defending his country – on Maidan and at the front, and his death is a tragic loss to Ukraine

Zynoviy Antonyuk, former Soviet dissident, publicists and human rights defender, has died at the age of 86, after many years of illness.

Mustafa Osmanov was implacably opposed to Russia’s occupation of his homeland and, together with his son, had faced trouble for this stand, but he is probably most fondly remembered throughout Ukraine for the special role he played during the Maidan protests in the winter of 2013/14.

Human Rights Watch, in bidding farewell to Ludmila Alexeeva, who died on 8 December, has published an extensive interview with Ludmila Mikhailovna

Almost two years ago, Ukraine proved herself to be a state and a civil society by marking a day of mourning on the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy

Yuri Badzio, one of the last political prisoners of the Soviet regime, who spent two extra years in exile for refusing to ask for a ’pardon’, has died in Kyiv, at the age of 82

Levko Lukyanenko, one of the founding members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group who spent 25 years in Soviet labour camps, has died in Kyiv after a long illness

Server Karametov, veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement, unwavering defender of all victims of political persecution under Russian occupation and himself a prisoner of conscience, has died in hospital after being hit by a car in Stary Krym.  

Yuri Soloshenko, Ukrainian pensioner and one of the first hostages of Russia’s undeclared war against Ukraine, has died less than two years after his release from Russian captivity .

It is four years since Reshat Ametov was abducted from his silent protest at Russia’s invasion of his native Crimea and savagely tortured to death.  On the eve of the anniversary, President Petro Poroshenko entrusted to Refat Ametov his brother’s Hero of Ukraine honour and posthumous Gold Star award.   

Oleksandr Khomchenko, the courageous Donetsk pastor tortured for his active participation in the Prayer Marathon under a Ukrainian flag in 2014, has died after a long illness, aged 59. Father Oleksandr gave vital testimony about Russian war crimes in Donbas, and was a People’s Hero of Ukraine

Arseny Roginsky, Soviet political prisoner & Chairman of the International Memorial Society has died at the age of 71 after a life spent in “the struggle for historical truth and human rights”.  His colleagues write that it would be hard to imagine Memorial over the nearly 30 years of its existence without Arseny Borisovich, and inconceivable to imagine it now without him.  The loss is felt far beyond Russia.

It is a son’s duty to lay his mother to rest. Russia had allowed Crimean Tatar political prisoner Akhtem Chiygoz to see his dying mother for just ten minutes two weeks ago, and it has now prevented him from attending her funeral

Archbishop Lubomyr Huzar, who died on May 31, was the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and a leading moral authority for a very large number of Ukrainians

Reshat Ametov wanted his three children to grow up in a free Ukraine. When others were too fearful to join him in a peaceful demonstration against Russia’s invasion of Crimea, the 39-year-old Crimean Tatar came out in solitary protest.  He was abducted by armed paramilitaries from outside the Crimean parliament and savagely tortured to death.

Yevhen Hrytsyak, one of the leaders of the 1953 Norilsk Uprising, has died at the age of 90. In his message on the news, President Petro Poroshenko spoke both of deep sorrow at his passing and of “profound gratitude for his example of an unbreakable spirit and will to fight for freedom”.

Viktor Parshutkin, a Russian lawyer who became well-known in Ukraine for forcing Russia to withdraw falsified charges against Ukrainian political prisoner Serhiy Lytvynov has died suddenly in Moscow at the age of 57.

This 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau feels frighteningly different from previous years. Developments over the last year have meant that for the first time very many people are confronting the possibility of a rise in totalitarianism, with the question “how could it happen?” no longer something for enlightened history teachers to discuss with their students.