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Human Rights in Ukraine. Website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group |
Yevhen Karakashev, a 41-year-old left-wing activist from Yevpatoria in occupied Crimea, was jailed for six years by a Russian court on 19 April, with the charges based solely on very old posts on the social network VKontakte | detail
The Russian-controlled ‘justice ministry’ in occupied Crimea is making problems over the application for registration of a Ukrainian Orthodox congregation, an application forced on the Church by mounting attempts to drive it from Crimea | detail
The 5-year ban on entering his native Crimea that Russia imposed on veteran Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev soon after invading his homeland came to an end on 19 April, but it is using surreal criminal charges. | detail
A Ukrainian bus driver has been sentenced to 3.8 years’ imprisonment in Russia on bizarre charges in the latest of many suspect prosecutions since Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea’ | detail
President-Elect Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have received a record number of votes, although what almost three quarters of the population voted for remains largely unclear | detail
A Russian-controlled court in Crimea has passed long suspended sentences on four Crimean Tatars in their fifties and sixties despite an earlier court ruling having confirmed that there were never any grounds for their arrest, imprisonment and ‘trial’ at all | detail
Three of the judges involved in the controversial ruling finding the nationalisation of PrivatBank unlawful have previously been accused of corruption and / or suspect rulings. Nor is this the only court ruling that has aroused concern in the context of the presidential elections | detail
Remzi Bekirov has been a major force within the Crimean Solidarity movement, working tirelessly to report on the mounting repression in occupied Crimea. He is now potentially facing a life sentence, on of 23 civic activists arrested in Russia’s worst attack to date on Crimean Solidarity and on Crimean Tatars | detail
71% of Russians have a positive attitude to Joseph Stalin’s role in their country’s history, with just over half the population saying that they view a dictator responsible for the death of millions “with respect”. | detail
Soon after seizing control of Sloviansk, Russian ex-GRU officer Igor Girkin (Strelkov) claimed that his men did not want to kill Ukrainian solders whom he called “brothers”. His men had just savagely tortured to death Volodymyr Rybak, a Ukrainian politician defending the flag of Ukraine and two very young students, Yury Popravka and Yuri Dyakovsky. | detail
Russia’s abuse of ‘extremism’ legislation is notorious, and suspicions about this ‘operation’ are only exacerbated by the fact that the FSB and other enforcement officers appear to have been accompanied by several Russian and Russian-controlled TV channels | detail
Human excrement dripping from leaking sewage pipes, cells in which political prisoners are held with men suffering from tuberculosis or AIDS, and solitary confinement for lying down after being refused treatment for acute pain | detail
The West, as well as very many Ukrainians, have been all too ready to swallow Russia’s line about the supposedly overwhelming support for ‘joining Russia’ in Crimea and for ‘Russian world’ / ‘Novorossiya’ ideology in Donbas | detail
Russian-occupied Crimea could find itself totally cut off from the global Internet according to a bill which was adopted in its second reading on 11 April and has every chance of coming into force this year | detail
Three of the victims of Russia’s most ferocious attack on Crimean Tatar activists to date are civic journalists who recorded and circulated information about repression in occupied Crimea | detail
Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has given support to a parliamentary committee on assessing the alleged ‘losses’ which Crimea incurred as part of Ukraine, i.e. before Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation | detail
Several prominent Ukrainians have expressed concern that ‘form is replacing content’, with at least one of the candidates finding it convenient to remain an ‘enigma’ – a “colouring book” for voters to colour as they prefer. | detail
The ‘prosecution’ in Russian-occupied Crimea has demanded suspended sentences for four respected members of the Crimean Tatar community after a farcical ‘trial’ that would have been comical had the FSB not already caused one death, and effectively tortured two of the ‘defendants’ | detail
The renowned Memorial Human Rights Centre has issued an important statement in which it both confirms that the 24 Ukrainians seized by Russia on 25 November 2018 are prisoners of war and declares all of them political prisoners | detail
The self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ has announced the formation of a militarized ‘army’ for children and young people - essentially a copy of the Russian ‘Yunarmia’ or ‘Youth Army’ which is being used to militarize childhood in both Russia and occupied Crimea | detail
