11 French MPs did not simply breach Ukrainian law and international sanctions through their visit to Crimea this weekend. They also took part in a shameful propaganda show, denying flagrant human rights violations under Russian occupation and slandering Crimean Tatars who have been abducted, and very likely murdered.

Punitive psychiatry appears to have returned in Russia with a recognized political prisoner being forcibly held in a psychiatric hospital. 36-year-old Alexei Moroshkin has been receiving psychiatric ‘treatment’ against his and his family’s wishes since December 2015, and a Chelyabinsk court has just extended his confinement for a further 6 months

A very young Ukrainian just sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment remains as chillingly anonymous as when his arrest in Russian-occupied Crimea was announced in May 2015. Russia claims that Maxim Filatov was a fighter in the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, though this remains in serious question as does everything else about the case.

On the positive features and failings of the report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch

Donald Trump did not just call on a hostile state to hack a presidential candidate’s emails on Wednesday. He also said that, if elected US President, he would consider removing the sanctions against that same nation for its aggression against Ukraine and recognize Crimea, which Russia invaded and is occupying, as Russian territory

While broadly welcoming the law, the Reanimation Package of Reforms propose some amendments to ensure mechanisms of response to judges’ complaints of interference in their work, and to prevent preservation of the old system

Crimean Tatar lawyer and rights activist Emir-Huseyn Kuku and two other Crimean Muslims - Vadim Siruk and Refat Alimov - who are all in custody on concocted charges have been placed on a so-called ‘prophylactic register for dangerous remand prisoners’ and moved to a special unit

As believers arrive in Kyiv, views remain sharply divided on both the controversial religious procession organized by the Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate and how the Ukrainian authorities should have dealt with it.

You need to go back nearly a year to find another month as deadly as July -- and the month isn’t even over yet. But despite all the death and destruction, almost nobody is noticing.

A second Russian court has found Andrei Bubeev guilty of ’calls to violate Russia’s territorial integrity for reposting an article entitled “Crimea is Ukraine”, as well as of ’extremism’ for reposting a toothpaste tube with the caption “Squeeze Russia out of yourself”

The number of places where in theory meetings can be held has halved throughout Crimea, while in some places, like Kerch, the restrictions are much more extreme.

Russia’s most openly lawless prosecution since occupying Crimea has descended to a new low with the refusal to allow Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz to even attend his own court hearings and the unfounded decision to separate the proceedings into two trials.

Russia’s most openly lawless prosecution since occupying Crimea has descended to a new low with the refusal to allow Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz to even attend his own court hearings and the unfounded decision to separate the proceedings into two trials.

Bloody Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin has not been relegated to the past in today’s Russia. Not if you judge by the offices of law enforcement officers and investigators, Ivan Pavlov, a human rights lawyer writes. He has to visit a lot of such offices, and says that one in two will have the tyrant’s portrait.

Two religious processions converging on Kyiv have Ukrainian authorities warning that provocations could spark violence in the capital.

The renowned Memorial Human Rights Centre has called on Russia to release four Crimean Muslims from Sevastopol and reminded it of restrictions under international law since Crimea is occupied territory. This is of critical importance since Russia has (unwarrantedly) charged the four men now on trial and 10 other Crimeans with involvement in an organization which is totally legal in Ukraine.

If the results of a recent survey can be trusted, less than one in five residents of areas under the control of the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [DNR] identify themselves as ‘citizens’ of this unrecognized creation. The result is even lower than the level of support which the militants themselves inadvertently revealed, and then ‘adjusted’, but it can certainly not be dismissed as insignificant.

"How many divisions does the pope have?" Josef Stalin was meant to have asked contemptuously. Today the question could as easily be posed: How many companies does the Kremlin have?

The above words, spoken about Pavel Sheremet’s friend Boris Nemtsov are bitterly poignant, as is so much else on a dark day, when the well-known and respected 44-year-old Belarusian journalist and former prisoner of conscience has himself been murdered. He died in Kyiv almost exactly two years after leaving Russian ORT in protest at the virulent warmongering propaganda against Ukraine.

The above words, spoken about Pavel Sheremet’s friend Boris Nemtsov are bitterly poignant, as is so much else on a dark day, when the well-known and respected 44-year-old Belarusian journalist and former prisoner of conscience has himself been murdered. He died in Kyiv almost exactly two years after leaving Russian ORT in protest at the virulent warmongering propaganda against Ukraine.