Yury Soloshenko, the 73-year-old Ukrainian pensioner, sentenced to 6 years in Russia on mystery ‘spying’ charges has cancer. This is the latest blow for the elderly Ukrainian who has not seen his grandchildren since August 2014

The Mejlis, or representative assembly of the Crimean Tatar people is likely to be criminalized on the basis of unwarranted warnings about supposed ‘extremism’ or criminal charges brought for opposing Russian occupation of Crimea.

Ukraine has identified nearly 50 people it considers responsible for the "illegal detention and falsified trial" of Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko and has urged the European Union to impose sanctions against them.

The attack on Igor Kalyapin, head of the Committee against Torture comes just a week after a savage attack on members of his committee and journalists. The chilling message it sends is particularly disastrous given the urgent need for publicity for Russia’s show trial in Grozny of Ukrainian political prisoners Mykola Karpyuk and Stanislav Klykh

Graham Phillips, a Briton well-known for his propaganda coverage in excruciatingly bad Russian of the Kremlin-provoked and armed conflict in Donbas, has been detained by police in Riga. This has given pro-Kremlin media a particular boost with Phillips himself claiming he was simply standing and filming ‘fascists’.

Review of human rights situation in the Crimea

Since the 2nd anniversary of Russia’s pseudo ‘referendum’ on Crimea comes as the West is pushing Ukraine to agree to ‘elections’ in Kremlin-controlled Donbas, it seems worth recalling that supposed ‘expression of the people’s will’ and the motley crowd of far-right, neo-Nazi or extreme left-wing politicians who were invited as ‘observers’

Being thrown into punishment cells or getting disciplinary penalties for nothing, and not getting medical treatment when needed – these are the sort of measures Russia is using to try to break the Crimean political prisoners

On March 14, the Moscow City Court rejected an appeal against the refusal to reclassify the murder of former Russian Prime Minister and fierce Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov as an attempt on the life of a government or public figure (a more serious charge). The need for an international investigation is clear and urgent.

Relatives of Nebesna Sotnya, those killed during Euromaidan and civic activists have publicly demanded an end to behind-the-scenes bargaining and an open competition for the post of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General 

Hearings scheduled for March 14 and 15 have been adjourned after family members arrived in Russia, almost certainly with compelling evidence that neither Mykola Karpyuk nor Stanislav Klykh was ever in Chechnya. As compelling as that provided by the Memorial Human Rights Centre that the impugned crimes never happened

Although he relies on a daily cocktail of drugs to survive, 5-year-old Daniil was struck off the disability register in October, leaving his family to fend for itself. Daniil is one of hundreds of thousands of patients who were denied disability benefits in 2015 under new measures that health advocates say are hurting many of Russia’s most vulnerable citizens.

Following the public admission by Igor Girkin [Strelkov] that he ordered extrajudicial killings during his period as military leader of the Kremlin-backed militants in Donbas, a St Petersburg lawyer has demanded that Russia initiates criminal proceedings against Girkin for committing what are undoubtedly war crimes in eastern Ukraine.

Following the public admission by Igor Girkin [Strelkov] that he ordered extrajudicial killings during his period as military leader of the Kremlin-backed militants in Donbas, a St Petersburg lawyer has demanded that Russia initiates criminal proceedings against Girkin for committing what are undoubtedly war crimes in eastern Ukraine.

Following the public admission by Igor Girkin [Strelkov] that he ordered extrajudicial killings during his period as military leader of the Kremlin-backed militants in Donbas, a St Petersburg lawyer has demanded that Russia initiates criminal proceedings against Girkin for committing what are undoubtedly war crimes in eastern Ukraine.

A Russian court in the far northern Komi Republic has accepted that holding Gennady Afanasyev in a prison 2,700 kilometres from his family violates his rights under the European Convention. . This unexpectedly positive move comes as fellow Crimean political prisoners Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko are being moved as far east as Moscow can send them

More than eighty former political prisoners from ex-Soviet republics have appealed to the people of the Netherlands to vote in favour of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

The body has been found of 17-year-old Iryna Yermakova from Horlivka who disappeared in December last year. There are strong grounds for believing that she was abducted by members of the Troy gang of Kremlin-backed militants, but little, if any hope, of a real investigation with Horlivka now within the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [DNR].

Russia is refusing to allow the Ukrainian consul to see Khaiser Dzhemiliev, the 33-year-old son of veteran Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemiliev. It recently turned down his application for parole and clearly plans to hold him imprisoned as long as it can.

The script changes, but it always follows the same template: Patently ridiculous charges are presented and debated as if they were actually plausible, followed by the faux suspense of a verdict that everybody knows is a foregone conclusion.