The calls from Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin are, frankly, baffling, and not only, as Nariman Dzhelyal points out, because the sanctions really are hitting the Putin regime

Vienna, 10 December 2023 — Numerous human rights activists, some long active in the former Soviet Union, have signed an open letter urging free and democratic nations to provide Ukraine with military assistance it needs to resist Russian aggression.

KHPG sees political persecution in the investigation of businessman Konstantin Zhevago and opposes his extradition to Ukraine.

Putin’s war in Europe against democratic values is only the first wide scale assault on the West. The great dictatorial and conquering empires of the past are waking up in Moscow, Istanbul and Beijing.

Speech by Oleksandr Cherkasov, chairman of the board of the Memorial Human Rights Center, at a conference organized by the Committee of Mathematicians and Memorial in support of Azat Miftakhov.

KHPG spoke to a former human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova who was recently sacked with quite a scandal. Mrs Denisova says that she knows the real reason for her dismissal but prefers not to disclose it to prevent possible damage.

Despite Russia’s total war against Ukraine and serious concerns expressed by human rights NGOs, 235 lawmakers voted on 31 May to dismiss Lyudmyla Denisova from her post as Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights

On 30 May it became known that the people’s deputies want to use the new law (“On the legal regime of martial law”) by proclaiming mistrust to Denisova after an instruction from Bankova street. If it happens, the independence of the institution of the Commissioner can be buried and forgotten. That independence survived in the winter months of Maidan, and later – in spring 2014 in opposition to the whims of parliamentarians. It was defended. The law defeated the arbitrariness.

"Schools and hospitals instead of bombs and shells", "Russia, do not occupy Ukraine", "Freedom to Ukrainian political prisoners": Russians protest against the war with Ukraine. They've been detained by law enforcement officers for solitary pickets.

Russia has finished the era of the “hybrid” conflict, when Ukraine had to prove in international jurisdictions the existence of general and effective control of Russia over these territories through funding, military support and the establishment of Russian-controlled governance.

While Russia claims that Ukraine is failing to comply with the Minsk Accord, it is actively creating a situation where a significant number of young Ukrainians from Donbas could, in principle, be liable for conscription into the Russian army

A recent survey has found that a fairly large majority of Ukrainians view the conflict in Donbas as Russian aggression, with this number having increased significantly over the past six months

While the West’s attention is fixed on Russia’s military build-up on Ukraine’s border, Moscow is continuing its illegal methods of ‘integrating’ occupied Donbas.

Viacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s State Duma, is threatening ‘consultations’ in the coming week on a proposed ‘appeal’ to Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘asking’ him to recognize the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics’

The decision to close Memorial, which was ordered by the Russian Supreme Court, marks a new and very dangerous era in the offensive on the foundations of civil society and the rule of law.

Italy’s public broadcaster RaiUno has broadcast three ‘reports’ from occupied Donetsk which present a seriously biased view of the conflict in eastern Ukraine

Anton Krasovsky, director of broadcasting for the Russian state-funded RT channel, has used his chat show to assure Ukrainians, whom he calls ‘animals’, that Russia will invade on any sign that Ukraine is near joining NATO

This is the latest move in the most serious of around 20 criminal proceedings brought very publicly against the main rival to the current President Volodymyr Zelensky

Russian President Vladimir Putin has tabled a new draft law on Russian citizenship which, rather menacingly, envisages ‘change of the state border of the Russian Federation’ as grounds for obtaining Russian citizenship

In this letter, we express our solidarity with our Russian friends, with whom we have spent more than 30 years helping former Gulag prisoners, defending human rights and in recent years opposing Russian aggression in Crimea and Donbas.