Maxim Sokurenko has been remanded in custody in occupied Crimea and could face a three-year prison sentence for hurling a bit of paint at a monument to the Russian soldiers without insignia who seized control of Crimea five years ago

It is indicative of the questionable nature of all such prosecutions that Russian-controlled reports of this sentence used identical video footage to that shown in reporting another alleged arrest of a ‘battalion member’ on that very same day.

PACE has called on Russia to release all 24 Ukrainian servicemen seized on 25 November 2018, and has insisted that their treatment must be in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, one of which regulates treatment of prisoners of war. 

After claiming that Edem Bekirov, an amputee who has a serious heart condition, is an Asker Battalion fighter, the Russian FSB is now hiding the face of another Crimean Tatar arrested on similar charges, and carrying out armed searches of the parents of activists living in mainland Ukraine

The self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ has ‘sentenced’ Stanislav Pechonkin to 10 years’ imprisonment, after taking the young man hostage while he was visiting Horlivka, which is under the Russian-controlled ‘republic’s’ control. 

If Russia has nothing to hide in its ‘prosecution’ of 24 Ukrainian POWs, why is the FSB asking for their detention court hearings to be held behind closed doors?  

Olena Sorokina disappeared on 30 October 2018, but as with many hostages seized in the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [LPR], details have taken months to emerge

Even the media reports that showed Bekirov having difficulty walking with a crutch still posted headlines claiming that he was a member of a military formation who’d been seized with 11 kilograms of explosives.

Although the men’s POW status, according to international law, was never seriously in question, all have been under immense pressure from the FSB to ‘confess’ to non-existent crimes

Leonid Parkhomenko, a retired Black Sea Fleet captain from Sevastopol, has been convicted by the Russian military court in Rostov of ‘treason’ and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment.  Parkhomenko denied the charges, which date back to 2003-2005, and there are strong grounds for suspecting the methods used to obtain the conviction.

Russia’s attempt to justify its seizure of 24 Ukrainian prisoners of war on 25 November by bringing criminal charges against the men has hit major hurdles, however Russian President Vladimir Putin is scarcely concealing his unwillingness to release any political prisoners or POWs for fear of helping President Petro Poroshenko in the coming elections

A ‘court’ in Russian-occupied Crimea has remanded 58-year-old Edem Bekirov in custody for two months, after he was seized by the FSB on 12 December when he tried to cross into Crimea to visit his elderly mother’

The Crimean Tatar people have become more united by repression, Kurbedinov stressed as he was released after a second imprisonment for the same pre-annexation social media post used as a pretext for ongoing pressure on lawyers defending political prisoners in occupied Crimea

Russia’s FSB has come up with an absurdly irrelevant allegation against one of the 24 Ukrainian POWs seized on 25 November, with the story virtually identical to that used in 2014 against Nadiya Savchenko

Emil Kurbedinov has been sentenced to five days’ imprisonment for an entirely innocuous video posted a year before Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He links his detention to his defence of one of the Ukrainian prisoners of war whom Russia seized in the Azov Sea on 25 November.

A Bellingcat probe has found that Russia fired on at least one Ukrainian naval boat in neutral waters, and aimed to hit the Ukrainian seamen, not their boats. It also looks likely that none of this act of war was in any way spontaneous

Roman Sahaidak has been ‘sentenced’ in the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ to 13 years’ imprisonment with full confiscation of his property. It seems likely that the confiscation was the main point of his abduction and ‘prosecution’ and, possibly, that of his father, who was seized 15 months later.

The European Court of Human Rights has reacted swiftly to an application from Ukraine in defence of 24 Ukrainians whom Russia seized after attacking Ukrainian naval boats on November 25.

There has been a huge outpouring of help, including from many Ukrainians in occupied Crimea who normally try to keep a low profile, for the 24 Ukrainian sailors whom Russia opened fire on and seized on 25 November, and who are now being held prisoner far from their families and home

The number of Ukrainians whom Moscow is holding illegally in occupied Crimea and Russia has risen to nearly 100, with the last 24 men seized after an open act of warfare on 25 November