RT is coming under increasing scrutiny for its role in the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign against the West. The US Justice Department is allegedly requesting that individuals associated with the network’s US branch, RT America, register as foreign agents. Nascent Congressional efforts to investigate and counter the Kremlin’s influence operations have also targeted RT.

Finnish Janus Putkonen permanently moved to Donetsk in summer 2015.  At that time he founded the so-called DONi-News media company  with Russian money.

A 35-year-old Ukrainian from Kyiv has received a two-year suspended sentence for the reposting on social media back in April 2014 of an article by Russian fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin. 

It is 110 years since the birth of Petro Grigorenko, Soviet General, founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, victim of punitive psychiatry and defender of the Crimean Tatar people. The anniversary is of acute poignancy at a time when Crimean Tatars are once again facing discrimination and persecution in their homeland under Russian occupation or in enforced exile.

Fikret Huseynli, a journalist working from Dutch exile for the opposition TV Turan channel, was detained on October 14 at Kyiv’s Boryspil Airport. Since one of the charges against him is of ‘illegally crossing the border’ when he left Azerbaijan in 2008, the question yet again arises of what checking procedure Interpol uses before issuing Red Notices

Crimean Tatars have reacted to the new arrests on ‘terrorism’ charges of civic activists in Russian-occupied Crimea by holding single-person pickets with placards reading: “Crimean Tatars are not terrorists.  Give children their fathers back” and “Fabricating criminal cases – it’s this that’s TERROR”.  .

Civic activists have reacted with strong scepticism to the claims made by the Lviv SBU [Security Service] in explaining the searches and detention on October 12 of up to 12 activists, including two well-known Crimeans, forced to flee their home after Russia’s invasion

There has been widespread condemnation of Russia’s two-year prison sentence on Crimean Tatar leader lmi Umerov “for voicing dissent against the illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula”. The most poignant was from Roman Sushchenko, the Ukrainian journalist seized by the Russian FSB almost exactly a year ago

Russia’s trial on openly falsified charges of Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov has reached its squalid end, with the real aim likely to be reflected in a ban on public activities, accompanying the demanded suspended sentence. No reversion to rule of law is anticipated, although the verdict is due a day after a UN monitoring report expressed exactly the same position on Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukrainian Crimea as that for which Russia has put 60-year-old Umerov on trial.

A court in Russian-occupied Crimea has passed a two and a half year suspended sentence on Ukrainian journalist Mykola Semena for expressing his opposition to Russia’s occupation of Crimea.  It was thus found that an opinion piece written by Semena contained ‘public calls to action aimed at violating Russia’s territorial integrity’.  His position expressed in the article fully coincided with that expressed by the UN General Assembly, EU, OSCE, and all democratic countries, as well as with that in a number of international treaties which Russia has ratified.

Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov has ended his final address (translated here) to a de facto court under Russian occupation by suggesting that they will all meet again at the international courts at the Hague and these are no empty words

Russia’s FSB rejected at least one translation of the interview given by Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov because the translator neither found nor invented the supposed ‘public calls to violate Russian territorial integrity” which Russia wanted to charge Umerov with

The prosecution in Russian-occupied Crimea has demanded a three-year suspended sentence for Mykola Semena, the 67-year-old journalist on trial for expressing his opinion - and the position of international treaties which Russia remains a party to. De facto prosecutor Svetlana Petrovna Budinskaya also proposed to ban Semena from engaging in any public activities for three years.

 “You have no rights” is what the mother of a young Crimean Tatar woman was told when Russian enforcement officers arrived to search their home.  This, it was claimed, was because the young woman, Zarema* from Bakhchysarai had “behaved badly to the Russian-speaking population”.

Leonid Kuzmin, the head of the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Crimea has become the latest Ukrainian activist to be forced out of Russian-occupied Crimea after receiving both death threats and warnings that he could end up imprisoned

The authoritative Moscow Guild of Linguists has totally demolished an FSB-commissioned ’linguistic assessment’ used to back extraordinary ‘separatism’ charges against Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov

Three years after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, at least 22 Ukrainian websites are totally or partially blocked, with some of the restrictions not formally registered and therefore impossible to challenge.

Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] has arrested a Zhytomyr blogger and journalist whom they accuse of “preparing and circulating anti-Ukrainian material on the instructions of Russian supervisors”. The charges include state treason so, if convicted, Vasyl Muravytsky could face a 15-year prison sentence

A so-called military court in the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [LPR] has sentenced two Ukrainians to huge sentences for what it calls ‘state treason’. Since the alleged ‘treason’ involved spreading ‘negative information’ on the Internet, it seems likely that one of the two people is Edward Nedelyaev, a prominent Luhansk blogger, seized in November 2016

The Donetsk Regional Court of Appeal has upheld five-year sentences passed on two young men for creating several social network groups with a pronounced anti-Ukrainian, pro-militant position.