Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, sentenced in Russia to 20 years for non-existent ‘terrorism’, has become one of the laureates of the Andrei Sakharov Award for Courage, together with two other Ukrainians facing Russian persecution: journalists Mykola Semena and Roman Sushchenko.

An appeal written by Vedzhie Kashka over forty years ago was made public * two weeks after Russia’s attempt to arrest the 83-year-old veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement caused her death.  Her questions back in 1974 as to why the Soviet authorities were trying to drive her family out of Crimea seem bitterly relevant to the present situation where Crimean Tatars are once again under attack. 

Reports in the media that Russia freed Crimean Tatar political prisoners Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov in exchange for two Russians accused of at least one political killing in Turkey cannot be confirmed or denied, however the Kremlin clearly has something to hide

Among those telling the world about the imprisonment on surreally lawless charges of Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz; Ali Asanov and Mustafa Degermendzhy was Mustafa’s father, a veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement.  Now Bekir Degermendzhy has himself been imprisoned, on different, yet no less cynical, charges.  The 57-year-old suffers from severe asthma and should not be in detention under any circumstances

A court in Russian-occupied Crimea has yet again extended the detention of Ukrainian political prisoner Volodymyr Balukh, despite the clear illegality of the move even according to Russian law, Balukh’s serious health issues and the fact that his elderly mother, who is going blind, has been left without any support. 

The Kremlin’s Ukrainian political prisoners were waited for in vain at countless airports throughout the world on November 26. There are now well over 60 known prisoners, held on spurious charges, and the number has risen alarmingly over recent months.

November in Canada is Holodomor Remembrance Month, designed to remember one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history, a premeditated genocide perpetrated by Josef Stalin to collectivize farms and destroy Ukrainian society

Sushchenko’s lawyer reports that a sentence of 20 years is planned, with the charge being that the journalist “gathered information about an anticipated invasion of Ukraine by Russia in the summer or autumn of 2016.” 

Ukrainian filmmaker and Kremlin hostage Oleg Sentsov has spent several terms in a punishment cell over recent months, including a two-week punishment as soon as he arrived at the harsh ‘White Bear’ prison colony north of the Arctic Circle. Both the penalties and the transfer to this most isolated of all prisons are linked with the mounting protest in his defence in Yakutia.

Having driven Ukrainian historian Stanyslav Klykh close to insanity through torture, psychotropic drugs and a Kafkaesque ‘trial’, Russia is now placing the 43-year-old’s life in danger.  His mother reports that, instead of providing her son with proper diagnosis and treatment, they injected him with some unidentified medication which left him virtually in a coma for six days.

There was a sense of Soviet déjà vu in the release of Crimean Tatar leaders Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov, seen in the secrecy with which the special operation was carried out and in the use of a third country. Déjà vu also since just as in the USSR, the number of political prisoners who remain incarcerated is large and on the increase, with such hostage-taking described by Chiygoz’ lawyer as "profitable business" for the Kremlin

On the 80th anniversary of the killing by quota at Sandarmokh of 1,111 Ukrainian, Russian and other Solovki prisoners, Russian writer Ludmilla Ulitskaya has issued a strong warning to the prosecutor and judge in the fabricated trial of historian of the Terror Yury Dmitriev. They risk their children being ashamed of them, and suffering “just as do now the descendants of those butchers who executed innocent people during the 1930s.”

More details have emerged of the unexpected release on October 25 of imprisoned Crimean Tatar leaders Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov.  The initial reports that Russia was not preventing them from returning to Crimea were too optimistic and both will, like other Crimean Tatar leaders, be exiled while Crimea remains under occupation

Even an alleged ‘aggrieved party’ in Russia’s widely condemned ‘trial’ of Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader Akhtem Chiygoz has labelled the case ‘political’ and called for the 8-year prison term handed down to be changed to a suspended sentence

There are now at least 60 Ukrainians whom Russia is imprisoning on politically motivated charges or for their faith in Russia or in occupied Crimea

The ‘incriminating’ word used to convict Ilmi Umerov of so-called ‘public calls to violate Russia’s territorial integrity’ has been omitted from the sentence passed on the 60-year-old Crimean Tatar leader.  Correctly omitted, since he did not say it, however the omission makes the political nature of his two-year prison sentence even more glaringly obvious.

Prevented by international scrutiny from using physical force against Ukrainian filmmaker and Kremlin hostage, Oleg Sentsov, Russia is resorting to other forms of reprisals. 

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

In a shock move on September 27, a Russian-controlled ‘court’ in Crimea sentenced 60-year-old Ilmi Umerov, who has multiple serious illnesses, to two years’ imprisonment. Given the suspended sentence of journalist Mykola Semena on analogous charges just one week ago, the conclusion seems clear that the harsher sentence in this case is because Ilmi Umerov is Crimean Tatar

The true number of famine victims has been difficult to calculate, Anne Applebaum says, because the Soviet system tried to cover up the famine immediately after it happened.