It is surely a telling sign that monuments and posters of Joseph Stalin, one of the bloodiest dictators of the twentieth century, should be emerging in both Russian-occupied Crimea and areas of Donbas under Kremlin-backed militant control.

An article on Russian state-funded Sputnik International asserts that criticism of the Soviet past, including Joseph Stalin, is part of a US and NATO attack on “today’s Russia and its leadership that is unwilling to bow before the West.”

Vasyl Stus – a human rights activist and a poet – died on the night from September 3 to 4 of 1985, in the solitary confinement of the «Institution ВС-389/36» in Kuchino village of Perm Region. At that time I was in the 20th cell of the “institution”, that’s why I consider it my civil and human duty to testify on the circumstances and causes of his death.

Kremlin-backed militants have decided to dismantle the Memorial to the Victims of Political Repression and Holodomor in Snizhne (Donetsk oblast), claiming such a move to be aimed at the “reinstatement of historical justice”.

One wonders how the world would react if Germany were to come up with 45 % justifying Hitler’s crimes. Surely worth considering when this sharp increase in willingness to justify horrific crimes comes at a time when Russia has annexed part of neighbouring Ukraine and is showing no intention of stopping.

The museum at the site of the particularly harsh labour camp where Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus died, has played a vital role in informing the public about Soviet repression, but openness about the dark aspects of Russian and Soviet past has been increasingly frowned upon under President Vladimir Putin.

On Feb 5 a monument to three world leaders, including Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, will be unveiled in Yalta, 10 years after public opposition from Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians led to the original plans being shelved

A Russian civic initiative to install commemorative plaques to the victims of Soviet repression at the homes where they lived before they were executed or sent to perish in the Gulag is about to be launched

This Day in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression comes as Memorial, the organization that enabled us to learn the fate of our parents or grandparents is under threat of closure and the Kremlin is increasingly trying to conceal or distort the darkest days of the country’s recent history

Perm-36 chronicles Soviet repression and stands on the site of a labour camp built under Stalin in 1943. In the 1970s and 1980s it was one of the country’s harshest facilities for political dissidents. It was here that Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus died on 4 September 1985

A large portrait of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin has appeared near the Memorial to soldiers of the Second World War in Simferopol

The value of the ruling is illusory. There are legitimate grounds for restarting the investigation; putting together a list of all those repressed for opposing the organization of the artificial famine and not rehabilitated and holding court proceedings aimed at their rehabilitation

Updated and expanded version of the study made in 2008 which found that the artificial famine of had all the hallmarks of genocide

While the Anti-Defamation League has honoured the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who died in 1944 with the Jan Karski Courage to Care Award, Ukraine’s Jewish Community have joined the UGCC in creating a Sheptytsky Award to those serving the course of Ukrainian-Jewish reconciliation

Remembrance services and ceremonies took place in many parts of Ukraine on Sunday for the Victims of political repression

The Congress of National Communities of Ukraine has issued a statement regarding the actions by Stalinists on 21 December. At the same time it is reported that the Crimean Tatars involved in obstructing them may be charged with hooliganism.

A group of Crimean Tatars led by members of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People have destroyed an exhibition glorifying the bloody dictator

On the eve of the eightieth anniversary of Holodomor 1932-33, a public survey has found that 59% of Ukrainians believe that Holodomor was genocide. The number denying this has fallen by a third

It is 75 years since the execution in the Sandarmokh Forest Clearing in Karelia of 1,111 prisoners of the Solovky Labour Camp, including 290 Ukrainian writers, poets, scientists and others