Searches by FSB and ‘counter-extremism’ officers were claimed to be over an outrageous criminal prosecution against volunteers tending the graves of victims of Stalin’s crimes

The Memorial Human Rights Centre traditionally marks the Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression on 30 October by publishing updated lists of political prisoners (see below for our updated list)

Oleksandr Shumkov has been on hunger strike in Russian captivity since 14 October. He began it in protest at the use by Russia of political prisoners to put pressure on Ukraine to make unacceptable concessions

Sergei Gavrilov, one of the defendants in Russia’s sinister ‘Novoye Velichiye’ trial has fled from house arrest, and asked for political asylum in Ukraine

Russia’s justice ministry has lodged an application with the Supreme Court to have the NGO ‘For Human Rights’ [«За права человека»] declared illegal and dissolved

The Moscow City Court has upheld a four year sentence against 34-year-old Konstantin Kotov, a Russian computer programmer and tireless defender of Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners

“If my language is to disappear tomorrow, I am ready to die today”. Albert Razin died in protest at forced Russification

If the new sentences are upheld at appeal level, this will mark a worrying new escalation in religious persecution, with more imprisonments likely, both in Russia and in occupied Crimea

Despite a number of highly contentious concessions made by the Ukrainian side, the release of two Ukrainian political prisoners on the exchange list, Mykola Karpyuk and Stanislav Klykh, may be in question

Konstantin Kotov, a 34-year-old computer programmer who has tirelessly supported Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian victims of Russian persecution and protested against Russian aggression against Ukraine has been jailed under a notorious law which criminalizes peaceful protest

Russian police have initiated two criminal prosecutions against Russian and Lithuanian activists taking part in an expedition, organized by the Perm Memorial Society to honour victims of Soviet repression and tend to their graves

New excavations are underway at the Sandarmokh Clearing in Karelia which holds the last remains of thousands of victims of the Great Terror of 1937

Russia has begun arresting people under an internationally-condemned law which effectively criminalizes peaceful protest and, typically, the latest victim is Konstantin Kotov, a young Russian who has tirelessly defended the ever-rising number of Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners

One of the ex-Berkut officers whom Ukraine wants to prosecute for his leading role in the savage attack on Maidan activists on 30 November 2013 has been spotted among the commanders of an equally vicious attack on protesters in Moscow

A new report asserts that Orkhan Dzhemal and two other Russian journalists were sent to the Central African Republic in July 2018 to be murdered with the operation linked to the billionaire with links to Putin who is funding the ‘Wagner unit’ fighters deployed in Ukraine, Syria and in Africa

A prosecution witness in Russia’s trial of 10 young people who chatted about politics and life on Telegram has stated in court that he gave false testimony under pressure.  Pavel Rebrovsky also confirmed that the real organizer of the supposed ‘extremist group’ was a man believed to have been an FSB provocateur.

A military chamber of Russia’s Supreme Court has upheld the six-year prison sentence passed on Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Hryb

Excavations at Sandarmokh of the mass graves of thousands of Russian, Ukrainian and other victims of Stalin’s Terror are part of a mounting offensive against both historical truth about the crimes of the Soviet regime and against historians exposing them

41-year-old Yelena Grigroryeva, a civic activist who fiercely opposed Russia’s occupation of Crimea and who often took part in pickets protesting against the mounting persecution of Crimean Tatars has been brutally murdered in St. Petersburg

Seven Crimean Tatar, many of them veterans of the Crimean Tatar national movement, were detained in Moscow on 10 July while holding a totally peaceful picket calling for an end to ethnic and religious persecution in Russian-occupied Crimea