Russian scholars, cultural and political figures have addressed an urgent appeal to the head of the High Court in Karelia, asking for the release from detention of 64-year-old Yuri Dmitriev, a world-renowned historian of the Soviet Terror and recognized political prisoner

Anya was just 7 months old when her father, Hennady Lymeshko, was seized by the Russian FSB, tortured into ‘confessing’ to impossible crimes and then convicted on very different charges

Russia’s annexation of Crimea is to form part of the mosaics inside the new Defence Ministry cathedral, together with portraits of mass murderer Joseph Stalin and Russia’s soon-to-be President-for-life, Vladimir Putin

A court in Moscow has only reduced, and not revoked, the prison sentence passed on Konstantin Kotov, a Russian computer programmer who actively helped Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners and tirelessly protested against repression in occupied Crimea

Warnings that a new criminal norm could be used to silence those telling the truth about the coronavirus pandemic were effectively confirmed by the behaviour of enforcement officers in Russia and occupied Crimea in the first days of April

Sergei Koltyrin has died in a prison hospital in Russia, less than a year after being sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment on dubious charges

Officers from Russia’s so-called Centre for fighting extremism have appeared at the home of activist Tatyana Kasyanova and interrogated her over her correspondence with Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Shumkov

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s effective censor, has blocked the website of a civic campaign against the proposed amendments to Russia’s constitution which will enable Vladimir Putin to be ‘President’ until 2036

Viktor Shur turned 63 on 10 March, his sixth birthday in Russian imprisonment. Shur is one of the oldest of the Kremlin’s political prisoners, held in conditions that are gruelling for men decades younger

72-year-old Volodymyr Morgunov is probably Russia’s oldest Ukrainian political prisoner, with his horrifically long 12-year sentence seemingly linked with his handing information to Ukraine that Russia has no good reason to keep secret

Valentin Vyhivsky’s grandfather, Stepan, was released from the GULAG as part of a mass release of political prisoners after Stalin’s death. His grandson has now been held longer by the Putin regime

In a case frighteningly reminiscent of Stalin’s Terror, 7 young men have received sentences from 6 to 18 years for supposed involvement in a ’Network’ ("Сеть") that almost certainly never existed.

Russian historian Yury Dmitriev turned 64 on 28 January 2020, his third birthday imprisoned in Russia on charges that bear no scrutiny, and that clearly coincided with the beginning of a campaign to rewrite the history of one of the darkest pages of the Soviet Terror – the mass killing by quota of Russians, Ukrainians and other prisoners at Sandarmokh

Darya Polyudova, a 30-year-old Russian left-wing activist who has tirelessly spoken out against Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and political persecution of Ukrainians, has been arrested and is facing a long sentence

A wave of exorbitant fines against the International Memorial Society and Memorial Human Rights Centre have placed the very existence of these two organizations which are of vital importance for Ukraine, as well as Russia, in question

Amir Gilyazov, who is wheelchair-bound and suffers from muscular dystrophy, has been sentenced by a Chelyabinsk military court to 11 years’ imprisonment in a case that demonstrates the grotesquely absurd nature of Russia’s conveyor belt ‘terrorism’ prosecutions

This sixth anniversary of the beginning of the Euromaidan protests is especially sombre as Ukraine’s President and parliamentarians appear unwilling to prevent the collapse of investigations into Maidan crimes

Russia’s State Duma has moved another step towards adopting a dangerous new bill which will mean that individuals working in Russia or occupied Crimea can be branded as ‘foreign agents’

200 prominent Russians have come out in defence of Russian historian of the Soviet Terror, Yuri Dmitriev, and the child whose life the FSB is destroying for the sake of a grubby and politically-motivated trial

Crimean activist and political prisoner Yevhen Karakashev has been placed for a year in a punishment cell in part because he refused to collaborate with the Russian prison staff