71% of Russians have a positive attitude to Joseph Stalin’s role in their country’s history, with just over half the population saying that they view a dictator responsible for the death of millions “with respect”. 

Russian-occupied Crimea could find itself totally cut off from the global Internet according to a bill which was adopted in its second reading on 11 April and has every chance of coming into force this year

Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has given support to a parliamentary committee on assessing the alleged ‘losses’ which Crimea incurred as part of Ukraine, i.e. before Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation

The renowned Memorial Human Rights Centre has issued an important statement in which it both confirms that the 24 Ukrainians seized by Russia on 25 November 2018 are prisoners of war and declares all of them political prisoners

Pavlo Hryb, the Ukrainian student whom Russia abducted from Belarus, has been moved to a solitary ward with 24-hour surveillance and medical supervision after formally declaring a hunger strike. 

The Northern Caucasus Military Court in Rostov-on-Don has taken just minutes to pass a six-year sentence on Pavlo Hryb, Russia’s youngest Ukrainian political prisoner

Russia’s Defence Ministry is reportedly seeking the creation of ‘Yunarmia’ [‘Youth Army’] units at all defence industry enterprises in its drive to get one million children and young people ‘enlisted’ by 2020 in a structure that has been compared to the Nazi Hitlerjugend

Amnesty International: The four-year prison sentence slapped on Oyub Tititev is an affront to human rights, reason, and justice

If Oyub Titiev is sent to prison, it will demonstrate the Russian authorities’ total disregard for human rights and the rule of law in Chechnya - Natalia Prilutskaya, Amnesty International’s Russia Researcher

Had the law now passed been in force in July 2014, crucial information about the secret transportation to Ukraine of a Russian BUK missile carrier and its use in downing  Malaysian Airliner MH17 would have never come to light

While ex-Berkut officers, involved in trying to crush Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests, have been given awards in Russian-occupied Sevastopol ‘for courage and heroism’, Russia has ensured the harshest of prison conditions for Ukrainian political prisoner Andriy Kolomiyets, sentenced by a Russian-controlled court to 10 years’ imprisonment for being on Maidan in 2014

Two Russian activists were detained, one very roughly, in Moscow on 5 March for marking the 56th anniversary of the death of Joseph Stalin by hurling broken flowers at his tomb near the Kremlin wall, with one shouting that the “executioner” should “burn in hell”

The latest ‘court hearing’ in Russia’s trial of Pavlo Hryb lasted all of two minutes on 18 February.  Neither the prosecutor nor the interpreter had turned up in what was clearly a planned move to prevent Hryb’s doctor publicly spelling out how Russia is placing the young man’s life in jeopardy

Since the internationally condemned charges concocted against Sentsov and three other Ukrainians were of ‘terrorism’, Viktor Kotov, a municipal council deputy and activist, could face criminal prosecution for supposed ‘justification of terrorism’.

Two Ukrainian human rights activists have disappeared in Astana while on a mission investigating cases suspected of being politically motivated

The author of a series of Russian school textbooks on economics has had one of the books rejected for lack of material fostering patriotism and for questions that might give rise to ’negative, unconstructive discussion’

A Russian court in Oryol has sentenced Dennis Christensen to six years’ imprisonment for practising his faith

Three Russian judges have confirmed the four-year sentence passed on Oleksandr Shumkov, ignoring not only compelling evidence that he was abducted to Russia, but also at least two basic legal principle

A Russian court has ordered a check to be carried out into Pavlo Hryb’s allegations of torture after viewing a video showing injuries which the 20-year-old Ukrainian student says were caused by having his hands bound for a long time in fishing line.

Earlier reports that the European Court of Human Rights had restored the ‘priority status’ assigned to the case of Russia’s Ukrainian political prisoners Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko were, as suspected, premature.  One mistake was rectified, yet the Court is still refusing to consider the men’s applications until it has examined Ukraine’s intergovernmental case against Russia over Crimea.