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

A court in the Siberian city of Tomsk has found 49-year-old Sergei Klimov guilty of “grave crimes against Russia’s constitutional order” for not renouncing his faith after Russia reverted to Soviet repression in April 2017 and outlawed the Jehovah’s Witnesses

The NGO ‘For Human Rights’ has played a major role in defending political prisoners in Russia and occupied Crimea, and it is doubtless for this, and for its work in publicizing particular forms of religious persecution and truly shocking political trials, that it, and its director, Lev Ponomaryov, have come under attack.

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