Edward Nikitin has gone on trial in St. Petersburg, accused of ‘extremism’ for reposting on social media a political cartoon and anecdote which points out, in the context of elections in Russia, that putting “a couple of cherries on a pile of shit” will not turn the latter into a cake. 

"I will try not to let you all down, to not give up and to not die. Though I guess of those three wishes, I will only be able to fulfil at most two" - from a letter from Oleg Sentsov to all those supporting and writing to him. He has now been on hunger strike for 100 days, and has stopped believing in his release

Russia’s authoritative Memorial Human Rights Centre has recognized as political prisoners 29 Jehovah’s Witnesses, imprisoned for their faith.  It warns that the number of people already facing persecution is higher and rising rapidly

The Kremlin has rejected the plea from Oleg Sentsov’s mother that President Putin ‘pardon’ her son.  It claims that the request must come from Sentsov although this was not the case when Putin issued decrees ‘pardoning’ three other Ukrainian political prisoners.  It also claims, equally falsely, that Sentsov is a Russian citizen. 

Major crackdown on independent media in Belarus

Ukrainian filmmaker and Kremlin hostage Oleg Sentsov is dangerously weak after 87 days on hunger strike. His cousin reports that the situation is "catastrophically bad" and that when Oleg speaks of the end being near, it is not release that he is referring to

It is not only in occupied Crimea that Russia’s FSB uses provocateurs in politically-motivated prosecutions. Several young Russians, including two teenage girls, have been in custody since March 2018, and are facing long sentences for supposedly ‘organizing an extremist organization’ effectively created by a person working for the FSB

Oleksandr Kostenko has been released from a Russian prison after being forced to serve a legally absurd sentence to the end.  He is one of two Ukrainians, together with Andriy Kolomiyets, sentenced under Russian legislation on charges related to Euromaidan in Ukraine, over which Russia can have no jurisdiction.

Journalist Orkhan Dzhemal was one of the few Russian citizens unafraid of exposing the truth about Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and, especially, its treatment of the Crimean Tatars. He was murdered on 30 July in the Central African Republic, together with Russian filmmaker Alexander Rastorguev and cameraman Kirill Radchenko

35-year-old Serhiy Lytvynov remains imprisoned in Russia four years after a fateful tooth inflammation led to him becoming one of the first and unlikeliest of Russia’s Ukrainian political prisoners.  Following the tragically premature death of his lawyer Viktor Parshutkin in March 2017, he has also become the most abandoned of all political prisoners. 

Although it was Belarus that extradited Russian opposition activist Vladimir Yegorov to Russia, this was only because Ukraine’s Security Service had first flouted both Ukrainian and international law by simply dumping Yegorov, who had applied for asylum in Ukraine, on the border, leaving him no choice but to cross into Belarus.

Russia’s ‘trial’ of Pavlo Hryb, a Ukrainian student abducted by the FSB from Belarus, began in Rostov on 23 July 2018, only to be adjourned for the prosecutor to correct a critical mistake in the indictment.  Hryb’s detention was extended to 22 October, despite the 20-year-old’s life-threatening blood circulation illness, which could lead to fatal haemorrhaging at any time

Roman Ternovsky has been sentenced by a Russian court to 2.5 years’ imprisonment for taking part in what Russia calls ‘extremist activities’.  The charges, incredibly, pertain to Ternovsky’s involvement in his native Ukraine in Right Sector, an organization that is legal in Ukraine

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is turning 42 on 13 July.  It will be his fourth birthday in a Russian prison, and must be his last. The Kremlin’s most famous Ukrainian hostage has been on hunger strike since 14 May and has made it clear that he will not give up until Russia releases him and other Ukrainian political prisoners

Ihor Kiyashko has been in Russian custody since 9 April 2018, with it likely that the FSB are using torture or other illegal methods to extract ‘confessions’ to ‘spying’.  It is difficult otherwise to explain why the far more serious espionage should have appeared only two months after his arrest, and why Kiyashko has been prevented from having an independent lawyer  

If Oleg Sentsov, Emir-Usein Kuku and Oleksandr Shumkov are on hunger strike for the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners, ignoring their demand helps only Russia (INFORMATION HERE about the other prisoners)

A Moscow court has fined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) after ruling that it had failed to comply with a Russian law regulating media outlets branded by the government as "foreign agents."

A court in Krasnodar has ordered Russia’s Finance Ministry to pay 4.5 million roubles in compensation for torturing five adolescents in a ‘corrective institution’, with two million of that sum awarded to the mother of 16-year-old Ukrainian, Vitaly Pop, who was savagely beaten to death

It has long been assumed that the persecution of Oleksandr Kostenko and Andriy Kolomiyets was in revenge for Moscow’s failure to prevent Euromaidan, with this only confirmed by the measures taken to make Kostenko’s last weeks in prison as hellish as possible.

With Russian lies failing to silence mounting international calls for the release of Oleg Sentsov and all Russia’s Ukrainian political prisoners, deception has been used to block access to Sentsov, and a provocateur deployed in an inept attempt to discredit the renowned Ukrainian filmmaker.