The appointment of Alexander Prokopchuk as Head of INTERPOL would have shown terrifying disregard by member states for the horrific torture used to fabricate the show trials of Ukrainian political prisoners, like Mykola Karpyuk and Stanyslav Klykh

The prominent Russian NGO ‘For Human Rights’ may be forced to cease its work after being denied a presidential grant, one of the chief forms of funding since the so-called law on ‘foreign agents’ made it near impossible to function through grants from abroad

Only a month after the Russian prison authorities finally allowed Pavlo Hryb to receive the medication that he needs for a potentially life-threatening medical condition, the medicines have disappeared while the 20-year-old was being moved between remand prison

Russia’s renowned Memorial Human Rights Centre has once again marked Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression on 30 October by publishing new lists of political prisoners currently held in Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea. 

Anonymous denunciations of neighbours or workmates are no longer a bad memory from the Stalin era, but encouraged by the Putin regime in Russia, and in occupied Crimea

Oyub Titiev, a renowned human rights defender and head of the Memorial Human Rights Centre Grozny Office in Chechnya, has become the sixth laureate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Václav Havel Human Rights Prize

Roman Ternovsky has been declared a political prisoner after being jailed by Russian courts for taking part in peaceful protests in Ukraine as a member of a legal Ukrainian organization

It is becoming dangerous in Russia to investigate the crimes of Stalinism.  A second Karelian historian, Sergei Koltyrin has been arrested and is facing charges almost identical to those now brought against political prisoner, Yuri Dmitriev

Two Russian citizens were forced to return to Russia from Ukraine in February 2018. One was almost certainly tortured to death, the other – seized and tortured into ‘confessing’ to fighting for ISIS, with the help of Ukraine’s Security Service and ‘Right Sector’. _

Russia uses a deserter facing criminal charges in Ukraine, highly dubious ‘secret witnesses’ and Google to prove what Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Shumkov has no need to deny

Valeriya Ivashkina, the journalist whose name was on a cynical attempt to defame Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, has announced her resignation from Strana.ua, expressing regret that she took part in the efforts to slur Sentsov’s name

A Russian lawyer defending victims of repression is facing a potentially long prison sentence on openly fabricated criminal charges, with this setting a terrifying precedent for other lawyers both in Russia and in occupied Crimea

The new legislative initiative is doubtless linked with the amount of proof of Russia’s direct part in the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 and of its military involvement in Ukraine and Syria, revealed by soldiers on their social media pages

Russia’s Supreme Court has, as feared, upheld the internationally condemned 12-year maximum security prison sentence against Ukrainian journalist and Ukrinform Paris correspondent Roman Sushchenko

While images of Russian children, elderly pensioners and other protesters being detained, many violently, in Russian cities on 9 September rightly hit world headlines, there was a lot of police brutality and thuggery that went on away from the cameras.  It included the abduction of Mikhail Benyash, a 41-year-old lawyer from Sochi, who had been planning  to defend those detained for peacefully trying to take part in protests against pension reform

The Russian news portal OVD-Info, which tracks the arrest of protesters, said more than 830 demonstrators were detained on September 9 at protests in 33 towns and cities across Russia

It is 14 years today since the storming of School No. 1 in Beslan (Russia) at the end of a three-day siege resulted in the deaths of over 330 people, 185 of them children

The European Court of Human Rights has responded swiftly to Ukraine’s request for urgent measures under Rule 39 regarding the state of health of four Ukrainian political prisoners: Volodymyr Balukh; Stanislav Klykh; human rights activist Emir-Usein Kuku and Serhiy Lytvynov.  The move is very welcome, however the number of political prisoners, especially in occupied Crimea, whose very life Russia is jeopardizing is much higher.

A new attempt to rewrite history about the Great Terror appears to be underway in Russia with this new offensive ominously linked with the arrest and imprisonment on fabricated charges of Yuri Dmitriev, a world-renowned historian and the head of the Karelia branch of the Memorial Society . 

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.