Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has echoed earlier warnings from human rights groups and advised Ukrainian nationals to not visit Russia. The advice came three days after journalist Roman Sushchenko became the latest Ukrainian to be seized, held incommunicado and accused of mystery ‘spying’.

A Russian court has ordered that the son of veteran Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemiliev be kept under ‘administrative surveillance’ for three years after his scheduled release on Nov 25. This effectively increases the young man’s sentence, with the ruling passed at a hearing which Khaiser’s lawyer was not even told about

In the latest move in its mounting offensive against civil society in Russia, the Justice Ministry has declared the renowned International Memorial Society a ‘foreign agent’. The four grounds cited include the fact that Memorial had publicly called Russia’s actions in the East of Ukraine military aggression.

Ukrinform has reacted with outrage to the detention in Moscow of its journalist Roman Sushchenko, and to the fact that his whereabouts and the supposed ‘spying charges’ were learned about from the Russian media. It believes this to be the latest act of deliberate provocation by Russia against Ukrainians

Viktor Kapitonov has received a huge fine after being detained on Sept. 12 outside the State Duma for reading out Russia’s Constitution, a document supposedly of direct force which guarantees the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

The Kremlin is funding a second separatist jamboree in Moscow on Sept 25. The event which purports to unite “parties and movements advocating for self-determination”, and which Russian embassies tout as in defence of minorities, will be held 4 days before the Supreme Court appeal against Russia’s criminalization of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, the self-governing body of the main indigenous people of Crimea..

Russia plans to create a super security agency called the Ministry of State Security (MGB), the name once given to Josef Stalin’s Soviet spy apparatus before it was renamed the KGB after his death, Kommersant newspaper reports.

The ‘breaking news’ headlines on the BBC, Sky News and others would have been comical, were they not so misleading. These were not ‘elections’ which President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party was ever going to lose, and if you want even exit polls to be credible, you don’t effectively outlaw the Levada Centre, the main independent pollster, two weeks before voting day

Details have emerged which cast some light on how a jury in Chechnya could have found two Ukrainians guilty despite overwhelming evidence that neither man had been in Chechnya at the time and that most of the alleged crimes had never happened.

Fears that new changes to the draconian law on so-called ‘foreign agents’ would be used to crush civil society are proving founded. After effectively paralyzing the Levada Centre, Russia’s main independent pollster, Russia’s justice ministry has again attacked Memorial.

The apparent resurrection of a long buried Soviet tradition in Russia’s new Youth Army is not the most alarming feature of a children’s ‘military-patriotic’ formation which in just eight months has opened 76 regional branches and reportedly already has 12 thousand members

A court in Chechnya on September 5, 2016, sentenced a local independent journalist to three years in prison on dubious drug possession charges, Human Rights Watch has reported

The Russian Justice Ministry has added the Levada Centre to its list of ‘foreign agents’, placing the internationally respected public opinion pollster’s very existence in jeopardy. The move comes just days after the Centre reported a major slump in support for the ruling United Russia Party.

There was good reason for the silent protest by 5 mothers on Sept. 1. They were prosecuted, and even those few media who dared mention their protest, avoided saying that they had called Vladimir Putin “the executioner of Beslan”

Russia’s Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of Perm blogger Vladimir Luzgin for reposting a text which states that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939. The Supreme Court’s ruling came on September 1, 2016, the 77th anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, 17 days before the anniversary of the Soviet invasion from the east.

Civic activists have marked the first anniversary of the sentences passed on Crimean filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko by handing down their own verdicts on the Kremlin and the investigators, prosecutors and judges directly implicated in that show trial. Real liability, however, remains largely theoretical

Olga Vasilyeva, the new arch-conservative Russian Minister of Education is known for her highly specific position on bloody dictator Joseph Stalin and for remarks implying that the figures given for victims of Stalin’s Terror are exaggerated

Imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov has written a powerful letter from Russian captivity in which he rejects attempts to free him and others at any price, saying instead to "use us as a weapon"

Shamil Kazakov was rejected for the Russian police service because he is a Tatar and Muslim. After making a video which included a taped conversation confirming such unconstitutional racism, it was he who ended up being prosecuted.

Ukraine is celebrating 25 years of Independence on August 24. The anniversary is poignant for so many reasons, but must be particularly painful for those Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea. Please show them solidarity with a breath of Ukraine – a sunflower!