2 and a half years after Russia’s FSB first seized Crimean filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and 3 other opponents of Russia’s annexation, and charged them with a non-existent ‘terrorist plot’, the same scenario is being followed with (at least) two other Ukrainians. Yevhen Panov and Andriy Zakhtei have been illegally taken to Moscow with the move immediately following confirmation that Panov had been tortured

Alexei Moroshkin has been declared a danger to society after he refused to reject the Memorial Human Rights Centre’s recognition of him as a political prisoner. A psychiatrist was recently taken off his case for saying he shouldn’t be in hospital and there is every reason to see Moroshkin is a victim of punitive psychiatry because of his support for Ukraine.

The Moscow Prosecutor has proven undaunted by previous failures and is once again seeking the imprisonment of Natalya Sharina, Director of the Ukrainian Literature Library in Moscow for so-called ‘incitement to enmity’.

Viktor Kapitonov was violently detained on Oct 7, when he tried to hold a legal solitary picket in memory of Anna Politkovskaya. The 20-year-old, who is disabled, was so badly injured that he is now in hospital with a broken arm, and may need an operation

Anna Politkovskaya’s voice would certainly have been heard, as was Boris Nemtsov’s, over Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. It is sorely needed now also in occupied Crimea, with Russia increasingly using the same methods that it has applied for so long in Chechnya and Ingushetia

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.