The trial of two Ukrainians whom Russia has accused of crimes which never took place seems set to continue without either defendant after Stanislav Klykh was removed from the court on Monday, Feb 8. The men’s defender and Nadiya Savchenko’s sister, Vera, has already been removed for alleged ‘contempt of court’.

Russia’s chief military prosecutor has refused to investigate the death of 159 Russian soldiers who are believed to have been killed in Russia’s undeclared war against Ukraine.

Russian engineer Gennady Kravtsov had been sentenced to 14 years maximum security prison, so the Supreme Court’s reduction of the sentence to 6 years could have been worse. The charges were utterly surreal and his conviction should have been overturned altogether

Gennady Afanasyev has been moved to a ‘prison-type cell’, one of the worst forms of punishment in the Russian prison system. This is the latest of constant moves aimed at making the conditions of his imprisonment unendurable since the young Crimean retracted his testimony against Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko

Ruslan Leviev, Russian blogger and head of the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), is convinced that the order for the offensive on Debaltseve in Donbas was issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian psychiatrists have claimed that Ukrainian Stanislav Klykh is fit to stand trial and court hearings at more intensive pace are scheduled to resume on Monday Feb 8. Clear signs of extreme psychological distress have proved as irrelevant to the Russian authorities, as alibis making the trial an absurdity, faulty historical facts and strong evidence to back allegations of torture.

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko have been moved from Rostov, dashing the flickering hope that the Kremlin was already considering an exchange of the two political prisoners.

Just months after Russia’s Investigative Committee was forced to withdraw insane war crimes charges against Serhiy Litvinov and came up with a robbery charge instead, Litvinov has applied for this supposed ‘robbery’ to also be tried as a war crime. He can then be tried by a jury which will be less likely than a court to dismiss clear proof of innocence

Nadiya Savchenko has recognized the driver of the car in which she was taken against her will into Russia as Pavel Karpov, a Russian who allegedly represented the Kremlin’s interests in the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [‘LNR’].

Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya leader and faithful ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has posted a video on Instagram showing opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov directly in the sights of a sniper

A Moscow court on Jan 27 extended for a further 3 months the house arrest imposed on Natalya Sharina, Director of the Ukrainian Literature Library in Moscow. The application for the 58-year-old librarian to be at least allowed short walks so that she could walk to a clinic was turned down

Russian civic activist Irina Kalmykova has been forced to flee Russia where she was facing the same charges over totally peaceful protest that resulted in a three-year prison sentence for Ildar Dadin. Like 76-year-old Vladimir Ionov, Iryna and her 14-year-old son have come to Ukraine, and are clearly in need of asylum.

The court appears to be allowing the defence to have its say, while in fact blocking material which exposes the cynical lies and lack of any substance to the charges against the former Ukrainian pilot

While observers around the world were sharing Marina Litvinenko’s relief that the likely role of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in her husband’s murder had finally been clearly stated, pro-Kremlin media were in overdrive trying to undermine the report.

The trial of Stanislav Klykh and Mykola Karpyuk whom Russia is accusing of fighting in Chechnya 20 years ago has been adjourned, with the court ordering that Klykh undergo psychiatric assessment. Klykh’s behaviour suggests that psychotropic drugs may have been applied, and it is imperative that independent psychiatrists are involved in the examination.

30 Russian pro-democracy activists and journalists have signed an open letter calling on FIFA not to hold the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia, because of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and his administration’s repressive policies towards its own population.

It is seven years today since human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and 25-year-old beginning journalist Anastasia Baburova, from Sevastopol in Crimea, were gunned down in Moscow by members of a neo-Nazi Russian nationalist organization

33-year-old Khaiser Dzhemiliev’s lawyer Nikolai Polozov reports that Russia has now formally rejected Ukraine’s application for Khaiser’s extradition, despite all legal grounds under bilateral agreements for returning the young man to Ukraine

Of the 30 Russian soldiers whom Russia is claiming two Ukrainians – Mykola Karpyuk and Stanislav Klykh - killed while supposedly fighting in Chechnya, 18 were killed in another place altogether, while a further 11 did not die from gunshot wounds, as the prosecution claims.

In the last two years, campaigns persecuting Ukrainians have become an entirely normalized and systemized form of Russian military aggression.