Russia’s Roskomnadzor has issued the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta with a warning over bad language cited in a literary text. As the second warning in less than a year, it could be used as pretext to strip the publication of its licence.

Russia is insisting on holding the trial of captured ex-pilot Nadiya Savchenko in a Russian city bordering the area of Ukraine under Kremlin-backed militant control. There are no legitimate grounds for this move which will seriously hinder access to the trial, and could, Savchenko believes, put her mother and sister in danger

Two Ukrainian nationals, one elderly and in poor health, have been held in Russian detention now for almost a year on mystery spying charges. The degree of secrecy, intimidation and insistence that both men only see lawyers provided by the investigators arouse serious concern that the men’s nationality is the main ‘incriminating’ factor.

A jury in Moscow has found Ilya Goryachev guilty of ordering the killing of anti-fascist lawyer Stanislav Markelov and four other victims of the neo-Nazi organization BORN [Militant Organization of Russian Nationalists].

Russia’s Constitutional Court has ruled that officials can ignore judgments by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) if they are found to contravene the Russian Constitution.

A Russian court has convicted poet and teacher Alexander Byvshev of ‘inciting enmity’ and sentenced him to 300 hours community service, confiscated his computer and prohibited him from working as a school teacher for two years. His ‘crime’ – the poem ‘To Ukrainian Patriots’ in which he expresses his opposition to Russia’s annexation of Crimea

Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov is turning 39 on July 13 in Russian detention. No need to wish him strength of will and determination, since his demonstration of both these last 14 months has only highlighted Russia’s shame but letters of moral support are important (addresses below).

Several dozen Russian contract soldiers could face up to 10 year prison sentences for having left a military unit in the Rostov oblast, fearing that they would be sent to fight in Ukraine. Soldiers allege that were offered up to 8 thousand roubles a day for ‘volunteering’ to go to Ukraine, and effectively held there until they agreed.

As the trial begins of Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko on absurd ‘terrorism’ charges, journalist Maria Tomak probes one of the ‘offices’ in Crimea which figure in the charges and finds not only a place of torture and imprisonment, but also a military base with people who later played a prominent role in the war in Donbas.

Alexander Byvshev, the Russian poet dismissed from his teaching job and on trial for a poem against Russia’s annexation of Crimea says that he would repeat every word despite all of the persecution. WIKIPEDIA, in contrast, has removed its entry on the poet in Russian and muffles this censorship on its English page

After seizing bags of poppy seeds from their family-run cafe, authorities took the Polukhins to court for alleged trafficking in opium -- a charge the entrepreneurs have vehemently rejected, denouncing what they say is a ruthless racketeering scheme by drug-control officials.

The preliminary hearing is due on July 9 in the trial of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko whom Russia is holding illegally and accusing of ‘terrorism’

Rafis Kashapov is on trial in Russia charged with ‘public calls to violate Russian territorial integrity’ and ‘hate speech’ for posts in VKontakte critical of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in eastern Ukraine.

So what was on the plane from Russia, organized with unprecedented speed on Feb 19, 2014, the day before unarmed protesters were gunned down on Maidan and why was all information about the flights classified as secret in both Ukraine and Russia’?

The vital Crimean Human Rights Field Mission has been placed on a so-called “patriotic stop list” of foreign NGOs likely to be deemed ‘undesirable’ and effectively outlawed in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.

Investigators in Russia have increased the seriousness of charges against captive Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, accusing her of direct participation in the killing of two Russian reporters who died last year while covering the conflict in Ukraine.

On Russia’s new museum, bust and all, dedicated to Joseph Stalin, the Russian Culture Minister’s “new approach to history” and the effective blocking for another 30 years of virtually all documents about the Soviet secret police and their crimes

74-year-old head of a Russian Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, Ludmila Bogatenkova was convicted on July 1 of one of the charges laid against her three days after a list she compiled of Russian soldiers believed to have been killed in Ukraine was handed to President Vladimir Putin

The lawyer representing Beslan victims says he is now virtually certain of a European Court of Human Rights judgement finding against Russia over its failure to prevent the tragedy at Beslan and to investigate and punish those responsible

The defence has begun publishing the case material against Nadiya Savchenko, captured by Kremlin-backed militants in eastern Ukraine and now on trial in Russia. Appropriately enough they begin with grotesquely absurd testimony from Igor Plotnytsky, militant leader and identified by Savchenko as one of her abductors