While Russia’s Minister of Culture waxes lyrical about this ‘patriotic camp’ entitled “I am a Citizen and Defender of a Great Country”, his first deputy is busy explaining why the Council of Europe, British Council and other bodies, funded from abroad, are plugging all the wrong values.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree classifying information about Russian military losses during “special operations in peacetime”, thus potentially enabling prosecution and imprisonment for divulging details about the deaths of Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine. As well as coinciding with publication of a second damning report this month about Russia’s undeclared war on Ukraine, the decree comes as another opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, lies remains gravely ill in Moscow with symptoms of poisoning..

74-year-old Ludmila Bogatenkova, head of a Soldiers’ Mothers committee in Russia, is facing charges potentially carrying a six-year sentence after she probed the deaths of nine Russian soldiers who were almost certainly killed in Ukraine

The report by the Atlantic Council also charges that Putin is using the decrease in hostilities that has followed a February cease-fire deal to reinforce Russian-backed rebels with troops and weaponry in order "to prepare for the next stage of fighting."

A prominent Russian opposition activist and grassroots political organizer who has lobbied U.S. officials to sanction Kremlin loyalists has been hospitalized in Moscow after suddenly falling ill.

While Ukrainians have either disappeared without trace after being taken prisoner in Russia over the last year, or are being denied access to lawyers and the Ukrainian consul, the Russian Foreign Ministry has issued a warning to its own nationals travelling abroad that they could face arrest or detention

The discovery of poison from an exotic Asian plant in the stomach of Aleksandr Perepilichny, a wealthy Russian whistle-blower who died suddenly in England in 2012, has raised suspicions of a KGB-style assassination

Russia’s State Duma has passed a draconian law on so-called ‘undesirable organizations’ which gravely threatens Russia’s already beleaguered and weak civil society.

Russia has placed a book written by former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko on its list of extremist materials and forced an Internet library to remove it. This comes 3 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded a state honour to the man suspected of killing London-based Litvinenko with radioactive polonium

The U.S.-based online payment service PayPal has blocked an account set up by Russian opposition activists to raise funds for a report alleging Russian military involvement in the Ukraine war, citing the political nature of the donation campaign.

The Sevastopol authorities have issued a decree handing 266.5 hectares of land to the Night Wolves, the Russian ultra-nationalist and pro-Putin bikers who played a role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014

Every word of the report that Boris Nemtsov was gunned down before he could write is damning of Vladimir Putin and his regime, but relatively little is new Much of it is equally an indictment on the West’s continued insistence on a diplomatic solution in which the Kremlin-backed militants in Donbas are treated as negotiating partners

The report, titled Putin. War, asserts that at least 150 Russian military personnel were killed during a Ukrainian offensive in August 2014. A further 70 -- including 17 paratroopers from the city of Ivanovo -- were reportedly killed during fighting near the bitterly contested town of Debaltseve in January and February

A Day in Solidarity with imprisoned Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov was held on May 11, the first anniversary of his official detention (he was in fact taken into custody the previous evening). Sentsov is facing ’terrorism’ charges that by no means only he considers politically motivated and fabricated. Despite this, both he and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko are facing sentences of up to 20 years

Nine people in Moscow, including two registered as disabled, are spending the night in jail after being detained at totally peaceful actions marking Nadiya Savchenko’s birthday. At least two others, in Yekaterinburg, are also being held overnight. There were events throughout Ukraine and in other countries marking Nadiya Savchenko’s 34tth birthday. Unsurprisingly, no arrests were reported.

Andrei Marchenko, a Russian LGBT activist and blogger from Khabarovsk has been charged with ‘calls to extremist activity’ over a blog against Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. He could face a 4-year sentence for words which experts allegedly claim “contain calls to carry out violent actions against supporters of fascism and terror in Russia, involved in the violent seizure of Ukrainian territory”.

If Nadiya Savchenko’s lawyers are right that the authorities are trying to speed up the case in order to find some way to release Savchenko, then every bit of pressure, every clear indication that she is not forgotten, is vital. Please join the global campaign on May 11

Lviv student Yury Yatsenko was welcomed home in his native Lviv on Friday, May 8, a year after being detained in Russia, tortured and then convicted on fabricated charges. He spoke of the direct threats he and his friend received if they didn’t ‘cooperate’ with Russia’s FSB [Security Service].

‘Perm-36’, the NGO recently forced to give up running a vital museum about the Gulag, has now been forcibly registered as a ‘foreign agent’. This new offensive comes as the museum taken over by the authorities removes all mention of repression, and Kremlin-backed militants in Donetsk remove a memorial plaque to Vasyl Stus, the Ukrainian poet who died at the notorious labour camp.

According to Russia’s investigators, Savchenko was released by the Kremlin-backed militants and that she sped to the Russian border in order to cross it illegally. Sped here is the operative word since she is alleged to have covered many kilometres in just one and a half hours.