Artyom Loskutov, Novosibirsk performance artist, has been sentenced to 10 days imprisonment and fined over two ‘unauthorized’ monstrations, or events with absurd slogans. The same artist’s attempts last year to hold a march in support of Siberian federalization resulted in Russia’s prosecutor and censor going into serious overdrive

As Memorial calls for a legislative ban on monuments to Joseph Stalin, a memorial plaque is to be erected in the centre of Simferopol, the second sculpture to the bloody dictator since Russian annexed Crimea. It will be formally unveiled on May 8, flanked by posters on which the tyrant responsible for the death of millions ‘greets’ Crimeans with Victory Day.

Lviv Maidan activist Yury Yatsenko is to be released from Russian custody on May 9, after his lawyer dazzlingly demonstrated the political motivation behind an absurdly harsh sentence imposed essentially because Yatsenko is Ukrainian.

The Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny has published a new report showing that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favorite biker gang, the Night Wolves, have received more than $1 million in taxpayer-funded state grants in recent years.

Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko are facing 20-year sentences for not cooperating with the FSB and ‘confessing’ to a Right Sector ‘terrorist plot. Sentsov’s letter shows yet again that the FSB miscalculated with these Ukrainian hostages

Vladimir Putin has signed a law increasing fines on the media for what the authorities choose to view as ‘propaganda of extremism’. In Russian-occupied Crimea this can be any peaceful opposition to Russian rule, with the use of the terms ‘annexation’ and ‘occupation’ having resulted in one newspaper being warned about ‘extremism’.

Yury Soloshenko has been held in custody since August last year. He is being prevented from seeing the lawyers he and his family want, or the Ukrainian consul, almost certainly because of the gross irregularities they will expose - such as the lack of any case against him

Allies of slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov are asking the United States to impose sanctions on Russian television "propagandists" they accuse of leading a media vilification campaign that helped lead to his killing.

A few hours after the Russian Penitentiary Service announced that Nadiya Savchenko had been refusing food for three days, Savchenko’s lawyer confirmed that she is to be moved to a civilian hospital on Tuesday

A Russian military court has sentenced a Belarusian IT specialist working in Nizhny Novgorod to two years imprisonment for what it deemed ‘public calls to terrorism’ with these including the call for Crimea to be returned to Ukraine.

A Russian court is due to hear the appeal on Monday against the two-year sentence passed on 25-year-old Yury Yatsenko. The young law student was first detained just before Crimean political prisoners Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko, and was almost certainly sentenced to 2 years in a low security prison colony because he’s Ukrainian.

As well as claiming that the kidnapped former pilot illegally crossed Russia’s border, the indictment now accuses Savchenko, from 150 metres up on a telephone tower, of abetting attempted murder, as well as the killing of two Russian journalists

Oleksy Chirniy, who ‘confessed’ and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution has received a 7-year sentence. The final indictments against Crimean film director Oleg Sentsov and civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko have, as expected, proven devoid of any elements of ‘terrorism’, yet both men are facing likely maximum sentences as punishment for refusing to ‘cooperate’

Nadiya Savchenko has been visited by Russian MPs trying to persuade her to ‘confess’, be convicted and then – supposedly - pardoned. There seems no chance that she, Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko will agree, but every reason for Moscow to want to avoid the lawlessness in each of these cases on public trial.

In Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea, Roskomnadzor will now be able to follow what people write on social networks and private emails, while another plan underway will allow it to destroy all copies of information that the regime decides are ‘extremist’ or about ‘unauthorized’ demonstrations.

Oleksandr Kolchenko, Crimean civic activist and recognized political prisoner, has lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights over the Russian citizenship which Moscow is foisting on him.

There is no evidence against Crimean film director Oleg Sentsov, no crime nor victim, yet he has been threatened from the outset with a 20-year sentence – if he lives to serve it. He told the court on Wednesday that he feared neither the threats nor the sentence since “the rule of the bloody runt in your country will end sooner.”

A left-leaning liberal representing Novosibirsk, Ponomaryov was the only member of the Duma to vote in March 2014 against Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. He is now facing criminal charges and has been stripped of his immunity

Ever wonder where the droves of Russian-language Internet trolls get those satirical graphics they deploy to smear Western and Ukrainian leaders? Turns out there’s a website with a vast archive of images helping them pepper their posts with visual invective.

Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko are facing likely 20 year sentences for refusing to confess to charges which are both politically motivated and absurd. Kolchenko is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail into an empty United Russia party office which the FSB call a ‘terrorist act seeking Crimea’s ‘secession’ from Russia’