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’

The next hearing is due on April 2 into the trial of Alexander Byvshev, a Russian poet and school teacher whose poem “To Ukrainian Patriots” lost him his job, and could result in a prison sentence

Moscow’s Basmanny Court has agreed to call a further charge in the indictment against Nadiya Savchenko, one that carries a 20-year prison sentence, a “technical mistake”. It found no problem with the investigators’ merging of two other charges against the Ukrainian pilot, one of which was announced the day after PACE demanded her release within 24 hours.

While 3 Russian nationals, facing 7-year-sentences for raising a flag, are charged with having offended veterans of the Second World War, Moscow is taking measures to ensure that elderly veterans who helped win that War will not be allowed near the parade on Red Square marking the seventieth anniversary of Victory Day.

Former employees of Russia’s best-known "troll farm" reveal what the operation looks like from the inside.

Yury Yatsenko, the 25-year-old student first detained in May 2014 after Russian officials realized he was from Lviv has been sentenced to 2 years low security prison colony. The charges were only laid after he and a friend had been in detention for some months and bear no scrutiny, but this did not deter Russian investigators nor the court.

There’s one place in the world where can you see the original, preserved barracks of Stalin’s Gulag – the Perm-36 camp in the Urals. But nowadays it’s something else that strikes you as you flick through the museum’s pamphlet: The words "Stalin," "dissident," or "gulag" are nowhere to be seen.

The trial has begun in Kaliningrad of three men held in detention since last March for placing a German flag on the garage of the FSB building as a form of peaceful protest over Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea. Despite quite bizarre charges, they face up to 7 year sentences

Russia’s anti-extremism squad had issue only with those objecting to the St. Petersburg forum of mainly European and Russian far-right and neo-Nazi parties. Notorious Russian neo-Nazi sadist Alexei Milchakov and his comrade in arms and Nazi views, Jan Petrovsky were there representing the Kremlin-backed militants in Donbas

Europe’s far-right parties are due to take part in an ‘International Russian Conservative Forum’ on Sunday Its organizers hope to find ‘allies in Europe’ among far-right and neo-Nazi politicians who will support Russia’s ‘conflict with Ukraine’ and seek to get sanctions removed.

A day after a Moscow court upheld the justice ministry’s decision to forcibly enter the Movement ‘For Human Rights’ on the Register of ‘Foreign Agents’, another court has fined the Movement 300 thousand roubles for refusing to register itself.