43-year-old Ivan Yatskin has gone on hunger strike in protest at the systematic pressure and ill-treatment he is being subjected to in Russian captivity

An exhibition has opened in Berlin of the works of Viktor Shur, a Ukrainian political prisoner, incarcerated in Russia since December 2014. Shur is now 64, and forced, as his daughter Olha puts it, “to draw the life he is not living”.

Three Ukrainians have been arrested, with the only proof of such alleged activities coming from ‘videoed confessions’ made by men totally under the control of the FSB

Russia’s attempt to ban the Memorial Human Rights Centre is based on an ‘opinion’ by two individuals without any expert knowledge and with either no academic publications at all, or just three, and none in the relevant field

Viktoria Ivleva, a tireless defender of Russia’s Ukrainian political prisoners, has been fined a huge 150 thousand rouble fine after being held in detention for two days.

The flagrant irregularities in Oleksandr Marchenko's 'trial’ included muffling the fact that the recognized Ukrainian political prisoner was abducted to Russia from militant-occupied Donbas where he was savagely tortured at the Izolyatsia secret prison

The forced dissolution of the Memorial Human Rights Centre, in particular, would be catastrophic given the crucial role the NGO plays in monitoring political and religious persecution both in Russia and in occupied Crimea

Olga Smirnova, a political activist from St. Petersburg, has been charged with ‘justifying terrorism’ over a picket in defence of four recognized Crimean Tatar political prisoners from Alusht

Russia’s Supreme Court has refused to refer the case of Yury Dmitriev for a cassation review despite glaring procedural irregularities and violations of his right to a fair trial.

Russia’s FSB has published a list of 60 topics that could result in journalists and others finding themselves labelled ‘foreign agents’ and prosecuted despite receiving no funding from abroad

The decree makes it possible for people like the convicted killer of Ukrainian schoolboy Stepan Chubenko and suspected Maidan killers to hold public service posts in the Russian Federation or occupied Crimea.

64-year-old Viktor Shur has spent almost seven years in Russian captivity, serving a 12-year sentence passed behind close doors without any access to an independent lawyer or to the Ukrainian consul

The new textbooks have coincided with the creation of a ‘commission’ made up of the FSB and other enforcement bodies, rather than historians

A new survey has found a terrifying increase in the number of young adults who support a monument to Joseph Stalin, and a sizeable majority overall who believe that there should be a ‘Stalin Centre’ museum complex

Since its invasion of Crimea, Russia has abducted and imprisoned a large number of Ukrainians, in several cases holding them incommunicado for many months and mercilessly torturing them to extract ‘confessions’ to non-existent crimes

Libraries and book shops in Russia and occupied Crimea have been feverishly removing ‘dangerous’ books after a new law came into force making it a criminal offence to equate the actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany during the Second World War

Two days after Russia’s effective censor, Roskomnadzor, blocked the website of the important human rights initiative Team 29, its Director Ivan Pavlov has announced the group is terminating all activities

No other foreign company places as many commercials on Belarusian state television as Nestlé. Over 50 NGO call on the Swiss food company to immediately end its support for the Lukashenko regime’s TV propaganda

The US-based Bard College has become the 35th NGO outlawed in Russia as 'undesirable', with the Prosecutor General’s Office claiming that the College “poses a threat to the Russian Federation’s constitutional order and security”.

The renowned Levada Centre has carried out a survey to find out whom Russians would name as the “ten most outstanding [выдающиеся) figures of all times and nations”.