The Berlin Academy of Arts has reiterated calls for Russia to release Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov whom it is holding on fabricated ‘terrorism’ charges and says that any official contact with Russian arts bodies would be inconceivable until he is freed.

Nadiya Savchenko was gaunt, but unbroken as she spoke during Tuesday’s hearing in Moscow at which the judge ‘found no grounds’ for releasing the imprisoned Ukrainian MP who has been convicted of no crime and will almost certainly die before the next court hearing if left in Russian detention.

On the 59th day of Nadiya Savchenko’s indefinite hunger strike, prominent Russian writers, actors and others have initiated an appeal on Novaya Gazeta for her release from custody, warning that otherwise she will soon die.

Everybody knows who will decide whether Nadiya Savchenko, now on her 55th day of hunger strike, is left to die in Russian detention. The words today from the USA and PACE were blunt, but only words. Greater pressure, perhaps more punitive sanctions are obviously needed.

Three Russian activists, including a 75-year-old pensioner, could face 5-year prison sentences for taking part in peaceful protests following application of draconian new measures introduced in July 2014. Memorial has declared their prosecution to be unlawful and politically motivated, and warns that the latest legislative moves destroy freedom of assembly in Russia.

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has been forced to acknowledge that imprisoned Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov is a Ukrainian national, but is still insisting that he also has Russian citizenship. It is attempting to use the lack of an agreement with Ukraine on dual nationality to insist that ‘de jure’ Sentsov should be treated as Russian

Svetlana Davydova’s lawyers believe her release may be because of the public outrage aroused by the arrest and detention on charges of ‘treason’ on behalf of Ukraine of the mother of 7 young children, the youngest of whom is only 2 months old.

Almost 9 months after their arrests Russian investigators have charged Oleg Sentsov, Ukrainian film director and Crimean political prisoner with possessing arms never found, and have denied fellow prisoner Oleksandr Kolchenko’s right to be a Ukrainian citizen.

The NGO Solders’ Mothers of St. Petersburg has reported a sharp increase in complaints from conscripts and their families who say that the young men are being forced to sign contracts purportedly in order to be sent ’for exercises’ to the Rostov oblast on the border with Donbas. Reports of such coercion are not new, but the increase coincides with the major escalation in overt Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine over recent weeks

In the last 48 hours well over 20 thousand Russians have signed a petition calling for the release from custody of Svetlana Davydova who is breastfeeding her youngest child and facing charges of ’state treason’ by informing Ukraine of Russian soldiers probably deployed on Ukrainian territory

After months in which the Russian authorities have tried to conceal information about Russian soldiers fighting and dying in Ukraine, a Smolensk mother of seven is in detention facing charges of treason for trying to divulge this ‘state secret’.

It had seemed like a cynical joke back in October 2014 when Russia’s Investigative Committee first suggested that Nadiya Savchenko could be charged with ‘illegally crossing the border’. At the end of January with Savchenko in her seventh week of hunger strike and Russia ignoring international calls for her release, the new charge is immensely cynical, and anything but funny.

On the eve of a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] debate on whether to reinstate the Russian delegation’s credentials, Ukrainian MP and PACE delegate Nadiya Savchenko is on the 46th day of her hunger strike in Russian detention and a number of people in Moscow have been jailed for up to 45 days in connection with a peaceful protest demanding Savchenko’s release.

Less than 8 years after Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly encouraged ‘positive moves’ in the presentation of the country’s history, a Levada Centre opinion poll has found 52% of Russians viewing Joseph Stalin in a positive light, the highest rating for the bloody dictator since such questions were asked. Only 30% see him in a negative light.

How can Nadiya Savchenko, captured by Kremlin-backed militants in Ukraine, be in RUSSIAN detention? How can we believe that she will get a fair trial when the investigators and the court are ignoring an irrefutable alibi? Please help tweet these and other questions on Nadiya Savchenko’s FORTY FIFTH day on hunger strike.

The three-year sentence passed on Oleg Navalny has been widely seen as hostage-taking and an attempt to stifle his brother – leading political opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Memorial’s stand only strengthens this view.

The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] has asked Russia’s State Duma Speaker for help in securing Nadiya Savchenko’s urgent release. The imprisoned former pilot, Ukrainian MP and PACE delegate has been on hunger strike for 39 days and has rejected even her sister’s call for her to end it

The 75-year-old pensioner and activist is the first to fall foul of tough new legislation providing for stiff jail terms for those who repeatedly attend unsanctioned demonstrations.

The European Court of Human Rights has (again) found grave violations of the right to life and prohibition of torture in connection with the abduction of Chechens by “groups of armed men, most of them in camouflage gear, in areas under the full control of the Russian federal forces.

Well-known human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and 25-year-old Anastasia Baburova who was finishing journalism studies and working for Novaya Gazeta were gunned down in Moscow on January 19, 2009.