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”.

Almost 7 years after Russia abducted and imprisoned Valentin Vyhivsky, he has spoken openly of his despair in Russian captivity, and his certainty that he cannot endure another four years of imprisonment “in a concrete basement”

Darya Polyudova is best known to Ukrainians because of her unwavering opposition to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and for her defence of Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners held in occupied Crimea or Russia

Russian prison authorities are preventing Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Marchenko from regularly receiving thyroid hormone medication, needed to compensate for a removed thyroid and to prevent the cancer he once survived from returning

Prominent Russian legislators have tabled a bill which would ban any public statements likening the roles played by the USSR and Nazi Germany in World War II.

The Russian FSB burst into Ivan Pavlov’s hotel room in Moscow early on 30 April, carried out a search and detained the well-known lawyer and head of the legal and journalist initiative Team 29.

As has been the case in all analogous trials involving Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses from occupied Crimea, the ‘indictment’ against Rayis Mavliutov pointed only to legal activities normal for any devout believer

There are strong grounds for believing that Darya Polyudova is imprisoned because of her unwavering support for Ukraine, opposition to Russian aggression and her defence of the Kremlin’s Ukrainian political prisoners

The lack of any grounds for the charges the FSB brought against 50-year-old Oleksandr Marchenko also proved no problem

Russia’s Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu has issued orders which effectively block almost all access to Russian military archives from the period of the Second World War

A first appeal hearing has taken place in the Russian city of Krasnodar in a case that is likely to prove most incriminating for Moscow when it reaches the European Court of Human Rights, not to mention the International Criminal Court

Dzianis Ivashin has been placed in detention after exposing the deployment of Russian fighters, involved in Russia’s invasion of Crimea and war in Donbas, as well as ex-Berkut officers, in propping up the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenka