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

Moscow has finally achieved its end and brought about the dissolution of one of the country’s most renowned human rights NGOs: ‘For Human Rights’, defending the ever-mounting numbers of political prisoners in Russia and occupied Crimea

The recent use of a World War II veteran for Russia’s politically motivated persecution of opposition leader Alexei Navalny has whetted the appetite of those Russian ruling party politicians responsible for legislating repression

Russian prison authorities are effectively threatening reprisals against Oleksiy Bessarabov because he is refusing to hand over the Ukrainian government’s grant to him as a political prisoner in order to pay a preposterous fine

41-year-old Anastasia Shevchenko, who has spent over 2 years under house arrest, was the first person to face criminal charges for peaceful activism as a member of Open Russia

A Russian cassation court has ignored glaring infringements of the right to a fair trial and upheld a 13-year sentence against world-renowned historian and head of the Karelia Memorial Society, Yury Dmitriev.

An important new initiative has begun exposing those academics providing the dodgy ‘expert assessments’ most often used to convict Crimean or Russian political prisoners on fabricated charges

Over the past year, Russia has already introduced criminal liability and very steep sentences against those seeking an end to Russia’s occupation of Crimea. The proposed new legislation would add yet another weapon to the arsenal.

Why is the EU confining itself to deep concern when Russia is sentencing Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners to 18 years, and when new laws are set to still further crush any freedom in occupied Crimea and Russia?.