Volodymyr Vakulenko was killed because he openly opposed Russia’s occupation of his native Kharkiv oblast and helped the Ukrainian defenders. He is one of many Ukrainian writers and artists remembered in PEN Ukraine’s #EmptyChairWeek

Russia has blocked investigation of the explosion at Olenivka that killed over 50 Ukrainian POWs. Its mass ‘trials’ of Ukrainian POWs are, however, also in flagrant violation of international law and have perpetrators who should be held to answer

Russia is not content with having destroyed most of Mariupol’s infrastructure, and having killed vast numbers of civilians, but is now seeking to deprive residents of those homes it did not earlier destroy

Ukrainian defender of Mariupol, Anton Cherednyk was clearly tortured into providing an insane ‘confession’ that fits Moscow’s propaganda narrative, but not the facts

Yury Armash had been a military medic for several years before 2022, but what he saw and experienced after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shocked him in its savagery

Russia is flouting international law and even its own norms, by holding 46-year-old Maksym Butkevych incommunicado and refusing to even pass on letters

Bohdan Yermokhin is about to turn 18 and there are serious grounds for fearing that Russia will forcibly mobilize the young lad who has repeatedly been prevented from returning to Ukraine

If Russia had evidence to back its profoundly cynical claims, it would trumpet them, instead of using illegal formations on occupied territory to produce kangaroo court ‘sentences’

20-year-old Ilya Hibeskul has become Russia’s youngest Ukrainian political prisoner probably because he had not taken Russian citizenship and was trying to leave for Poland

Five young Telegram channel administrators have been held in captivity for over two months, and clearly tortured into providing Russia’s later propaganda attempt to combat Ukrainian resistance in occupied Melitopol

It is believed that Russian soldiers killed the nine members of one family, including two small children, after the children’s father refused to hand over the family’s home

Russia had long included many Ukrainian political prisoners on its notorious list of extremists and terrorists’ but since February 2022 it has begun bringing grotesque ‘terrorism’ charges against civilians abducted from newly occupied Ukrainian territory

For years, Russia claimed not to wield any control over its proxy Donetsk ‘republic’, yet it is now staging a fake ‘trial’ under its own legislation, of three of that fake ‘republic’s’ civilian hostages

Russia is spending eyewatering amounts of money on its war of aggression against Ukraine, while on occupied Ukrainian territory, it seems more concerned with indoctrinating young people than on rebuilding what it has destroyed

The Russians claimed to have ‘deported’ Oleksiy Brazhnyk in February 2023, almost six months after they abducted and imprisoned him, but he has disappeared

The invading power is even refusing critical medication to children unless their parents accept Russian citizenship

The UN Commission established appalling crimes, such as the repeated beating and rape of an 83-year-old woman in front of her disabled husband and the killing of a couple who had reported the wife's rape by Russian soldiers

Russia is continuing to seize and torture civilians in all parts of Ukraine that fall under its occupation, with many hostages held for over a year without any charges being laid

Russia abducted school directors, threatened to take children from their parents and tried other methods of coercion, but has consistently had difficulty in foisting its propaganda on Kherson oblast schools

There is every reason to believe that Roman Zarubaiev and Artur Nesterenko are illegally held incommunicado and deprived of independent lawyers