Russia 'needed' claims of having 'thwarted' a terrorist attack to justify the so-called 'referendum' held at gunpoint to try to justify Russia's full of aggression

Russia seems willing to do anything to prevent political prisoners like Tofik Abdulgaziev from being released - from flouting its own legislation to horrific forms of cynical torment

Even were there any plans, with this not guaranteed, the actions which Vitaliy Chorny were claimed to have been made would have been in support of his country and hardly ‘terrorism’

Oksana Kravchenko was held incommunicado for a year and told, that if she did not 'cooperate', that her son would be imprisoned for a photo that he sent when he was 12

56-year-old Yashar Shikhametov urgently needs proper medical examination and treatment for conditions that are causing acute joint pain and making it impossible to walk

Vladyslav Vidlatsky, Kostiantyn Zinvovkin, Hryhory and Oleksiy Semykopenko opposed Russia's occupation, with the sentences against them of monstrous savagery

The bizarre charges against Serhiy Iliechko were over alleged activities, linked with a sauna and 'visual surveillance' long before Russia launched its full-scale invasion

In the case of Russian authorities, they are never held to answer, with Russian courts having ignored harrowing accounts of sexual torture from, among others Natalia Vlasova and Yaroslav Zhuk

The charges against Yevhen Karpenko could not have been more cynical

Neither Serhiy Chekhovsky nor Svitlana Shevchuk had accepted Russian citizenship despite the immense difficulties this poses on occupied territory

Age is no constraint in Russia’s persecution of Ukrainians for remaining true to their country, with an ever-mounting number of men and women in their sixties and seventies receiving sentences of 12 t...

The prosecution has still not explained what Ananiev is supposed to have done, nor why he was, for so long accused only of explosives charges, and yet is now considered to deserve imprisonment until 9...

Six Crimean Solidarity civic activists are facing sentences from 17-19 years, with 'foreign agent' repression against Abdulmedzhit Seitumerov, his father and uncle making it clear that the men have be...

Russia has turned the life of the remaining residents of Oleshky, including children, into a battle for survival and is blocking their safe evacuation, even to areas under Russian occupation

Iryna Levchenko’s description of torture in a Russian secret prison and provides important information about Russia’s torture of Olha and Hennadiy Kapralov, Victoria Roshchyna and Father Kostiantyn M...

Aside from the charges against Ukrainian political prisoners, there are almost no crimes so serious that a Russian prisoner cannot buy his freedom by agreeing to kill Ukrainians, with these the men re...

Lera was in a neonatal intensive care unit when her mother was sentenced by an illegal occupation 'court' to 12 years and taken into custody, together with Lera's grandmother who suffers from multiple...

Both Hennadiy Kapralov, who turns 62 in a few days and has heart issues and his 53-year-old wife Olha Kapralova denied the charges and described exactly how they were tortured for 'confessions'

Mamut Belyalov has been in Russian captivity since 10 September 2022, with it now claimed that the young man, who was just 24, committed ‘treason’ against the aggressor state

Nasiba Saidova, who was just 18 when arrested on 15 October 2025, two other very young women and Esma Nimetulayeva, a mother of five, are imprisoned for their religious beliefs and accused of ‘seeking...

The Russian invaders seized the parents of three boys, two of them underage, and called the couple's support for Ukraine to be 'treason

While deliberately postponing hearings on the evident grounds for Tofik Abdulgaziev's release, a Russian court has convicted him of 'contempt of court' for expressing outrage over a brutal deception a...

Russia did not admit to holding Iryna Levchenko for years, and the charges were never clear. This is doubtless in part because all that the aggressor state could come up with is so manifestly absurd

Both civic journalist Asan Akhtemov and his cousin Aziz Akhtemov are imprisoned thousands of kilometres from their families because Russia wanted to fabricate a 'saboteur' plot

As well as their usual arsenal of torture methods, the Russians also threatened reprisals against 53-year-old Olha Kapralova's children and grandchildren

This is not the first time that Russia has claimed to have ‘arrested’ Ukrainians they have long held incommunicado, but the situation here is particularly worrying for several reasons

Yan Petrovsky / Voislav Torden is still facing a 12.5 year sentence for war crimes in 2014, with this a crucial first trial in another country over international crimes committed in Ukraine

28-year-old Ilia Chertov is the second member of his family to be persecuted by the Russians solely for his faith

The Russians clearly wanted the 'confessions' with it largely immaterial what came next. The fundamental lawlessness of the charges has never been an issue

Victoria Serhieieva was held incommunicado for months, with the FSB initially threatening to come for her children in order to force her to 'confess'

The claim that allegedly planned attacks on legitimate Russian occupation targets is immensely cynical whether there were such plans or the FSB simply wanted to claim to have 'thwarted' them,

These 'trials' are of particular cynicism both because Ukrainians in their 60s and 70s have been forced to take Russian citizenship, or be deprived of healthcare, subsistence and because the supposed ...

The indictment migrates from one such prosecution to another, almost verbatim, yet the sentences are becoming ever longer

It is unclear even if the secret ;'trial' has taken place, as well as what the charges are

Schoolchildren on occupied territory will be forced to repeat easily disprovable claims about support for independence and to compare Russian invaders of Ukraine with WWII heroes

The court dismissed Karpilovych's claim of 'romantic relations' when his victim had been threatened with a machine gun and would have been killed in shelling if she tried to flee

Hanna Pyrozehnko is one of the latest victims of a level of lawlessness and terror on all occupied territory that is off the scale

Two very young women from occupied Volnovakha and Mariupol were obviously terrorised into 'repenting' on video. The charges against Serhiy Pustovy and an as yet unidentified 57-year-old woman from Za...

Under no circumstances were acts of resistance against an armed aggressor 'terrorism', but they may, in any case, have never happened

As if not enough to pass a sentence for Ukrainian patriotism which would see the elderly Ukrainian freed in his eighties, an appeal 'court' added another six months

Russia is clearly changing the demographic situation in occupied Mariupol while finding new excuses for escalating the suffering of residents who have already lost almost everything

Rosa Abdulgazieva died without seeing her son who has been imprisoned since 2019, in reprisals for his Crimean Solidarity civic activism, with Russia now also persecuting Tofik Abdulgaziev's son, Amar

The occupation regime is claiming that 66-year-old Volodymyr Rytikov ‘poses a threat to Russia’s state security’

A cartoon of Putin drinking Ukraine's blood from 2014, a call in 2022 from a Ukrainian for other Ukrainians to support their own Armed Forces, these are just two of the old posts dredged up for Russia...

Russia's oldest Ukrainian political prisoner is facing a massive sentence which all Russians complicit in his persecution, including the 'judge', know in advance that he cannot survive

Although those POWs, civilian hostages held incommunicado, without any status, remain most in danger, the obstacles Russia is placing against relatives and others finding out where Ukrainians are held...

Freedom House rates Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory as less free even than the most notorious dictatorships

Since Yevhen Shved has been imprisoned since June 2023, it is likely that the new charges are over social media posts or fake testimony from other prisoners

Larysa Haidai is one of three women abducted by the FSB in March 2024 and held in total isolation, probably to extract ‘confessions’ and come up with charges

The sentences are becoming truly massive although the indictments generally differ only in the dates cited