President Putin’s amnesty which has seen Pussy Riot’s Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova released, as well, perhaps, as the Greenpeace 30, is by no means extended to everyone. Young activist Taisiya Osipova also has a young child, but she remains locked up with no apparent chance of release, says Marc Be
Pyotr Pavlensky is the performance artist who nailed his scrotum to the cobblestones of Red Square. Pained, the government reaction was to institute criminal proceedings against him. Yelena Kostyleva talked to Pavlensky the night before his first interrogation.
Nine ordinary Ukrainians – ‘The Nine’– are currently sitting in jail in Kyiv. They were part of a peaceful protest near the Presidential Administration building; they paid for this with their health and their freedom.
This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Campsfield, the immigration removal centre which heralded a mass expansion of detention and opened the door for profit in immigration control in Britain. Yet outside the prison and within, there are voices of dissent, says Bill MacKeith.
Vladimir Putin’s latest political course as president – from the jailing of Pussy Riot to the law against gay ‘propaganda’ – strikes many as being one defined by the Russian Orthodox Church. But is it really so?
In Kyiv, Metropolitan Pavel – aka ‘Pasha the Merc’ – has succeeded in closing down Ukraine’s only specialist HIV/AIDS clinic, which was inconveniently located in the grounds of the Pecherskaya Lavra. A new clinic has yet to open, and now all the patients can do is pray…
When Ukrainian postgraduate Pavlo Lapshyn was sentenced for racially-motivated murder and terrorism in the West Midlands, the response from Ukrainian media was to distort facts; from authorities to remain silent; and from British journalists to pin blame on UK society. These approaches obscure the
The northern territory of the Perm region is known as 'the Zone' – a remote region of prison camps and correctional facilities. Ola Cichowlas came to know it quite well….
The UK government continues to use the potential embarrassment of the White House as an argument against justice and liberty in the UK.
In July 2012, a mix of flash flooding and gross negligence conspired to kill nearly 200 in Southern Russia. One man has been fighting since then to get justice for his dead son. Lyolya Vlasenko reports.
Mikheil Saakashvili, ex-president of Georgia, was once hailed as the very archetype of a model post-Soviet leader – smooth-tongued and sharp-suited. But was the fluency with which he promoted himself as a modern messiah merely a case of pouring old Georgian wine into new bottles?
Protests against the proposed mining of nickel and copper in the heart of Russia’s Black Earth belt have been escalating, and so has the media smear campaign against the protesters. Konstantin Rubakhin, an activist himself, sees this as a positive sign.
