• Polish defense minister: Russia preparing for offensive operations

    The recent Zapad 2017 large-scale Russian-Belarusian military exercises are evidence that Russia is preparing for offensive operations, said Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, as reported by Ukrinform.

    “The Zapad 2017 exercises ended two months ago. They were held in the space between the Arctic Ocean and the Black Sea, and even involved the launches of Iskander ballistic missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. The Russians were not preparing for defense, but for aggression,” …

  • Russia fines the Committee for the Prevention of Torture for refusing to register as foreign agent

    At the request of Russia’s Ministry of Justice, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture or CPT was fined 400,000 rubles for refusing to be registered as foreign agent, reported the head of the organization, Igor Kalyapin, writes Radio Liberty.

    The CPT was previously named the Committee Against Torture. In 2015, human rights defenders reregistered the organization so that it would not have to be registered as foreign agent.

    The organization is now being reregistered; therefore the fine …

  • Lawyer of detained Ukrainian journalist Sushchenko says he will be sentenced to 20 years in Russian prison

    Russian courts will sentence Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko to 20 years of imprisonment, stated his lawyer Mark Feygin.

    "Tomorrow, the wife and daughter of my client, Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko will arrive to visit him. This will happen on the eve of the ‘court hearings’ where he is going to be sentenced to 20 years for ‘collecting information about the alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine’ [according to investigators] in the summer and fall of 2016," Feygin wrote on Twitter. …

  • Russian citizen asks for asylum in Ukraine because of political persecution in Russia

    On November 18, a Russian citizen arrived by train at the Ukrainian capital and asked for refugee status at the checkpoint "Kyiv-Passazhyrsky", as reported by the State Border Service of Ukraine.

    "During the passport control procedure, the Russian woman appealed to the employees of the State Border Service of Ukraine saying that she wanted to obtain refugee status. The Russian woman said that she was an opposition activist and was being persecuted in Russia for her political views," the …

  • Peskov speaks of problems in prisoner exchange between Ukraine and separatist republics

    Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has spoken of issues in the exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and the two unrecognized republics, the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).  "There are many problems that complicate the exchange itself," TASS reports.

     “The leaders of the unrecognized republics, [while] agreeing in general with this initiative (by Medvedchuk), noted that all details of the exchange with Kyiv still need to be agreed upon. And …