News

A public prosecutor requested court to sentence human rights defender Oleg Orlov*, accused of discrediting the Russian Armed Forces, to two years and eleven months of imprisonment.

Anna Tsomartova, an athlete, was last seen in the FSB sanatorium in Kaspiysk, after which she disappeared, Nikolai Tsomartov, her father, has stated in his petition posted on the Change.org website. He has asked Russian President, Vladimir Putin, to help with the inquiry.

The project "Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial" has recognized Boris Goncharenko and Bogdan Abdurakhmanov, accused of setting fire to the military commissariat (registration and enlistment office) building in the town of Goryachy Klyuch, as political prisoners. The charge of terrorism is unjustified, human rights defenders have stated.

Nikolai Zimirev, a resident of Sochi who has attracted law enforcers' attention with an action in memory of Alexei Navalny, has not been in contact for five days after his detention. Today, the district court released information about an administrative case against Zimirev.

The Russian Supreme Court (SC) has found no grounds to overturn the verdict to Olga Petrova, a resident of the Krasnodar Territory (also known as Kuban by the name of the main river), who was sentenced to seven years for financing terrorism.

After the death of Alexei Navalny, Sochi townspeople began leaving in his memory at the memorial complex, where official events are held on the Fatherland Defender Day. After that, authorities moved the February 23 celebrations to another place; and the memorial was surrounded by a fence allegedly for repairs.

Australia has imposed sanctions on Murat Kumpilov, the head of Adygea, and on Ilyas Umakhanov and Arsen Kanokov, the senators (members of the Russia's Federation Council) from Dagestan and the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), accordingly.

Case files of people's forced disappearances in Chechnya are classified; and even relatives of those kidnapped have no legal ways to find out details or achieve an efficient investigation, human rights defenders have pointed out, adding that appeals to international structures yield no results.

In Grozny, Chechen officials and MPs held a rally in memory of the victims of the Stalin’s repressions. The event took place without the participation of Ramzan Kadyrov, who limited himself to a post in the Telegram channel on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Vainakh people.

The Makhachkala police department is engaged in finalizing the charges to be brought against thirteen detainees in a criminal case on the death of Kurban Dalgatov.

In Nazran, hundreds of people came to a mourning meeting on the 80th anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of Ingush and Chechens to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Every Chechen family suffered from deportation, participants in the action held in the Novolaksky District of Dagestan have stated. According to their stories, the memory about the Vainakhs' deportation and about victims thereof is transferred from generation to generation.

The US Treasury has included Akhmed Dudaev, the head of the Ministry of Nationalities of Chechnya, into the sanctions list. The Minister has stated that he fears only sanctions from Ramzan Kadyrov and the Almighty.

On the anniversary of Stalin's deportation of Vainakhs, the human rights "Memory Project" has issued a documentary about the people who fell victim to kidnappings and forced disappearances in Chechnya in the 2000s.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg has awarded compensations to two Rostov and one Volgograd residents detained at protest actions in 2021 and 2022.

February 23 marked the 80th anniversary of the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The head of Chechnya and republic's state-owned media have passed over this date in silence.

The decision of the Russia's Supreme Court (SC), which has refused to acquit the eight residents of Dagestan killed in Chechnya in 2016, was expected for the casualties' mothers, but they have declared their commitment to continue their fight for justice.

The advocates of Andrei Vyazov, an activist, arrested in Krasnodar on February 17, after a rally in memory of Alexei Navalny, have filed a complaint against the arrest decision. Because of Vyazov's arrest, his elderly relatives were left without help, his girlfriend has informed.

Political analysts and activists spoke out against an initiative to recognize animal rights defenders as foreign agents voiced by Yevgeny Dunaev, a member of the Astrakhan Regional Duma.

The initiative of residents of Chechen-Aul to open gates on the anniversary of the deportation, as is done on days of mourning, has become a way for the people to pay tribute to the memory of the victims of deportation in the absence of the opportunity to organize mass events, human rights defenders note.