Watchdog

A hunger strike by nine people from Russia's southern Republic of Bashkortostan who paid for new apartments that were never delivered has entered its 12th day.

The protesters in the city of Sterlitamak are part of a larger group of 150 would-be homeowners who made full or partial payments to private builder Bashstroi for new homes between 2010 and 2013.

Some apartments were never finished; others were completed but were resold by Bashstroi to other clients.

They nine hunger strikers, who started their protest on October 23, vowed to continue until local authorities met their demands to provide them with homes and approve legislation to protect the rights of prospective homeowners.

On November 2, an ambulance was called for two of the hunger strikers, who continued the hunger strike after medical assistance.

In July, hundreds of people who went through similar predicaments rallied in cities across Russia.

Russian officials earlier this year acknowledged that some 40,000 families across 67 regions of Russia were still waiting to move into apartments they had paid for.

Based on reporting by Sterlitamakcity.ru and Proufu.ru

A former teacher of German in Russia's Oryol region who was fired from his job and convicted of inciting ethnic hatred for writing a pro-Ukraine poem says he now faces a new trial over a separate piece of writing.

Aleksandr Byvshev wrote on Facebook on November 3 that police informed a day earlier that their investigation had been completed and the case sent to a court in the region, which is in western Russia close to Ukraine.

In 2014, after his poem To Ukrainian Patriots was published in a local newspaper, Byvshev was deprived of the right to teach, his name was included in the official register of extremists, and all his bank accounts were frozen.

The poem criticized Russia's takeover of Ukraine's Crimea region and Moscow's support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In 2015, Byvshev was sentenced to 300 hours of community service after a court found him guilty of inciting ethnic hatred through his poems.

Regional law enforcement officials said in January that they had opened a new investigation over another poem, On The Independence Of Ukraine, which plays on a poem of the same name by the late Nobel Literature laureate Joseph Brodsky.

Byvshev said that the Oryol Regional Court had deemed his poem to be extremist, a finding that enabled investigators to charge him.

Russia seized Crimea in March 2014, sending in troops and staging a referendum denounced as illegal by at least 11 countries.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.