North.Realities is a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Russian Service.
Police in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, on March 8 detained a friend of Seda Suleimanova, whose whereabouts have been unknown she was detained in August and sent her to her native Chechnya, where rights defenders believe she may have become the victim of an honor killing.
The Memorial human rights group has recognized musician Eduard Sharlot, who was arrested in November 2023 on his return from Armenia, where he publicly protested against Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, as a political prisoner.
A former fighter from the Wagner mercenary group, who was recruited from prison to fight in Ukraine, was sentenced to 17 years in prison on February 28 after a court in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk found him guilty of sexually assaulting two schoolgirls last year.
Activists in several countries around the world rallied on February 27 to demand Russian authorities find Seda Suleimanova, who has not been heard from for more than 150 days since she was detained in St. Petersburg and sent to her native Chechnya, which she had fled because of domestic violence.
A court in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, has sent an 18-year-old activist to pretrial detention on a charge of repeatedly discrediting Russian armed forces involved in Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Russia's Interior Ministry on February 20 again added self-exiled Oleg Navalny, a younger brother of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who died in Russian prison last week, to it wanted list on unspecified charges.
A law that allows authorities to confiscate vehicles with Russian license plates came into force in Latvia on February 15.
Noted Russian lawyer and outspoken Kremlin critic Ilya Novikov, who resides in Ukraine, said on February 14 that Russian authorities had issued an arrest warrant for him.
A Russian court on February 14 sentenced a 67-year-old woman to 10 years in prison for setting a fire at a military recruitment center in St. Petersburg.
Repressed in Russia, independent Russian media have multiplied in exile, posing a counterweight to Kremlin narratives that one study considers an “historically unprecedented phenomenon.”
Russian activist Gregori Vinter, who was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this month on a charge of distributing "false" information about Russian armed forces, has asked President Vladimir Putin to euthanize him "to avoid an excruciating death of diabetes."
A court in Russia's northwestern city of Gatchina on January 25 sent a couple to pretrial detention on a charge of calling for terrorist acts by placing pro-Ukrainian leaflets in a local grocery store.
Relatives of Russian men mobilized to fight in Ukraine have been holding small but frequent protests to call for their return. Despite the daunting conditions in authoritarian Russia, The Way Home movement could change the narrative as Putin heads toward a fifth presidential term.
Russia’s removal of thousands of children from occupied areas of Ukraine has garnered global headlines and led to a war crimes indictment against President Vladimir Putin, but cases of elderly Ukrainians taken to Russia have gone largely unnoticed. Here is one woman’s story.
Prosecutors have asked a military court in the Russian city of St. Petersburg to sentence Darya Trepova, who is accused of being involved in the killing of prominent pro-Kremlin blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, to 28 years in prison on charges of terrorism and forgery.
A court in the northwestern Russian city of Cherepovets on January 18 sentenced a local human rights defender, Gregory Vinter, to three years in prison on a charge of distributing "false" information about Russia's armed forces.
Estonian media reported on January 16 said that Vyacheslav Morozov, a Russian citizen who worked as a professor on international political theory at the University of Tartu, was arrested earlier this month.
Cancer-stricken Russian anti-war activist Igor Baryshnikov, who was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison on a charge of spreading "false" information about Russia's armed forces involved in the ongoing war in Ukraine, has been transferred to a prison infirmary.
A court in Russia's Kirov region on December 26 sentenced the region's imprisoned former governor, Nikita Belykh, to an additional 2 1/2 years in prison on a charge of abuse of power but spared him from serving the fresh sentence, citing the statute of limitations.
A 29-year-old woman from St. Petersburg has spent over a year in custody over social media posts condemning Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Viktoria Petrova faces a verdict on December 25, with prosecutors urging the court to sentence her to enforced psychiatric hospitalization.
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