Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
The Russian Constitutional Court has fixed the glitch in the legislation that denied the guaranteed right to a jury trial to women accused of capital crimes: According to Russia’s Criminal Code, regional courts only hold jury trials when the accused faces…
The UN’s latest casualty count for Ukraine: A report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said 9,098 people including combatants and civilians have died in the conflict since April last year… More than 20,000 have been injured……
The fast-track trial of Alexander Malofeyev ended on September 30th. This month, the court will probably issue a “motivated ruling” raising the status of the defendant’s statements to that of a judicially established “truth.” All sorts of outlandish claims could…
As reported in its latest bulletin (PDF), the UK media regulator Ofcom has found RT (formerly Russia Today) in violation of rule 5.5 of the 2003 Communications Act, which requires “due impartiality on matters of political or industrial controversy.” The first of the…
The two Ukrainians accused of torturing and killing Russian servicemen Chechnya in 1994-5 will be tried by a jury in Grozny, according to Russian press reports. It appears that one was kidnapped in Ukraine and the other seized on a…
Last week, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, sensationally claimed that the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arseny Yatsenyuk, had fought on the side of Chechen separatists in December 1994 – February 1995 against Russian troops and, moreover,…
The conviction and jailing of Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko for “terrorism” are shameful and will stain Russia and its pro-Putin citizens for years to come, unless the injustice is promptly remedied. Alexander Sokurov, the great Russian director of our time,…
The Russian Investigative Committee, which is supposed to look into all sorts of serious and high-profile crime but is mostly infamous for fabricating dossiers against Alexei Navalny, Nadiya Savchenko, and Bolotnaya Square protesters, has published a book titled The Tragedy…
I did not expect the Kremlin to break the ancient, deep-rooted, almost archetypal taboo against the wasting of food. Or do they think that “Western” food is not real food? Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Wednesday ordering the “destruction” of…
Nadiya Savchenko is a Ukrainian military held in a Russian jail, accused of a “war crime” against Russian citizens. She took part in Ukraine’s war against Russia-backed separatists in 2014. It appears that she was kidnapped in Eastern Ukraine and…
Putin met with Pope Francis last week, but just before that… In a rare newspaper interview ahead of his state visit to Italy, Vladimir Putin has claimed he never makes mistakes because God “built his life so he’d have nothing…
By presidential decree, information on losses incurred by the Russian army in “special operations” in peacetime is now a state secret. Previously, only wartime losses were so classified. The point of the secrecy regime expansion seems to be preventing leaks from the…