Parliamentary elections were held in Russia yesterday (4 December). Several independent media websites were hacked on election day; journalists and rights activists claim this was to prevent coverage of electoral violations. With 96 per cent of...
Rights activists have said there has been an onslaught of freedom of expression violations in Russia as the country's 4 December parliamentary elections draw closer. Russia's leading independent election watchdog, GOLOS (voice) Association, has...
Earlier this month, Russia’s Department of Presidential Affairs won three defamation lawsuits against newspaper Novaya Gazeta in just one week. “The court is being used as a censorship instrument; it has been serving officials rather than law...
The Russian State Duma has decriminalised defamation, having passed amendments to the Criminal Code. There are two major legislative threats to freedom of expression in Russia: libel and antiextremism legislation. Both are frequently abused to...
Russian journalist Maxim Shaligin, a presenter on pro-government radio station Voice of Russia has been fired for criticising the outgoing president of South Ossetia. Maxim Shalygin was sacked on 14 November, just ten minutes before his show was...
A scandal is flaring in Russia as two segments for popular NTV programme "Unreal Politics" were shot and then blocked by NTV's management. The first one subjected the leader of a pro-government youth movement Nashi and the chairman of State...
Vladimir Osechkin, 30, has become one of Russia's most successful freedom of expression advocates. The former businessman fell foul of Moscow's regional authorities in 2007, Osechkin claims he was asked to pay numerous bribes after he began...
The raid on a leading historical research centre in St Petersburg is an attack on freedom of expression, writes historian Orlando Figes Yesterday, on 3 December at 1 pm, a group of masked men from the Investigative Committee of the Russian General...
The gravest danger to religious freedom in Russia comes from the Kremlin’s approach to combating extremism, writes Geraldine Fagan of Forum 18 The odd one out in the latest update to Russia’s Federal List of Extremist Materials, announced on 29...
Just before my last trip to Chechnya in mid-September my colleagues at Novaya gazeta began receiving threats and were told to pass on the message: I shouldn’t go to Chechnya any more, they said, because if I did my life would be in danger. As...