Natalia Estemirova
In July 2009, journalist and human rights defender Estemirova was abducted by four gunmen on her way to work in Grozny, Chechnya. She was found dead in woodlands near… More
Alexey Kungurov
Siberian blogger Kungurov, who spent two years in prison for "justification of terrorism" from 2016-18, was arrested again in November 2019 for 15 days. He was accused of arousing… More
Grigory Pasko
Since 1997, Pasko has faced repeated charges of treason for his reporting. In 2016 while traveling to Barnaul train local journalists, Pasko was met with an aggressive pattern of… More
Roman Sushchenko
A Ukrainian journalist and artist who reported on Russian propaganda, Sushchenko was arrested in Moscow in September 2016 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for "spying." He was… More
Anna Politkovskaya
Journalist and writer Politkovskaya was found murdered in her apartment in central Moscow in October 2006, shot at point blank range. There is widespread outrage that her murder was… More
Kirill Serebrennikov
Playwright and theater director Serebrennikov was placed on house arrest in 2017 for embezzlement and convicted in June 2020. The court handed him a three-year suspended sentence and fine… More
Nizametdin Akhmetov
Poet and the first PEN Freedom to Write honoree, Akhmetov was arrested in 1966 on fabricated charges of theft for association with a movement advocating for the return of… More
Oleg Sentsov
After being arrested in Crimea, Ukrainian filmmaker was Sentsov given a 20-year sentence on terrorism charges in August 2015. Following five years in a Russian jail—including a hunger strike… More
Natalya Sharina
Sharina, head of the Ukrainian Literature Library in Moscow, was detained and put under house arrest in 2015 after authorities raided the library and found several Ukrainian nationalist works… More
Tomasz Piątek
Journalist and writer Piątek faced potential criminal charges for a book published in June 2017, which examines the links between Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz and the Russian military intelligence… More
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