Rights in Russia

Our guest on the podcast this week is the Russian civil society activist, now living in Talinn, Estonia, Evgenia Chirikova. Evgenia Chirikova is especially well known for her campaign to save the Khimki Forest and she was leader of Ecological Defence (Ecoborona) in Moscow region. She was also a member of the organizing committee for Strategy 31 and a member of the Coordinating Council of the Russi...

The guest on our latest podcast is Dmitry Piskunov, a lawyer and human rights activist from Russia who works for the Moscow-based human rights organization  OVD-Info .   OVD-Info   monitors politically motivated prosecutions, with a particular focus on the right to freedom of assembly. Previously, Dmitry worked for the Committee against Torture, a human rights organisation based in...

Our guest this week on the podcast is Andreas Umland,  a political scientist and an expert in modern Russian and Ukrainian history and politics. He lives in Kiev and teaches at the National University of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Andreas is a senior expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv and a research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Relations in Stockholm. H...

This week our guest on the podcast is Konstantin Aleksandrovich Kotov, a Russian computer programmer and civil society activist. In 2019 Konstantin Kotov was the second person to be convicted under the so-called ‘Dadin’ Article 212.1 that was added to the Russian Criminal Code in July 2014 – ‘Repeated violation of the established procedure for organizing or holding a meeting, rally, demonstration,...

This week our guest on the podcast is Ivan Pavlov, a human rights lawyer specializing in freedom of information and treason cases. For many years, Ivan Pavlov headed the civil society group Team 29, which also worked to promote freedom of information in Russia. The topics of our conversation today are the persecution of lawyers in Russia, the rule of law, what reforms are needed, the history of Te...

Today is a special day: 10 December - Human Rights Day, and our best wishes to all who are listening! This week our guest on the podcast is Sergei Anatolievich Pashin, a retired Russian federal judge, Honoured Lawyer of the Russian Federation and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.   The topics discussed on the podcast include the reform of the justice system in Russia, trial by jury, and...

This week our guests are Victoria Ivleva, photographer, journalist and writer, and Yury Samodurov, civic activist, publicist and co-founder of Memorial. Both Victoria and Yury were detained on 20 November on Pushkin Square in Moscow for participating in single-person protests against the closure of Memorial. Both were held in a police station for two days and then fined by a court. This week’s pod...

Our guest this week on the podcast is Grigory Melkonyants. Grigory Melkonyants is a Russian human rights activist, lawyer and co-chair of Golos, the movement to protect voters' rights. This week’s topics are freedom of association in Russia, the law on foreign agents, the significance of the attack on the Memorial Society and whether free and fair elections are possible in the country. The questio...

This week on the podcast we discuss the current situation around Memorial and the moves by prosecutors to close down two organisations: the International Memorial Society and Memorial Human Rights Centre. Our guests on the podcast are Sergei Davidis and Jens Siegert. Sergei Davidis is head of the programme in support of political prisoners at the Memorial Human Rights Centre, an organisation...

  This week our guest on the podcast is Sergei Babinets. Sergei Babinets is a lawyer and head of the Orenburg branch of the Committee against Torture , whose head office is in Nizhny Novgorod. The issues discussed in the podcast include: How did someone who had intended to work in the prosecutor’s office went to work for a human rights organisation? How does the work of the Committee Against...

This week our guest on the podcast is Marina Pisklakova-Parker. Marina Pisklakova-Parker is a Russian women's rights activist and writer. She was the founder of ANNA (Regional Organization for Assistance to Women and Children Victims of Domestic Violence), one of the first women's crisis centres in Russia to help victims of domestic violence. Marina has also addressed the problem of trafficking in...

This week our guest on the podcast is Valentina Dmitrievna Melnikova. Valentina Melnikova is a Russian human rights activist and politician, a graduate of the geology department of Moscow State University and a specialist in geochemistry, but better known to us all as the executive secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia. Valentina Melnikova was one of the initiators of...

This week our guest on the podcast is Ernest Mezak, a well-known journalist and human rights activist from the Republic of Komi in Russia. He represents victims of law enforcement violations in courts at the national level and has also acted as a legal representative before the European Court of Human Rights in some 200 cases. In 2012 he won the Moscow Helsinki Group's Human Rights Award in the ca...

This week our guest on the podcast is Liudmilla Ilyinichna Alpern. Liudmila Alpern is a prison researcher and observer. She used to work as deputy director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Reform and was head of the prison visiting programme. She has been a member of the Moscow Public Oversight Commission and is the author and developer of many prison projects, including a multi-year joint proje...

This week our guest on the podcast is the journalist and human rights activist Viktor Davydov. Victor Davydov studied at Kuibyshev Technical University and then at the History Department of Kuibyshev University. In 1974, he began publishing and distributing samizdat, for which he was interrogated by the KGB in September 1975. In 1975 he became a member of the dissident groups in Kuibyshev, and on...

This week our guest on the podcast is Grigory Vaypan. Until recently, Grigory was head of the Litigation Department at the Institute for Law and Public Policy where he led strategic human rights litigation before the Constitutional Court of Russia and the European Court of Human Rights. Since 2013, Grigory has been developing the practice of amicus curiae at the Constitutional Court of Russia. Gri...

This week our guest on the podcast is Alena Vershinina, a journalist and former host of Ekho Moskvy radio who has also previously worked on Nastoyashchee vremya and now is with Radio Svoboda. The topics discussed in the podcast include: Career - from Lipetsk to Moscow; The difficulties of working as a journalist in Russia; Harassment by the authorities; Trends in modern journalism in Russia; Journ...

This week our guest on the podcast is the well-known human rights activist, Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev. Lev Ponomarev is the head of the civil society project ‘For Human Rights’, chair of the Defence of Prisoners' Rights Foundation and also of the Hotline organisation, and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. In May this year Lev Ponomarev spoke at the International Conference ‘Anxiety and Hop...

This week our guest on the podcast is Elena Belokurova. Elena is a political scientist specializing in the study of civil society and a civic activist from St. Petersburg. She is the director of the organization Mosty [‘Bridges’]. The questions discussed in this podcast include: early career; the NGO Bridges; Russian civil society in the 1990s; Russian civil society under Putin; comparison of Germ...

This week our guest on the podcast is Gleb Bogush. Gleb Bogush is a lawyer, with a PhD in law, and an associate professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an expert in international law. The issues discussed in the podcast include: what it means to be an expert in international law; human rights in the practice of an international lawyer; the European Court of Human Rights and its p...