Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza is a Russian-British political activist, journalist, author, filmmaker, and former political prisoner. A protégé of Boris Nemtsov, he is vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by Russian businessman and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. He has directed two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov. As of 2021, he acts as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was awarded the Civil Courage Prize in 2018.
Viktor Volodymyrovych Medvedchuk, also known as Viktor Vladimirovich Medvedchuk, is a former Ukrainian lawyer, business oligarch, and politician who has lived in exile in Russia since September 2022 after being handed over to Russia in a prisoner exchange. Medvedchuk is a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician and a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ksenia Anatolyevna Sobchak is a Russian-Israeli public figure, TV anchor, journalist, socialite and actress. She is the younger daughter of the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, who was one of Vladimir Putin's mentors, and the Russian senator Lyudmila Narusova. Sobchak became known to the wider public as the host of the reality show Dom-2, which aired on the Russian channel TNT. Later she became an anchor at independent television channel TV Rain. As of January 2023, she hosts the television show Dok-Tok with Alexander Gordon.
Andrei Maratovich Babitsky was a Russian journalist and war reporter, who worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) from 1989 to 2014, covering the 1991 August Coup, Civil War in Tajikistan and both the First and Second Chechen Wars from behind Chechen lines. Babitsky's kidnapping by the Russian forces in January–February 2000 during the Second Chechen War attracted attention of international journalists' organisations. His 2005 video interview with Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev was condemned by Russian government, as Basayev was on wanted terrorist list in Russia.
Television, magazines, and newspapers have all been operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. Even though the Constitution of Russia guarantees freedom of speech, the press has been plagued by both government censorship and self-censorship.
The Russo-Georgian War included an extensive information war. Russia spread disinformation to discredit Georgia, Ukraine and the United States even after the end of armed hostilities.
MIA Rossiya Segodnya is a media group owned and operated by the Russian government, created on the basis of RIA Novosti. The group owns and operates Sputnik, RIA Novosti, inoSMI and several other entities. The head of the organisation is Dmitry Kiselyov. Margarita Simonyan is the chief editor.
Opposition to the government of President Vladimir Putin in Russia, commonly referred to as the Russian opposition, can be divided between the parliamentary opposition parties in the State Duma and the various non-systemic opposition organizations. While the former are largely viewed as being more or less loyal to the government and Putin, the latter oppose the government and are mostly unrepresented in government bodies. According to Russian NGO Levada Center, about 15% of the Russian population disapproved of Putin in the beginning of 2023.
Euromaidan, or the Maidan Uprising, was a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on 21 November 2013 with large protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv. The protests were sparked by President Viktor Yanukovych's sudden decision not to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. Ukraine's parliament had overwhelmingly approved of finalizing the Agreement with the EU, but Russia had put pressure on Ukraine to reject it. The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of Yanukovych and the Azarov government. Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, abuse of power, human rights violations, and the influence of oligarchs. Transparency International named Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world. The violent dispersal of protesters on 30 November caused further anger. Euromaidan was the largest democratic mass movement in Europe since 1989 and led to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.
Below are the foreign reactions to the Euromaidan. Euromaidan was a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine that began on the night of 21 November 2013 after the Ukrainian government suspended preparations for signing an Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union.
Russian-occupied territories in Georgia are areas of Georgia that have been occupied by Russia since the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. They consist of the regions of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia and the former South Ossetian Autonomous Region of Soviet Georgia, whose status is a matter of international dispute.
From the end of February 2014, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity, which resulted in the ousting of Russian-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, demonstrations by Russian-backed, pro-Russian, and anti-government groups took place in Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Odesa. The unrest, which was supported by the Russian military and intelligence services, belongs to the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
This is a timeline of the 2014 pro-Russian unrest that has erupted in Ukraine, in the aftermath of the Ukrainian revolution and the Euromaidan movement.
Vyacheslav Vladimirovich Ponomarev is a former owner of a soap production company who in 2014 briefly achieved prominence as the self-proclaimed mayor of the city of Sloviansk, at that time a focal point at the beginning of the 2014 War in Donbas.
Oleh Hennadiiovych Sentsov is a Ukrainian filmmaker, writer and activist from Crimea. Sentsov has directed the feature films Gamer (2011), Numbers, and Rhino (2021).
Arkady Arkadyevich Babchenko is a Russian print and television journalist. From 1995, Babchenko served in the communication corps in the North Caucasus while participating in the First Chechen War. He later volunteered for six months during the Second Chechen War. After leaving the army in 2000 he worked as a war correspondent for more than a decade. Since 2017 he has worked as a presenter for the TV channel ATR. In 2006 he published the book One Soldier's War, about his experiences in Chechnya.
Roman Volodymyrovych Sushchenko is a Ukrainian journalist and artist. He was arrested in Russia on spying charges in 2016, and sentenced in 2018; his detention and sentence have been criticized by a number of Ukrainian and international agencies. Sushchenko was released in September 2019.
Dzianis Jaŭhienavič Ivashyn is a Belarusian journalist. He works as a freelance correspondent of Belarusian Novy Chas newspaper and a volunteer investigator of the Ukrainian Inform Napalm project. He was arrested in 2021 by the Belarusian KGB and charged with high treason. His colleagues believe that this arrest was connected with his publications about former Ukrainian Berkut members employed by the Belarusian police.
Strana.ua is a Ukrainian online newspaper launched on 16 February 2016. It was founded by journalist Igor Guzhva, and is one of the most popular Ukrainian online media, being one of the top 5 most visited online newspapers in Ukraine.
On 17 March 2023, following an investigation of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian commissioner for children's rights, alleging responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children during the Russo-Ukrainian War. The warrant against Putin is the first against the leader of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
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