Foreign Affairs committee  Very quickly, you're absolutely right. There is a relatively new clause in the Russian criminal code that officially penalizes “separatist tendencies”. If, for example, one of the Russian regions were to try to do what Putin did in Crimea in 2014, the so-called referendum, the

Foreign Affairs committee  I will answer it in two different ways because there are two sides to this story. For those of us from the Russian democratic opposition and from Russian civil society, whenever we meet our western friends and counterparts, we always emphasize that it's important to differentiate

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, thank you very much for your question. As you know, there have been two wars against Chechnya with the official goal of making it part of the Russian Federation. From a legal point of view, Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechnya is not part of the Russian Federation right now. Under Vl

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, thank you for bringing focus to this issue. While our main topic of discussion today is political prisoners, I think it's important to remember that there is a price even higher than long-term imprisonment to be paid by people who dare to stand up for truth an

Foreign Affairs committee  Just to directly answer Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's question, I think it's important to put on the record some of those names because these names are known: Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic; General Viktor Zolotov, the commander of Vladimir Putin's National Guard; Adam Del

Foreign Affairs committee  Mustafa Dzhemilev is somebody who I admire immensely as one of the legends and the pillars of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union. By the way, Andrei Sakharov himself, as you know well, has been engaged in the movement for the restoration of the rights of the Crimean T

Foreign Affairs committee  On the first question on religious prisoners, most of the people—and, as Natalia mentioned, it's more than 200 out of 296 people—are there as religious rather than political prisoners. The vast majority of those are either adherents of a Muslim organization called Hizb-ut-Tahrir,

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. It is an honour to be back before your committee. Thank you for this opportunity and for holding this very important hearing today. On December 10, 1975, Oslo City Hall hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Everything seemed in order exce