Our latest update on the Bogatenkova arrest, including information from our Russian Service and Sergei Krivenko's suggestion to radio station Govorit Moskva that the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights would look into her case:
Russian 'Soldiers' Mothers' Activist Arrested
ICYMI yesterday:
Dpa's Nikolaus von Twickel comes through with another Russian source on the Bogatenkova detention, activist group Citizens In The Army:
"Certain progress" made, Poroshenko said afterward:
Russia's Justice Ministry in August blacklisted as a "foreign agent" the St. Petersburg branch of the Soldiers' Mothers network, with which Lyudmila Bogatenkova is associated. That listing came one day after activists there in Russia's second city cited a list of more than 100 Russian troops who had been killed in eastern Ukraine.
Here's THAT STORY.
Our Ukrainian Service reports that commander from several volunteer battalions addressed an open letter to President Petro Poroshenko urging him to crack down on Ukrainian television programming during "wartime." Ukrainian broadcasters' airing of shows that casually include portrayals of Ukraine's "enemies" in the Russian military.
"People with the chevrons of Russia and its military structures are killing us!" it says.
The volunteer-force commanders demand that Poroshenko end "Russian propaganda broadcasts in the form of media products, including [TV] series, movies, and entertainment where idealization of our enemy arises."
This is from a BBC report from late August on alleged Russian troop deaths in Ukraine:
The long-rumoured involvement of Russia's military in Ukraine tallies with the reports of a sudden loss of contact between soldiers and their relatives, posted on social networks, websites and regional media.
Added credibility comes from a network of NGOs called the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, which has been at the forefront of defending soldiers' rights ever since the Russian wars in Chechnya in the mid 1990s.
Lyudmila Bogatenkova, the head of the Soldiers' Mothers branch in Stavropol in southern Russia, claimed on Wednesday that it had a list of 400 names featuring many wounded and dead soldiers.