From RFE/RL's news desk:
By the Ukrainian Service's Crimea Desk
Dozens of people have been detained in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Crimea for demonstrating in defense of Crimean Tatars.
Lawyer Emil Kurbedinov said on October 14 that more than 100 people had staged one-person protests across Crimea earlier in the day and that at least 34 had been detained, even though one-person protests do not require advance permission from officials.
The Russian authorities in Crimea reported that 49 people had been detained, according to the Russian website Meduza. The Russian police statement said all the detainees had been released after "precautionary conversations."
The protesters held signs with slogans including "Stop the arrests, searches, and robbery of Muslims" and "Muslims are not terrorists."
"The detentions violated the right of peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of speech and the free expression of opinion," Olha Skripnik, head of the Crimean Human Rights Group, told RFE/RL. "This was a peaceful action that did not present any danger.... One-person pickets -- which these people have been forced to adopt -- are not restricted even by the Russian laws that are de facto operating in Crimea."
On October 11, six Crimean Tatars were arrested in the city of Bakhchisarai and accused of membership in Hizb ut-Tahir, an Islamic organization that is legal in Ukraine, but banned by Russian authorities.
The Crimean Solidarity rights group said that several other Crimean Tatars were detained while protesting against those arrests.
Rights groups and Western governments have denounced what they call a persistent campaign of oppression targeting members of the indigenous, Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar minority and other citizens who opposed Moscow's annexation.
The majority of Crimean Tatars opposed Russia's 2014 annexation of their historic homeland.
Video of the torch-lit march in Kyiv:
A torch-lit march in Kyiv to commemorate the founding of the UPA 75 years ago:
From RFE/RL's news desk:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Ukraine has banned a new Russian banknote that includes images from the annexed Ukrainian region of Crimea.
The National Bank of Ukraine announced on October 13 that the new Russian 200 ruble ($3.50) bill showing a memorial in Sevastopol, a ruin in Chersonesus, and a map of Crimea would be illegal in Ukraine beginning on October 17. Banks and exchanges will not accept them.
The bank's statement said the ban covers any Russian currencies depicting "maps, symbols, buildings, monuments" or other objects "based in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia."
Russia presented the new banknote on October 12.
Ukraine and Russia have been locked in a standoff since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and began offering military, economic, and political support to separatists in parts of eastern Ukraine.
Although Russia denies military involvement in the conflict, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November 2016 determined the conflict to be "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation."
More than 10,000 people have been killed, at least 23,900 have been injured, and some 1.6 million people have been displaced by the conflict in eastern Ukraine since the spring of 2014.
With reporting by AFP
More commemorations in the memory of fallen soldiers: