News
Publish date: November 6, 1998
Written by: Thomas Nilsen
News
Amnesty International’s Bill Bowring, a human rights lawyer, observed the Nikitin trial in St. Petersburg last month. Amnesty argued that Nikitin’s situation after the trial violates both his constitutional right to have the charges against him settled by a court of justice, and his right under international law to be tried within reasonable time.
After last month’s trial, where judge Sergei Golets sent the case back for new investigation, Amnesty International says they haven’t changed their position. "We still believe Nikitin should be unconditionally acquitted," says Katzarova. She underlines that judge Golets has been ‘very courageous’ in sending the case back, given that it was raised by the FSB, successor to the former KGB. Never before in Soviet and Russian history was an indictment of treason through espionage dismissed by the court.
Amnesty says another round of investigations into the Nikitin case will yield nothing new. "Nikitin has been under investigation for three years, and the prosecution has not managed – and never will manage – to come up with an indictment with a tenable judicial foundation," says Katzarova. Amnesty International adopted Aleksandr Nikitin as a prisoner of conscience in 1996, the first Russian citizen to be named so in post-Soviet history.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.