A U.N.-backed human rights expert monitoring President Vladimir Putin’s Russia has decried increased violence in the country caused by former prisoners who have their sentences shortened or pardoned to fight in Ukraine and then return home to commit

Ukraine accused Russia at an international court on Monday of flouting sea law by trying to keep the Kerch Strait between mainland Russia and annexed Crimea under its sole control. Kyiv began proceedings at the Hague-based intergovernmental Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 after Moscow began building the 19 km (12 mile) Crimea Bridge link to the peninsula it seized from Ukraine two years previously.

GENEVA - Jails controlled by Russia are deliberately withholding medical care for Ukrainian prisoners, with doctors in one prison even taking part in what it called “torture”, a commission mandated by the UN rights council.