Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking to create conditions for the release of people persecuted in Russia for political reasons.

The UK Government condemns the continued deterioration in the Kremlin's dire domestic human rights record and will continue to call on the Russian government to comply with its international obligations. The Foreign Secretary and I have both been clear that the Russian authorities must release all political prisoners. The UK regularly uses multilateral fora, such as the UN and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), to highlight Russia's human rights violations and hold it accountable. On 10 April the UK called for the release of political prisoners in Russia at the OSCE alongside 14 other states and on 14 May the UK Human Rights Ambassador condemned the sentencing of an independent Russian election monitor, Grigory Melkonyants, to five years' imprisonment.