Whereas the right to liberty and security of a person and the protection from arbitrary imprisonment are among the principal human rights guaranteed by Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 23 of the Concluding Document of the Vienna Meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights; Whereas the Russian Federation, as member of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Council of Europe, is bound by international commitments with regard to human rights and the rule of law; Whereas, on October 3, 2012, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution 1900 (2012) which defined anyone whose detention has been imposed in violation of one of the fundamental guarantees set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols and is the result of proceedings which were clearly unfair and … appears to be connected with political motives of the authorities as a political prisoner; Whereas based on the criteria of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Resolution 1900 (2012), the Memorial Human Rights Center, a Russian nongovernmental organization, estimates that there are currently more than 300 political prisoners in the Russian Federation—a six-fold increase since 2015; Whereas the Memorial Human Rights Center list of Russian political prisoners includes journalists, civil society activists, human rights advocates, participants of peaceful organizations, and Ukrainian citizens from illegally annexed Crimea; Whereas the Russian Federation’s longest-detained political prisoner, Alexey Pichugin, has been incarcerated since June 19, 2003, in violation of two rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and the opinion by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention