Valentina Cherevatenko (Russian: Валент́ина Ив́ановна Черев́атенко) is a veteran of human rights and peace-building initiatives in southern Russia, the Caucasus and, more recently, Ukraine. She is the founder and chair of the Women of the Don NGO, which was set up in 1993.
In 2016 Valentina's long service to these causes was recognised by two international awards.
One was a special prize announced in October 2016, to be given concurrently with the annual Anna Politkovskaya Award.[1] (The main 2016 prize-winner was Jineth Bedoya Lima; she and Valentina received their prizes in London on 11 March 2017.)[2] The other award is a new prize jointly created by the French and German governments. It was awarded for the first time in December 2016 in Berlin to 15 men and women from all over the world.[3]
Cherevatenko was given these prizes in recognition of past achievement and as a response to present harassment. The Russian government has shown its displeasure with her recent activities and those of the Women of the Don by bringing criminal charges against Valentina Cherevatenko under the 2012 Foreign Agent law. If convicted she faces a heavy fine or two years' deprivation of liberty.
In late July 2017, the charges against Cherevatenko were dropped.[4]