Yuri Dmitriev is a historian and researcher of Stalinist repressions in Karelia, in the North of Russia, and one of the first political prisoners of the new repressive era in Russia. He searched for the sites of mass executions in 1937–1938 and worked to restore the fates of people who were shot during the Great Terror and died in the Gulag camps. He recognised the terrible nature of the new Russian regime sooner than others did, and spoke openly about it. The conviction of Yuri Dmitriev is an example of the Putin regime’s direct inheritance of the spirit and logic of Stalinist terror.
Since December 2016, Dmitriev has been persecuted on false charges.He has been imprisoned for nine years. His sentence is 15 years.He will turn 70 on January 28, 2026.
For the past four years, the historian has been held in a harsh regime penal colony in Mordovia, central Russia. During his time there, he has been placed in solitary confinement nine times. His health is now in critical condition. We want to raise money to give Yuri Dmitriev and his family a gift for his anniversary. These funds will be used to cover his daily expenses in the colony (purchasing food and necessary items), regular visits from his lawyer, and parcels. This is the least we can do to thank Yuri Dmitriev for his work to restore the memory of the victims of Stalin’s terror and for his uncompromising stance towards the crimes of the present.
Iouri Dmitriev est un historien et un chercheur spécialiste des répressions staliniennes en Carélie, dans le nord de la Russie. Il compte parmi les premiers prisonniers politiques de la nouvelle ère répressive instaurée en Russie. Pendant des décennies, il a recherché les lieux d’exécutions massives de 1937–1938 et s’est attaché à rétablir l’identité et le destin des personnes fusillées durant la Grande Terreur ou mortes dans les camps du Goulag. Très tôt, il a compris et dénoncé publiquement la dérive autoritaire du régime russe contemporain.
La condamnation d’Iouri Dmitriev incarne, de manière tragiquement exemplaire, la continuité entre la logique répressive actuelle et l’héritage de la terreur stalinienne.
Depuis décembre 2016, il est la cible de persécutions fondées sur des accusations fabriquées de toutes pièces. Incarcéré depuis neuf ans, il purge aujourd’hui une peine de quinze années de prison. Il aura 70 ans le 28 janvier 2026.
Depuis quatre ans, Iouri Dmitriev est détenu dans une colonie pénitentiaire à régime sévère en Mordovie, dans le centre de la Russie. Durant cette période, il a été placé à neuf reprises à l’isolement. Son état de santé est désormais extrêmement préoccupant.
Nous souhaitons organiser une collecte afin d’offrir à Iouri Dmitriev et à sa famille un présent pour son anniversaire. Les fonds permettront de couvrir ses dépenses quotidiennes dans la colonie pénitentière (achats alimentaires et produits de première nécessité), les visites régulières de son avocat ainsi que l’envoi de colis.
C’est le minimum que nous puissions faire pour exprimer notre gratitude envers Iouri Dmitriev, pour son travail inlassable de restauration de la mémoire des victimes de la terreur stalinienne et pour sa position sans compromis face aux crimes perpétrés aujourd’hui.
Юрий Дмитриев – историк, исследователь сталинских репрессий в Карелии, на Севере России, один из первых политических заключенных новой репрессивной эпохи в России. Он занимался поиском мест массовых убийств 1937–1938 годов, восстановлением судеб людей, расстрелянных в период Большого террора и умерших в лагерях ГУЛАГа. Он раньше других понял страшную природу новой российской власти и открыто говорил о ней. Осуждение Юрия Дмитриева – пример, проявляющий прямое наследование путинским режимом духа и логики сталинского террора.
С декабря 2016 г. Дмитриева преследуют по лживым обвинениям. Он находится в неволе уже 9 лет. Срок заключения по приговору – 15 лет. 28 января 2026 года ему исполнится 70 лет.
Последние четыре года историк находится в колонии строгого режима в Мордовии в Центральной России. За время своего пребывания там он девять раз сидел в штрафном изоляторе. Его здоровье сейчас в критическом состоянии. Мы хотим собрать денег, чтобы сделать подарок к юбилею Юрия Дмитриева ему и его семье. Эти средства будут потрачены на его ежедневные расходы в колонии (покупку еды и необходимых вещей), регулярные визиты адвоката, посылки. Это то немногое, что мы можем сделать в благодарность Юрию Дмитриеву за его работу по восстановлению памяти о жертвах сталинского террора и за его непримиримость по отношению к преступлениям настоящего.
Source: Memorial France (Helloasso). Thanks to Jessica Gorter for the heads-up. It took me a minute or two to fill out the form to donate money to this fundraiser, and I would urge you to donate as well by clicking on any of the five links (above) in this post. To read my years-long coverage of the Dmitriev Case, go here. ||||| TRR
There are political prisoners whose names are not mentioned often and so they have few chances of making it onto prisoner exchange lists.
In a nutshell: political prisoner Lyubov “Lyuba” Lizunova, who is now nineteen years old, was arrested along with her boyfriend Alexander “Sasha” Snezhkov in 2022, when she was sixteen and still in high school (Sasha was nineteen at the time). This is the so-called Case of the Chita Anarchists or the Case of the Transbaikal Leftist Association. Why were they arrested? For writing the graffiti “Death to the regime” on the wall of a co-op garage on the outskirts of Chita, and for moderating Antifa Telegram channels. She was the drummer, and he was the vocalist in a band. They recorded songs and played concerts. . . . Lyuba was originally sentenced to three and a half years behind bars; Sasha, to six years. They are both behind bars now: Sasha is in prison in Krasnokamensk, while Lyuba is in a penal colony in Ulan-Ude.
I have been corresponding with Lyuba. The last letter I got from her arrived yesterday, the twentieth of January.
Now here’s the bottom line.
The very same day, yesterday, a court ruled that the Transbaikal Leftist Association is a “terrorist” organization, and named Lyuba and Sasha as its organizers and leaders. This means that they could be charged with, and found guilty of, violating Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 205.5 [“organizing and participating in the activities of a terrorist organization”].
The penalty for violating this law is fifteen to twenty years in prison. If she is convicted on the new charges, Lyuba Lizunova could be released in the 2040s.
The 2040s!
She will be around thirty-nine years old.
She wrote me a letter earlier, on the sixteenth of January:
“I don’t know what to expect. […] It’s a rather hefty sentence for a social media post and a bit of graffiti, right? I’m slowly shedding my usual calm confidence that I’ll be released on 19.02.2027. Don’t think I’m complaining or being dramatic—it’s just the way it is. The prisoner transport is also not clear. I will go either this month, or in March. The trip to Yaroslavl is long: it will take two months, including stops, just to get there, and the same amount of time for the return trip. I need to stock up somehow. […] Everything is kind of shaky and unreliable. The only things which are strong are ideals, principles, and love.”
I would argue that very young people should be at the top of the prisoner exchange lists, that we should drag children, schoolchildren, and university students out of prisons by any means necessary. These prison sentences are Stalinist [in their severity].
Actually, this is my main point. What follows are personal details.
I will later publish excerpts from Lyuba’s letters if she permits it.
While Lyuba was jailed in the pretrial detention center, she studied for the Unified State Exam and managed to finish eleventh grade. (I don’t know how she managed that.) During the ten months in jail and later, during the long prisoner transport (in a Stolypin wagon and paddy wagon) to the penal colony in Tomsk and then to Chita, she read about one hundred books (all of Solzhenitsyn, Kafka, Schopenhauer, Aristotle, Frankl, and Dante—basically, whatever she could find). She has no time to read that much in the penal colony, although she has recently been reading Anna Seghers: she has only one day off, and that day she is kept busy with “squad” assignments. But she asked me to send her something to read; I’ll try to send something, I’ve never done it before. She is the “detachment artist,” so she designs all the holiday celebrations, posters, and props. She writes poetry for her own amusement and sometimes borrows a guitar from a “local lady.” In the next barracks, someone has a synthesizer.
I am including these details on purpose, as they make it possible to visualize Lyuba’s story: the daily lifestyle, including sewing and cleaning the premises; eating Dosirac instant noodles (Lyuba is a vegetarian and cannot eat the food served in the penal colony, because everything is cooked in a meat broth); and the nitty-gritty of the prisoner transports.
Strikingly, Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression was observed at Lyuba’s penal colony: she drew a poster for the occasion. Actually, our correspondence and acquaintance began that same day: I chose her letter from a long list of letters from other political prisoners to read aloud at our Returning the Names event. It had a particularly poignant ring. I later realized why she takes the Stalinist crackdowns so personally. She wrote to me that her great-grandfather was a bigwig in the Chita KGB. When she was taken to FSB headquarters for interrogations, she was escorted past a stand dedicated to him, featuring a framed portrait, documents, and awards. It sounds like a movie—a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl being led down a corridor past a portrait of her great-grandfather—but it isn’t a movie.
If you have ideas about who can publicize this case, or who can help make the media cover the cases of very young political prisoners, please write to me. And write letters to them, please.
FKU IK-7 UFSIN of Russia in the Republic of Buryatia • Lyubov Vitalyevna Lizunova (born 2006)
Source: Alexandra Selivanova (Facebook), 21 January 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader. Since letters to Russian prisoners are vetted by prison censors, they must be written in Russian or translated into Russian, something that can done more or less decently using an online machine translator. ||||| TRR
A court in Russia’s Transbaikal region has designated the informal youth group known as the Transbaikal Left Association (ZLO) as a terrorist organisation and banned its activities nationwide.
According to the ruling by the Transbaikal Regional Court, the group, which was founded in 2019, operated with its own symbols and maintained pages on social media. The court concluded that elements of terrorist activity were present in its actions, as outlined in a lawsuit brought by prosecutors, Caliber.Az reports via Russian media.
The case named Alexander Snezhkov and Lyubov Lizunova, described by authorities as the group’s unofficial leaders, as defendants. Snezhkov was sentenced to six years in prison, while Lizunova received a sentence of three and a half years. They were convicted on charges including vandalism, incitement to terrorism, and extremism.
Snezhkov rejected the accusations, stating that ZLO functioned primarily as an information platform through which he expressed his personal views. At the same time, he acknowledged that in 2022 he had asked Lizunova to prepare a post that he later published online. He said he subsequently deleted the post after realising that it could be interpreted as justifying terrorist activity, including attacks on military enlistment offices.
As temperatures in Kyiv plunged to -20°C (-4°F), Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving millions in total darkness and biting cold. Though Russia has tried this strategy before, this winter is different. The scale and relentlessness of these attacks have reached unprecedented levels. Many Ukrainians are now forced to survive winter without steady heat, without light, without the basic infrastructure that makes normal life possible.
While this crisis unfolds, international coverage has been limited. We want you to see what’s actually happening on the ground.
Our journalists are reporting these stories while living them — and so is everyone else in Kyiv, rushing to charge phones during brief power windows, cooking on camping stoves in their kitchens, huddling under blankets in apartments that feel like freezers. For the elderly, it’s worse. When elevators stop working, they are stuck in their own homes, unable to reach food or medical care. What was occasional last winter is now constant.
To light the darkness
Building on our “I Stand with Ukraine” T-shirt, we’re launching I Stand with Ukraine Through Darkness — available as a T-shirt and hoodie.
From January 20 through February 3, all proceeds from this collection go to supporting the charitable organization Starenki, which helps older people living in vulnerable situations.
This winter Starenki’s volunteers provide a lifeline by:
Delivering essentials — Food and hygiene kits for older people, especially those who are physically unable to navigate stairs to reach shops. When high-rise buildings are left without power, elevators become inoperable — effectively trapping seniors in their apartments.
Providing emotional aid — Companionship and conversation to combat the profound isolation that comes with darkness.
As Ukraine enters its fourth winter of war, international attention is fading. The reality of these freezing blackouts is slipping from the headlines.
By wearing this design, you do more than help support the elderly in Ukraine — you raise awareness of the situation and keep Ukraine from slipping from the world’s attention.
Share this. Wear this. Spread the word.
Source: TheKyiv Independent Store email newsletter, 20 January 2026. I have purchased one of these t-shirts and would urge you to do so as well. ||||| TRR
[Editor’s note: On January 21, Kyiv’s Mayor, Vitali Klitschko, urged the city’s inhabitants to “leave if you can.” 600,000 have already left these last two weeks since Russia intensified its attack on the city’s energy infrastructure. The mayor says that the constant Russian attacks are pushing the city towards “a humanitarian catastrophe.” Temperatures are plunging to as low as –18°C (0°F). According to Klitschko, “the situation is critical with basic services – heating, water, electricity. Right now, 5,600 apartment buildings are without heating.” This morning, President Zelenskiy said that one million people in Kyiv are now without power. The city’s authorities have now have been forced to drain the city’s central heating and water system to prevent pipes from freezing and bursting. A couple of days ago, Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, Denys Shmyhal, said that “there is not a single power plant in Ukraine that has not been hit by the enemy during the war.”]
Today we received this from a dear, long-term friend in Kyiv:
BY OLEKSIY KURKA, resident of Kyiv, works in diplomacy and policymaking
I’ve written about Russian attacks so many times that the words no longer convey any new meaning, muted by repetition. But friends abroad cared to check in with me after last night, so here is an update.
As of this hour, only a fraction of the capital has electricity. I’ve been without power for about 24 hours now; others for much longer. It isn’t clear when it might return.
The heating is also off. The building is gradually cooling down. Soon I’ll be breathing out vapour, like some of my friends. Those living through ‘no-heat’ situations for longer – such as those near the front lines – are now camping out in their flats. It’s 5-7°C warmer inside a tent inside your flat.
The attack caused massive disruptions to public transport. Segments of the Metro I use to commute were closed due to electricity shortages. Many, myself included, had to stay and work from home.
My portable power station is gradually running out. Not having a predictable source of power is beginning to worry me more. I can predict one thing: our foes will stop at nothing to inflict more suffering on Ukrainians – while they can.
On a brighter note, I found and successfully installed a solution to the lack of internet at home. It’s an external antenna that catches and amplifies signals from nearby towers. Even during prolonged outages, I have about 15-20 Mbps, which is brilliant.
As for the power, I was inspired by my neighbour who took a mini petrol generator out to the courtyard and recharged his upper-floor flat via an extension lead. Now I fancy having the same system – and solar panels, for when there’s more daylight. Anything that minimises energy dependence is a win.
I went for a walk on the slippery, ice-clad streets of my district in an off-grid darkness that once again revealed the starred heavens. Most businesses and shops are running off generators, their light bulbs making up for the absence of proper street lights, coupled with the headlights from cars. This is how we see. That, and the torches in our hands.
Earlier today, we chatted with a visiting colleague who asked many questions about life these days. I made the point that a war of attrition forces things upon you that you’d otherwise never have thought you’d need.
But when it happens a few times, you spot the trend and start thinking even more creatively about what is yet to come. Do I need to consider satellite internet now, or are the mobile towers maintained well enough for me to avoid rushed decisions and unnecessary costs? Thinking ahead and learning from others makes the unpredictability a tiny bit more predictable, as it were.
Do I plan to leave Kyiv because of these ‘inconveniences’? I said a long time ago that there are two conditions for me to make such a significant decision: when there is no drinking water, and when the prospect of Russian occupation looms larger.
The first is not yet a reality for Kyiv, and I hope it never will be. The latter is no longer a reality, thanks to the Ukrainian army and our partners who provide Ukraine with air defence, long-range, and other weapon systems.
One more thing: Even if I leave the place, it’s only to come back.
The sun floods the room like a Christmas postcard: snow-covered trees, silence, a fairy tale.
But it ends at the windowpane.
I stand in the middle of the room in two sweaters and a robe, clutching a cup of hot tea as if it could save me. The thermometer indoors reads +9°C (48°F). It’s the third day without heat, and every hour the cold settles deeper into the walls.
In my arms is my six-month-old son, Ustym. I hold him tighter than I should, trying to give him my warmth. And suddenly it hits me: I don’t know how to protect him from the cold.
I can endure it. He can’t.
I cry quietly so he won’t hear. The tears on my sleeve are warmer than the air in the room.
I pack to leave the city.
There, the power may go out—but there is warmth. What a strange word now. A luxury. A reason to flee your own home.
I thought this fear was mine alone. But when I wrote to my colleague Nastia, I realized the cold does not discriminate. She has no child, but the same thermometer, the same сold walls, and made the same decision to leave.
As a result of Russia’s prolonged strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including power plants and substations, large parts of Kyiv were left without heating for several days as temperatures dropped to –15°C — the lowest in recent years. During the January 9 attacks, damage to the power grid led to heating outages in approximately 6,000 apartment buildings, nearly half of the city, demonstrating how winter has become yet another front in the war.
Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko called the situation the most difficult for the capital since the start of the full-scale invasion and urged residents to temporarily leave the city, despite the opening of hundreds of heating centers. 600,000 Kyivans have fled the capital since January 9. For many, leaving the city is no longer a matter of comfort but one of survival.
It is a reminder that in times of war, even a major city can turn perilous overnight, and true security depends not only on the absence of missiles but on access to basic needs like heat, electricity, and water.
Our apartments turned into cold traps we had to escape. We came together to share this strange, frightening feeling, when every minute at home feels like a test, and survival becomes a daily struggle.
Nastia: On the night before the major strike that left us without heat, January 8, I took a hot shower for the first time in a week and had uninterrupted electricity for the whole evening.
Restoration work on hot water and heating had been underway in my building before, we always had problems with heating and water.
I felt like a human being again — someone who, after work, can properly warm up in the shower, instead of heating up a kettle 5 times.
After the attack, I was back to not having water, heating and electricity. When I woke up under two blankets I felt powerless again: I already knew I would cancel the plans I had that evening because of how exhausted I felt.
I didn’t even try to catch the internet in my apartment, because I knew I’d fail. I just washed my face under freezing water and went to the cafe nearby to work.
Later I was riding the metro and barely held back tears. Not even because of the cold, but because I would yet again have to spend my evening in a dark apartment all alone. Such evenings just gnaw at me, creating a deep sense of isolation. I know that when I set foot in the apartment nothing will be waiting for me there, except darkness, silence, and piercing cold.
“Please, come home. Don’t be there alone in the cold,” my parents told me. My dad suggested I go with his friend, who was also planning to leave Kyiv on January 9. I was hesitant at first: I had friends, plans, and work to do. But if I had been able to find ways to function with blackouts and distract myself before, this time I just couldn’t find the strength to bear it.
Myroslava: During the latest Russian attack on Friday, January 9, we immediately lost both electricity and heat. The boiler in the building runs on electricity, so it was clear that if there’s no power, there won’t be heat either.
At first I was calm; this was not the first time, and we’d get through it. But then Mayor Klitschko urged people to leave the city for the weekend, and that was alarming. The apartment was getting colder and colder.
My husband and I decided to go to his parents’ village to wait it out for the weekend, hoping that heat would return soon. On Sunday evening, we returned to Kyiv: heating had already come back in parts of the city. But not in ours. In the morning I took Ustym to my parents, where it was warmer, and went to work.
I dressed him in layers and held him close to share my warmth.
He seemed fine. It was I and even more so his grandparents who were truly scared.
I knew that we would only leave the Kyiv apartment at the most critical moment, when we had no strength left to endure. That’s exactly what happened on the last two nights–not only because my son woke up frequently, but also because of the cold, in which it was impossible to sleep. I was in warm pajamas, under a duvet and three blankets, surrounded by cats – and it still didn’t help.
I left for the Kyiv region on January 13th for my in-laws’ house, which has its own heating. The situation was so bad I couldn’t even wait for my husband to finish work. The frost had turned the roads into solid ice, and with darkness falling early, driving was dangerous. So my father-in-law drove out to pick up Ustym and me.
Nastia: As I was leaving Kyiv it was darker than usual – the blackouts had taken over the capital. Sorrow and the shame of leaving my own home kept me quiet and bitter in the taxi, but it changed when I met with my dad’s army friend; he cheered me up with conversations about life. The roads were covered with ice and snow.
That evening I got a message from my friend.
“I’ve never regretted more… the day I moved to Kyiv,” she said with an exhausted voice.
I often thought the same, but with the same thoughts I realized it was the best decision – it’s the city where I met most of my great friends, found work I love, and made plenty of great memories I want to keep until my last day.
For now I have to witness it from social media and news, or from my friends’ messages.
Energy workers are active around the clock. And they have been working under tremendous pressure for months. The brutal weather makes it much more difficult – just imagine working in the frost night and day, breaking through snow and ice to repair something, while Russia continues destroying more and more facilities.
DTEK, the country’s biggest private energy firm, posted on Threads: “It’s really difficult for us now. The damage from new big shellings is very serious. This was compounded by the severe weather we could all see outside our windows — the harshest winter in many years.”
Myroslava: The thought that we had to leave Kyiv hurts the most; it breaks me from the inside. I always saw the capital as a fortress, a place that must hold out under any conditions. In 2022, many Ukrainians stayed here even when the Russians stood on the outskirts of the city, because they believed Kyiv would be defended to the end. Now people are leaving not because of a military offensive, but because of the weather.
This is exactly what Russia wants – to make Kyiv unlivable, to break Ukrainians’ morale and force concessions. And they’re partially succeeding: home has stopped being a safe place.
That’s why visiting stores have become one of the most painful things for me. Supermarkets are a kind of marker of stability, an indication that tomorrow will still come. When they are open, it feels like life is still holding on.
But a few days ago, I saw a message that supermarkets in Kyiv were starting to close, including one near my home.
The store is closed, and a sign to that effect hangs on the entrance, Kyiv, January 13th, 2026
It stayed open at the start of the war, through heat, cold, and the blackouts of 2023.
And this time, it didn’t survive.
Nastіa: Leaving was difficult not only because it carried a sense of shame for giving up and escaping, while my friends and lots of other people had to stay and endure the cold.
But also it was hard to walk away from the places I love, not knowing how soon I’d be able to return. I don’t know how my apartment is now, or my favorite cafés and stores where I could go from my dark apartment to recharge my phone a bit.
I didn’t spend much time in the cold and blackouts after the latest attack, but it didn’t take long to feel its full effects. I was barely able to get myself out of bed; the indoor temperature had already plunged to about +10°C / 50°F.
And the rest of the time I spent dragging bottled water from the shop to clean up and take a shower before I could leave. At that point, I had no running water at all.
Myroslava: I miss my husband terribly, as he stayed in our Kyiv apartment. He works in Kyiv, and with this weather, regular trips aren’t realistic.
We’ve always done everything together, and now it feels like I’m without my main support. We text each other constantly. I send him photos of Ustym, and we wish each other good morning every day, trying to keep that closeness alive.
He has to keep the bathroom warm so the pipes don’t burst, otherwise the whole building could lose heat for the rest of winter. At –15°C outside, it’s frightening. He uses whatever he can: an oil radiator when there’s electricity, a gas heater when there isn’t.
Our cats, Stuhna and Sherri, stayed in the apartment. I constantly worry that they are cold, curling up and searching for any bit of warmth. They need to be fed and given water, and the rooms need to be kept warm. Every time I think about them, my heart tightens, because I left and they stayed behind.
The war has torn families apart on so many levels, and not just on the front lines. This winter brings a painful new wave of uncertainty and separation – endured not because people are giving up, but because they are forced to protect what matters most.
Editor’s note: The Counteroffensive team will continue to report from Kyiv, but we support any member of their team that wants to go back to their hometowns to be with their families.We also offered to take any member of the team to Warsaw for a week, at least until this blows over. They all refused to leave their country. I hope this shows, in some small sense, the grit, determination and courage of the small team I’m privileged to lead.
I want to try and describe what it is like in Minnesota right now for my friends in other states. As a reminder, Alyse and I live in the suburbs — Apple Valley — not Minneapolis. This federal invasion and occupation is occurring all across the state, not just in Minneapolis.
ICE is not looking for specific people. They don’t have a sheet of paper with specific names, specific addresses, that they are arriving in communities to get. They drive around looking for kidnappings of opportunity.
So they will sit and idle in their car, waiting for a Black, brown or Asian person who is walking into the gas station, taking out their trash, walking their dog, or working at their job and then swarm and grab them.
ICE drives around *incredibly recklessly* and uses license plate readers to find people with mostly-Hispanic sounding last names, pulls them over, and kidnaps them. Again, these aren’t specific people ICE has been tasked with finding. Most of the people who are kidnapped are U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or have legal status of some sort (work permit, a social security number, or are a refugee or asylee) (picture 1). These are documented immigrants or citizens who have broken no laws — including not having broken laws entering the country. These are people just going about their daily life who get stopped and snatched because they’re Black, brown or Asian.
Just going about OUR daily life, we see abandoned cars in the middle of highways, on neighborhood streets, in front of doctors offices. Sometimes the doors are still open and the car is still running. We could be in line to get Burger King and watch ICE snatch a teenager on his way into work (picture 2). We could be taking out the trash, walking kids to the bus stop, going for a walk outside, and there will all of a sudden be a swarm of anonymous, masked, violent men ripping a family from their home or out of the booth at a restaurant. Picture 3 is a neighborhood, one mile from my house, at 8:30AM this past Wednesday. It was school bus pick up time and also trash day in that neighborhood. This is just in the middle of the neighborhood.
This can happen any where at any time. There is no place we can go and be assured we won’t see someone be violently taken. Target. The grocery store. A restaurant. Driving Hattie to swim lessons. Driving to church. Going to the doctor (picture 4). Multiple times a day, we get texts from co-workers, neighbors, friends, family members about a person they know (or are related to, or work with, or are their kids’ friends parents) who was taken.
ICE sets up checkpoints in neighborhoods and make everyone leaving or entering show their papers (note: very few people can prove their citizenship at a moments notice. A majority of Minnesotans don’t have passports. Citizens don’t just carry their birth certificate around). They go door-to-door in apartment buildings and neighborhoods, just hoping a Black, brown or Asian person will open their door (because they have no judicial warrant to take a specific person(s), just kidnapping whoever accidentally opens their door).
Schools have had to close. ICE has shown up to schools and just pepper sprayed kids and parents (picture 5). Districts are calling families and advising that their kids switch to online school. ICE circles and targets Spanish-immersion programs, forcing moms and dads to sit watch over their kids’ school to keep their kids and teachers safe (picture 6). Kids come home from school to empty houses, their parents having been stolen sometime during the day. When parents are kidnapped in front of others, they will yell out their full names and the name of their kids’ school(s) so someone can call the school and alert the administration, hoping their kids can be put with a safe adult instead of coming home to no one. There are people who signed delegation of parental authority (DOPA) forms — agreeing to take a neighbor or friend’s kids in the event of an emergency — who now have multiple children from multiple families.
ICE is ubiquitous. They are everywhere. We see them 3, 5, 7 times a day just going through our normal routine. There are more federal agents in Minnesota than there are local law enforcement from the ten largest metro police departments COMBINED (picture 7).
This is going to come to other states and I want people to be prepared, because I cannot overstate how many people have (had to) come together to respond.
Regular Minnesotans — people who have never once gone to a protest, called their elective representatives, participated in an economic strike, people who rarely even vote — have been activated. Grandparents carry whistles in their cars in case they come across ICE while living their lives and need to warn the surrounding area. Parents of kids in K-12 organize to ensure there’s parents at bus stops and the area around schools, because ICE stakes out bus stops and school properties — taking parents who are waiting at the bus stop or in the carpool line (picture . We’ve set up massive food donation and delivery infrastructure. We organize rides to school and work. People are literally taking in families.
SO many kids aren’t going to school right now (picture 9). So many businesses are closed or have lost their customer base entirely. So many families are facing eviction because they can’t go to work and won’t be able to pay their rent.
Minnesotans are being collectively punished and traumatized. 6 month old babies have been teargassed because their parents are just driving in their own neighborhood (picture 10). We are coming together in the most beautiful ways — I don’t want to understate that. But I want everyone outside of Minnesota to understand: we are under a federal invasion and occupation of armed, masked, paramilitary that roam our streets, brutalizing, harassing and murdering with impunity.
There may be people who might think that when this comes to your state, being white or being a U.S. citizen or living in a suburb or rural area or living in a neighborhood with few or no immigrant neighbors means you won’t see or experience this kind of daily assault of an invasion and occupation. I want to dispel that idea.
There are things I’m forgetting, certainly, but I wanted to try and paint the picture because this isn’t ending in Minnesota. We are the test case before expanding to other states in the country.
Help us now to stop this before it spreads. Organize in your communities now.
On January 7 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good, a thirty-seven-year-old woman who had been observing ICE raids from her car in her Minneapolis neighborhood. In videos of the incident, we can see Ross firing through Good’s windshield and open window as she begins to drive away. The horrific footage of the killing felt like a stark symbol of today’s authoritarian moment—but at the same time, I knew that anyone involved in the struggle against police violence would find it tragically familiar.
To put Good’s killing in context, I spoke with historian and Boston Review contributing editor Robin D. G. Kelley, whose forthcoming book, Making a Killing: Capitalism, Cops, and the War on Black Life, covers the history of county, state, and municipal police violence—as well as the activism against it. In an email exchange, we discussed the pitfalls of the “perfect-victim narrative,” policing’s terror tactics, why agents don’t need more training, and where we go from here.
Deborah Chasman: Good’s killing shocked Americans. But much about it reflects violence that’s very familiar to you. Can you put the murder in the context of your research?
Robin D. G. Kelley: Despite having spent more than thirty years studying and writing about police violence, I am still shocked by every death—even when the outcome is predictable. But the killing of Good shocked even the most seasoned organizers. She was a white woman and a mother—two things you’re not supposed to be when armed agents of the state put you in a body bag. (That she was queer and a poet, not so much.)
Of course, the very idea that certain people, by virtue of their characteristics, don’t deserve to be brutalized, caged, or killed by police is the problem. Mariame Kaba warns against “perfect-victim narratives,” which reinforce what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “the problem of innocence.” Centering someone’s innocence clouds the case for abolition, which seeks to create a world where no one is caged or gunned down even if they broke the law. No matter who she was, what she looked like, her marital or citizenship status, or what she might have done in the past or even in the moment, Good had the absolute right not to be shot for driving away.
What doesn’t surprise me is why and how Jonathan Ross shot her and the federal government’s efforts to cover up what happened. Researching Making a Killing, I found too many incidents to count where police fatally shot people for attempting to drive away. These were not high-speed chases, by the way—sometimes it was just a car lurching forward or an engine revving up that prompted a shooting. They all have one thing in common: police justify the shootings as acts of self-defense. The alleged “suspect,” the story goes, intended to ram the officer, who opened fire because he feared for his life. After these shootings, cops rarely argue they were simply trying to stop a fleeing suspect, because it opens them up to two objections: that firing at a driver puts others in harm’s way, and that they could have taken down the license plate and pursued the person later. Fearing for one’s life is always used to absolve cops from having to explain why they didn’t act differently.
This is why, in videos of the moments before the shooting, we can hear Good’s wife Rebecca saying, “We don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know. It will be the same plate when you come talk to us later.” And this is also why, for many years and in different cities, movements fighting police misconduct demanded that officers be banned from using lethal force against fleeing suspects who do not pose an imminent threat, whether on foot or in a car.
I’m also not shocked by the utter refusal of the federal government to investigate or consider bringing charges against Ross. I’ve lived through and documented so many cases of officers whose egregious acts of violence led to no indictments and no investigations; so many cases of police and even prosecutors destroying incriminating evidence. The question is, why are so many people surprised and indignant about the feds’ unqualified defense of Ross? Maybe because we’ve fallen into the trap of distinguishing ICE and CBP (bad) from local police (good). Maybe it’s a residual effect of the January 6 insurrection, in which some police officers had been victims of right-wing mobs (which themselves included a disproportionate number of cops and soldiers). In any case, the narrative has taken hold that ICE agents are rogue cops or cops on steroids, trained to terrorize or simply untrained. Strangest of all in this story is the liberal pipe dream that local police will stand up against ICE and CBP, when police have collaborated with ICE and been deployed to protect agents from protesters, even in so-called sanctuary cities.
I’m not sure if it’s amnesia or just wishful thinking, but it seems like the well-documented terror tactics of municipal, county, and state police have just disappeared from people’s memory. Chicago and Los Angeles, where resistance to ICE has been extraordinary and well-organized, have histories of police violence that rival anything ICE agents are doing. Indeed, it is precisely the long experience of organizing against this violence that prepared activists in these cities to resist ICE.
Chicago, which takes up a very long chapter in my book, is known for police torture, the maintenance of secret “black sites,” assassinations and executions, and prosecutors who have consistently protected police even to the point of hiding evidence. This is the city where the second Black police superintendent, LeRoy Martin, bragged in 1987, “When you talk about gangs, I’ve got the toughest gang in town: the Chicago Police Department.” And it is the same city that has been a model of resistance to police repression for more than half a century, culminating in the collective struggles for justice for Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, and victims of torture that brought down the ruling regime of Rahm Emanuel.
This is not to diminish ICE and CBP’s violent tactics. These outright abductions are terrifying, though again, not without precedent. Police have abducted Black men standing on a street corner or a stoop and tossed them into unmarked vans just for looking suspicious, and there are numerous cases of young Black women abducted off the streets and sexually assaulted by police. But there is a fundamental difference between these abductions and ICE’s: the former were intended to be secret, the latter publicized. ICE and CBP agents are either filming these acts of terror themselves (Ross had one hand on his gun and the other holding his cell phone to film!), or they are arriving with a film crew. The point is to create fear, to terrorize people into submission, to create a state of emergency.
Finally, let’s try not to make these attacks about Trump or even Stephen Miller. Both ICE and CBP have histories of violence dating back to well before 2016. My colleague Kelly Lytle Hernandez has written on the history of the Border Patrol, which has been terrorizing people since 1924.
DC: Republicans and right-wing pundits have been relentless in blaming Good for her murder, or calling her a domestic terrorist and warning that any activism will put you in harm’s way. Clearly there’s a legal element to blaming Good—it’s meant to exonerate the agent. But how do those narratives function politically?
RK: Anyone organizing against state power will be a target, whether their protest abides by the law or involves civil disobedience. Either way, nothing justifies the harm, which is what these narratives attempt to do. Just last night, after ICE shot another person in Minnesota and protesters were in the streets battling federal agents, there was a lot of talk—including from Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey—about the need for peaceful protest: code for candlelight vigils and silent prayer. Militant civil disobedience, aggressively confronting a phalanx of masked agents in riot gear, or blocking traffic is nonviolent, but these tactics are not considered by the political class to count as “peaceful protest.” And by now, it should be clear that peaceful protest, whatever form it takes, will not get ICE or CBP out of your city; it will not stop the terror or the abductions.
And yet, when we return to Good’s death, we must remember that she actually wasn’t protesting. She was a legal observer doing her job, and when told to leave she was complying. Unsurprisingly, J. D. Vance and all the right-wingers who blame Good for her death are simply lying. Calling her a domestic terrorist—it’s the oldest trick in the book. The subtext to which we ought to pay attention is how her gender and sexuality constituted the real threat to Ross, his fellow agents, Vance, Stephen Miller, and MAGA. One must imagine what it meant to Ross for a smiling queer woman to tell him, “I’m not mad at you.” After shooting her three times, Ross or an agent near him mutters, “Fucking bitch!” That says it all.
Nearly every victim of an ICE or CBP shooting is blamed for being either a fugitive or domestic terrorist. When ICE agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas-González, a thirty-eight-year-old immigrant from Mexico, as he tried to drive away from what amounted to an ambush in Chicago, DHS released a brazenly false statement claiming that he “refused to follow law enforcement officers’ commands” and used his car as a weapon, hitting and dragging one of the officers. And so the same old story goes: “Fearing for his own life and broader public safety, the officer fired his weapon.” We know now that no officer was hit or dragged, and the one officer allegedly hurt suffered minor cuts from breaking Villegas-González’s window.
Likewise, when CBP agents shot Marimar Martinez, a thirty-year-old schoolteacher and U.S. citizen—also in Chicago—they labeled her a domestic terrorist and charged her with ramming a federal law enforcement officer. We know now that the agent, Charles Exum, rammed her vehicle, jumped out with his gun drawn, and said “Do something bitch” before shooting her five times. The DHS lies were so egregious (and Exum didn’t help their case by bragging about it in text messages) that the prosecution had no choice but to drop all the charges.
DC: In the wake of Good’s murder, many have called for better training for ICE officers—a response that activist Kelly Hayes, among others, has forcefully rejected. I know you agree. Can you explain why?
RK: Jonathan Ross wasn’t one of those cats recruited with a $50,000 bonus and handed a gun. Besides being a veteran of the Iraq war, he had spent a decade as a member of the special response team of ICE’s enforcement and removal operation. He got more training than most of the other masked goons running the streets of the Twin Cities. The argument for more and better training was thoroughly discredited after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. As it turned out, Derek Chauvin had lots of training: he had taken the crisis intervention training, use-of-force training, de-escalation vs. restraint training, and even training in implicit bias, which became mandatory for Minneapolis police officers beginning in 2018. The result? Chauvin racked up seventeen misconduct complaints over nineteen years on the force. And after 2018, cases of police brutality and excessive force complaints increased across the city.
But if training hasn’t worked, why does it continue? Why is it always trotted out, alongside new technologies, as the solution? Because training and technologies (body cams, Tasers, so-called less-than-lethal weapons, predictive policing software) are a boondoggle for corporate interests. Training costs money, which increases police budgets, which are paid for through taxes and bonds—a hidden source of revenue for financial institutions that administer the bonds. The money for training flows to private companies, usually run by former police chiefs and so-called criminal justice experts—not community organizations that have been fighting for accountability. Sometimes the investment in new technologies and training comes from corporate-funded private police foundations, whose donations enable departments to purchase equipment, such as surveillance technology, guns, ballistic helmets, cameras, and drones, and assist officers with bonuses or legal fees, with no oversight or public input. But corporations like Amazon and Google get a great return on their investment since law enforcement agencies adopt technologies of surveillance, data mining and management, etc., coming from these companies.
To understand what “training” produces, let’s focus on one company: 21st Century Policing Solutions, LLC (21CP), which grew directly out of an Obama-era task force formed in late 2014 after the killing of Michael Brown. 21CP is made up of law enforcement officials, lawyers, and academics, and it’s paid by municipalities and university public safety forces to train police in a host of areas: gaining community trust, racial equity, changing use-of-force policies, communication, transparency, strategic management, and community policing. Usually, this work entails producing reports that ultimately just repeat boilerplate recommendations. Oklahoma City paid 21CP $193,000 for a report many Black residents found to be useless—nothing changed. Aurora, Colorado, paid 21CP $340,000 to “investigate” the police missteps that resulted in the death of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who had been injected with ketamine under police custody and died. 21CP produced a 161-page report that primarily described the operations of the Aurora Police Department, compared it with other departments in similar-sized cities, repeated what we all know about the death of McClain, and offered obvious and fairly innocuous recommendations: prohibiting chokeholds, retaliatory violence, using force on people who are handcuffed—in other words, prohibiting behavior that is already prohibited. And worse, these reports often suggest recruiting and training more officers. I want to suggest that when we talk about training and technology, we need to follow the money. And in the case of CBP and ICE, the last thing we should be doing is proposing reforms that give them more money.
As the coercive arm of the state, the police—including CBP and ICE—are the primary instruments of state violence within the borders of the United States. They function as an occupying force in America’s impoverished ghettos, barrios, reservations, on the Southwest border, and in any territory with high concentrations of subjugated communities. For people who reside in these communities, keeping us safe is not the objective. Instead, the modern police force—whether local, state, or federal—wages domestic war. Whether we call it a war on crime, a war on militants, or a war on drugs, law enforcement at every level has turned many Black working-class neighborhoods in particular into killing fields and open-air prisons, stripping vulnerable residents of equal protection, habeas corpus, freedom of movement, and even protection from torture. The attack on non-white immigrants is just another front in a war the police have waged since their inception.
And despite the handwringing and outrage over the Trump administration’s flagrant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limiting the use of the military in domestic matters, the police have long functioned as an army against dissident social movements. The police are the first line of defense against strikes and left-wing protests, while often serving as a cordon to protect Klansman, Nazis, and the alt-right.
DC: What are the chances that Ross will be held accountable? How does this end?
RK: Simply put, Ross will not be held accountable, nor will anyone else responsible for the death or injury of victims of ICE or CBP attacks. As I document in my book, we can’t get accountability from the “regular” police, whatever that means: after decades, we haven’t been able to achieve something as basic as an honest civilian review board with subpoena powers and the ability to hire and fire officers! Since Trump’s second term, things have gotten even worse. Guided by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the Trump administration rescinded Biden-era police and criminal justice reforms; shuttered the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD) created in 2023 to allow prospective employers to access the records of federal law enforcement officers in order to check their backgrounds for misconduct; halted all open federal investigations into law enforcement, notably in Jackson, Mississippi, and New York City; ended federal consent decrees mandating reforms of Louisville and Minneapolis police departments; made the extraordinary offer of free private-sector legal services for officers accused of misconduct.
It is not enough to abolish ICE. We need to abolish the police and cages and build other institutions and relationships that can bring us genuine safety. Abolition is less an act of demolition than a construction project. It is creative creation, the boundless, boundary-less struggle to make our collective lives better, what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “life in rehearsal.”
Ironically, the federal government’s escalation of violence and its spillover into other communities have actually forced people to find their own strategies to keep each other safe, through communication, patrols, whistles, trainings in nonviolent resistance, and old-fashioned organizing. It’s not just about keeping ICE out, but making sure that the medical and child care needs of neighbors are being met, that people who can’t leave their homes out of fear are fed, and that some homes can become designated safe houses.
I’m reminded of a 2009 statement issued by the abolitionist organization Critical Resistance. Instead of police, the statement asks,
What if we got together with members of our communities and created systems of support for each other?. . . . Relying on and deploying policing denies our ability to do this, to create real safety in our communities.
We’re seeing this in action now in the mobilizations against ICE. The question is whether it can be sustained and turned into something that can replace our dependence on armed agents of the state to solve human problems.
Independent and nonprofit, Boston Review relies on reader funding. To support work like this, please donate here. Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair of U.S. History at UCLA and a contributing editor at Boston Review. His many books include Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Deborah Chasman is publisher and coeditor of Boston Review. Her writing has also appeared in New York magazine and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Federal immigration agents detained three people and deployed chemical agents at multiple locations around E. 34th Street and Park Avenue in Minneapolis’ Powderhorn neighborhood Tuesday morning. At least two were observers and not the target of immigration enforcement operations.
Around 9:40 a.m., community response networks began sending alerts about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) door-knocking at E. 34th Street and Park Avenue. By 10 a.m., a crowd of over 100 observers had gathered, confronting agents at multiple intersections.
Among the detainees was a woman who was forcibly removed from her vehicle after agents smashed her passenger-side window.
In a video taken by Sahan Journal, the woman can be seen arguing with agents prior to being grabbed by multiple agents and carried to agents’ vehicle. The woman can be heard shouting that she is disabled and on her way to a doctor’s appointment that ICE was obstructing. Prior to the detention agents had instructed her to drive away.
After being pulled out of a car, a women screams as she’s being arrested by immigrations agents at 34th and Park in Minneapolis on Jan 13, 2026. Credit: Chris Juhn for Sahan Journal
Shortly after, another observer on site was tackled and forcibly put in agents’ vehicle as well. According to state Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, who was present at the scene, agents pushed the man’s head into the concrete prior to carrying him away. Gomez also said that agents were physical with her as well.
“These officers have obviously not had the basic law enforcement training,” Gomez said. “I was shoved with no verbal communication whatsoever.”
Andy Larson, a south Minneapolis resident who was out observing ICE activity Tuesday, told Sahan Journal that one protester kicked out the taillight of an ICE vehicle and was tackled to the ground up the road on Park Avenue and E. 36th Street.
“It was a really good kick,” Larson said.
The protester managed to escape ICE agents, Larson said. ICE deployed chemical irritants and shot pepper balls into the crowd and fled the scene.
According to Sahan Journal photojournalist Chris Juhn, a Hispanic man was also visible in the back of one vehicle. It is unclear whether the man was an observer or target of federal operations. ICE did not respond to Sahan’s request for comment on the operations.
At multiple points during the operation, agents deployed chemical agents at observers. Agents fired pepper balls at observers’ feet and threw canisters of tear gas at the corner of 34th Street and both Park and Oakland avenues prior to leaving the scene. Eyewitness Moses Wolf said there was no singular precipitating event that led to tear gas being deployed on Park Avenue.
“There was a crowd confronting each other telling ICE to get out,” Wolf said. “I didn’t really see any physical altercation happening.” He said it appeared to be a tactic by ICE agents to exit the scene.
Wolf said the confrontation prior to the deployment of tear gas had not escalated beyond what had already been happening.
“It wasn’t anything crazy,” Wolf said. “I turned around for one second and there was this whole entire cloud of it, and pepper spray came with that.”
Eyewitness Neph Sudduth said at Oakland Avenue agents used tear gas as they were leaving.
“They were finally leaving, it was the last car of the convoy,” Sudduth said. “They just threw two or three canisters out at us as they left.”
Both Sudduth and Wolf said they witnessed agents using pepper spray out of the windows of their vehicles as they drove off.
“They just wanted to hurt us cause we told them how we felt, and they didn’t like it,” Sudduth said.
The operation in Powderhorn is part of a flood of federal immigration activity in Minnesota. As many as 2,000 federal agents are present in the state according to reporting from the New York Times, with an additional 1,000 set to be deployed.
For Gomez, the clash with ICE is the new reality of life in the Twin Cities with federal agents present.
“This is what our streets are like,” Gomez said. “We have these masked, unaccountable unknown to us federal agents, and it’s like they’re the secret police.”
Despite the difficulties, Gomez believes observers should and will continue to show up to meet federal agents in the streets.
“Our community is undeterred,” she said. “We’re not going to just lay down. You can gas us and mace us all you want, we’re not going to just lay down.”
Sahan Journal reporter Andrew Hazzard contributed to this story.
During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised to deport every illegal immigrant who was a rapist, murderer, or thief. He also promised to deport 20 million immigrants. Some voters believed the first promise; other voters believed the second.
Because people are stupid, that first group of voters believed that there were 20 million undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies. This is not possible. The total number of people in jail in America today—this includes federal, state, local, and tribal land prisons—is just under 2 million. The number of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes cannot be 10x the entire prison population of the United States. If it were, then daily life in America would look like Escape from New York.
So some Trump voters were duped owing to their general ignorance and/or innumeracy.
But others were not. Others signed up for Trump because of his second promise (the 20 million deportations) and viewed the first promise (about deporting only criminals) as the pap necessary to get the suckers onboard.
There are two crucial questions about these two groups. The first is:
What is their relative size? What percentage of Republican voters were tricked into voting for Trump’s immigration policies versus what percentage are getting exactly what they wanted?
Would you like to guess? Go ahead. I promise that whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t dark enough.
Here’s a survey tracking Republican approval of Trump’s immigration policies (the top line, in red) over most of 2025:
That’s a consistent level of support around 80 percent. Now here is the first poll conducted after the killing of Renee Good:
Even after the killing of an unarmed American citizen, a total of 80 percent of Republicans approve of what ICE is doing and 53 percent of Republicans strongly approve.
It seems pretty clear that, at best, one in five Trump voters were duped. The majority of them are getting exactly what they wanted.
Now if Trump were to lose the support of 20 percent of Republicans voters—or even 14 percent—it would be meaningful for Republican electoral prospects. Which is nice.
The problem is that having 80 percent of Republican voters actively supporting a fascist race war is meaningful for our societal prospects.
Which brings us to the second question: How are these groups distributed through the elite positions of power in government? And here it seems that many of the Republicans most invested in a race war have a great deal of power. Like, for instance, Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
At the elite levels, even the idea of 20 million deportations is too little. Here’s a tweet from the Department of Homeland Security on New Year’s Eve:
100 million deportations?
There are 43 million foreign-born Americans. Most of them are legal immigrants. In order to perform 100 million deportations, DHS would have to round up every immigrant of any status—even naturalized citizens—and then also snatch 57 million American who are citizens by birth and deport them, too.
Want to guess who those other 57 million Americans might be?
This week the Department of Labor published this:
Of course, the slogan sounds better in the original German.
Oh, and don’t forget the Department of Labor’s heroic propaganda posters depicting the American worker in a very specific way.
On the one hand, it feels weird to say that the U.S. government is attempting some low-key ethnic cleansing.
On the other hand, the reality is that we have a masked secret police force going door-to-door attempting to kidnap brown people; one government agency publicly daydreaming about deporting 100 million people; and another government agency saying that the ideal worker is a 20-year-old white guy.
2. Demographics
Another tell: This administration is obsessed with America’s falling fertility rate. From the NYT:
Vice President JD Vance last week called falling marriage rates “a big problem.” The deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in December urged his agency to “make America fertile again.” And at a recent conference for young conservatives, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, doubled down on the importance of marriage and children, holding out his nine kids as a model for others to follow.
Full disclosure: I am also obsessed with America’s falling fertility rate. Enough that I wrote a book about it.
The problem here is that nearly all of the declines in total fertility rate (TFR) over the last decade have been the result of declining Hispanic fertility.
Here’s the deal: The TFR—the total number of kids the average woman has over the course of her life—has been below the replacement level, but relatively stable, among white and black Americans for the last generation or so. But America’s TFR kept declining anyway. Why?
Because Hispanic Americans—many of whom were recent immigrants—had TFR’s higher than the U.S. average. And their baby-making propped up the nationwide number. The problem is that, as recent immigrants spent time in America, their reproductive behavior began regressing to the mean. The shift has been dramatic:
If you were concerned about the fertility rate in America, would you be trying to (a) halt all immigration—since immigrants usually bring with them fertility rates higher than native-born Americans—and (b) deport 100 million people from the ethnic group that has the highest fertility rate?
No.
The only reasonable conclusion is that the concern of people in the Trump administration isn’t about the total fertility rate. It’s about the white fertility rate.
I don’t know how much clearer the regime could be.
So tell me: What does the pie chart look like on Republican voters and race war? What is the percentage of Trump voters in each of these categories:
Group A: Sees and understands the administration’s intent and supports it.
Group B: Sees and understands, but oppose it.
Group C: Do not understand that the regime views its program as part of a race war and thinks it’s all business as usual?
And follow-up question: How big can Group A be for us to retain a functional, liberal society?
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to announce I will be impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem,” announced Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois.
“Secretary Noem has violated the Constitution and she needs to be held accountable for terrorizing our communities. Operation Midway Blitz has torn apart the Chicagoland area. President Trump declared war on Chicago and then he brought violence and destruction to our city and our suburbs in the form of immigration enforcement.”
Rep. Kelly then broke down some of the outrageous violence that ICE has visited upon her district.
“In my district, federal agents repelled down from Black Hawk helicopters and burst into an apartment building in the South Shore area. They dragged US citizens and non-citizens alike out of their beds in the middle of the night. They claimed the apartment was infiltrated by members of a Venezuelan gang. I don’t understand this president’s obsession with Venezuela, but they did not arrest a single member from that gang.”
“I visited that apartment building and saw firsthand the destruction those agents left. Doors to people’s homes or apartments were kicked down. Belongings, including little kids’ toys, were strewn about in the hallway. That raid and so many others shook our community, not just immigrants, but everyone. Now, Secretary Noem has brought her reign of terror to Minneapolis after she left Charlotte and Raleigh. We have all seen what happened.”
“ICE officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in cold blood. Without knowing any of the facts or an investigation, Secretary Noem lied about what happened. She called [a] beloved 37-year-old mom a domestic terrorist. Secretary Noem and her rogue agents are the ones terrorizing our communities, and she is breaking the law to do so. I will hold her accountable.”
“I’m filing three articles of impeachment against Secretary Noem. Number one, obstruction of Congress. Secretary Noem has denied me and other members of Congress oversight of ICE detention facilities. It is our constitutional duty to find out what’s happening in these centers where people are reportedly being treated like less than animals. Two, violation of public trust.”
“Secretary Noem directed ICE agents to arrest people without warrants, use tear gas against citizens, and ignore due process. She claims she’s taken murderers and rapists off our streets, but none of the 614 people arrested during Operation Midway Blitz has been charged or convicted of murder or rape.”
“Three, self-dealing. Secretary Noem has abused her power for personal benefit. She steered a federal contract to a new firm run by a friend, her friend. Her propaganda campaign to recruit ICE agents cost taxpayers $200 million. She made a video that turned the South Shore raid into something that looked more like a movie trailer. But make no mistake, this is not a movie. This is real life and real people are being hurt and killed. I really have to wonder who are the people behind the mask. These DHS agents have no identifying factor.”
“From all their botched raids and officer-involved shootings, I have to ask, what is their training like? What is the vetting? Is Secretary Noem recruiting January 6th insurrectionists? I was one of the last members of Congress to escape the House Gallery on January 6th. I remember hiding on my hands and knees and running through the hallways to a safe room. Insurrectionists are not fit to serve as law enforcement. I realize that impeachment of Secretary Noem does not bring Renee back.”
“True justice would be Renee alive today at home with her family. Impeachment doesn’t bring back the four other people killed by immigration officers this year, including a man in Chicago. We could not bring them back to their loved ones. What we can do, though, is impeach Secretary Noem. Hold her accountable. Let her know the public is watching. In this country, we do not kill people in cold blood without consequences. These are not policy disagreements.”
“These are violations of her oath of office and she must answer for her impeachable actions.”
Audience members at the all-ages Minneapolis rock venue Pilllar Forum tussled with ICE agents on the street outside the club on Sunday — prompting that night’s show to be canceled.
The owner of Pilllar Forum, Corey Bracken, said several of his customers and musicians were pepper-sprayed by ICE agents and at least two were hit with batons on the street outside the venue, at 2300 Central Av. NE., where other ICE detainments and community protests have happened in recent days.
“My staff doesn’t feel safe after this, and our artists and customers don’t feel safe,” said Bracken, a dad who expanded his skateboarding store into a music venue and coffee shop in 2023 to bring more live music and art to underage fans.
He is leaving it up to his staff and the bands themselves to decide whether to proceed with upcoming concerts, including several more scheduled this week.
The ruckus started shortly after the 6:30 p.m. showtime for a four-band bill headlined by Pilllar Forum regular Anita Velveeta, a popular trans/queer punk act. Audience members saw ICE agents pull up and detain two individuals outside the neighboring Supermercado Latino market, prompting the club’s young music fans to quickly exit onto the street and protest the agents’ actions.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a Star Tribune request for comment. An employee at Supermercado Latino also declined to comment on the incident.
Antonio Carvale, singer/guitarist in one of Sunday’s opening bands, BlueDriver, said he was one of five people at the venue who had to be treated with water and saline solution after being hit with pepper spray. He said agents fired the spray after they pushed a protester who pushed back.
“Honestly, the pain felt brutal, but fortunately the community was prepared and helped treat our eyes,” Carvale said, but he commiserated with a bandmate who was also struck by a baton and “banged up pretty bad.”
The band was disappointed Sunday’s gig then was canceled, but he added, “It would’ve been hard to play when I couldn’t even see the frets.”
One of the audience members who was pepper-sprayed, Jess Roberts of Minneapolis, said she had to go to an urgent care clinic because she was sprayed in the ear, which led to an infection.
The run-in with ICE followed a viral Instagram post by Pilllar Forum that went up Friday and landed 25,000 likes. It showed a peaceful but loud crowd of protesters shouting down ICE agents on Central Avenue, with the message, “And that is how you get it done.”
Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne and the new Minnesota state senator representing northeast Minneapolis, Doron Clark, joined Bracken in another social media video posted late Sunday denouncing the incident. Clark called Pilllar Forum “an institution here on Central.”
Payne urged residents, “Stay safe and stay vigilant.”
Twin Cities musicians and music fans offered online support for Pilllar Forum after Sunday’s mayhem.
“Thank you for supporting the community!” veteran rocker Tim Ritter of the band Muun Bato wrote on the venue’s Facebook page.
Bracken did offer refunds to paid attendees of Sunday’s canceled show, proceeds of which were to be donated to families affected by ICE detainments, per headliner Anita Velveeta’s request.
“So far, I haven’t heard from anyone who wants their money back,” Bracken said.
Brandon Siguenza (center) and his wife, Julia Rose (left) in happier times. Source: Facebook
Good morning,
My name is Brandon Siguenza, and I am a US citizen from Minneapolis. Yesterday, while doing legal observation, ICE stopped their cars to harass my friend and me. They sprayed pepper spray into the vent of our vehicle. We held our hands in the air and told them we were not obstructing, that the car was in park and they were free to drive forward and away. There was no active immigration raid. They returned to their cars, and drove forward a bit, then decided to stop again. They surrounded us, smashed the windows of our car, opened the doors (they were unlocked), ripped my friend and I out of the car and arrested us on charges of obstruction.
I was put in an unmarked SUV, separated from my friend. As I was put in the back seat an ICE agent tore the whistle off my neck and said “I’ll be taking this, I might need it later.” My phone was knocked out of my hand while being arrested. As we drove away I asked the driver and the passenger if they wouldn’t mind buckling my seatbelt, as they were driving erratically. I was ignored. I asked them if I could have the handcuffs loosened, as I was losing circulation, and was told no. At one point the passenger realized his own driver’s license was in the backseat next to mine, and tried to surreptitiously grab it without me seeing it.
We were taken to the Whipple federal building, where I saw dozens of brown people being processed in an unheated garage. I was frisked, told of my charges, and saw buses and vans being prepped. I later learned that these were being filled with detainees and driven to the airport for deportation. As we were led in, I noticed that the building was very busy. I got the impression that one of the 2 agents bringing me around was being trained. At multiple points throughout my stay, government agents were unable to open doors, not sure where they were meant to be going, and overall confused and overwhelmed. They couldn’t figure out how to use the building phones, or complained about a lack of cell service preventing them from checking the internet or making calls.
The people in the cells were extremely scared. We heard people screaming “let me out!”, crying, wailing and terrified screams. There were cells with as many as 8 people. I have no way of knowing how long they have been there, if they were allowed any contact with the outside world, or if they were being brought food or water. Most people were staring at the ground with almost no energy. I was not allowed to talk to anyone imprisoned. I distinctly remember seeing a desperate woman. She was staring at the ground with her head in her hands crying, hopeless, while her friend or family member sat on a bathroom seat observed by 3 men.
My friend and I were put in an area for “USCs,” which we eventually learned meant US citizens, separated by gender. We were imprisoned for 8 hours, during which my friend was never allowed a phone call. I was allowed to call my wife and tell her where I was. During my interview with Special Agent William and Special Agent Garcia, they asked me to empty my pockets. When I pulled out gloves, Agent William said those were meant to be taken when I was processed, and complained about having to fill out the form again. He frisked me once more, where he found glass in my pocket from when our car window was shattered. He filled out the form listing my personal items again, but put the wrong date. I was read my rights, I pleaded the fifth and was led back to my cell.
Food, water, and bathroom breaks were extremely difficult to acquire. I would ask over the intercom provided in the cell for a bathroom break, be told someone was on their way, then ask again 20 minutes later, be told someone was on their way, wait another 20 minutes, etc. Eventually they either turned off the intercom or it stopped working, because no one would respond. I could get water and bathroom breaks by pounding on the glass when someone happened to walk by and beg them directly. Hours would go by without anyone checking on us. I am vegan and the only food they offered were turkey sandwiches, fruit snacks with gelatin, and granola bars with honey. I eventually ate a granola bar out of hunger.
I was in the cell alone for between 1 and 2 hours, then another man was put into my cell, whose shirt was ripped open from his arrest, and an injured toe, who was carried aggressively into an unmarked car during his arrest. After about 4-5 hours, another man was brought in who had a cut on his head from his arrest. He told me he was tackled by 4 or 5 agents during his arrest. At no point was he offered medical assistance.
Later I was told that a lawyer was here to see me, and I was able to speak with him in a visitation room. The special agent told me that the door could not be closed all the way, so it was cracked during my interaction with my lawyer. I got the impression that they were not used to having lawyers present, and were trying to follow procedure as best they could. I asked an agent if the other detainees were allowed lawyers and was not answered.
At one point, 3 men from the department of Homeland Security Investigations brought me into a cell. They insinuated that they could help me out. After inquiring several times what exactly they meant they finally told me that they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don’t), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.
Finally, after hours of detention, I was told to follow an agent. At no point was I told whether or not I was being charged, or where I was going, but I was led out of the building. I asked if I could use a phone to call my wife to pick me up, and was told I could not. After pleading for several minutes eventually Special Agent William let me use his phone to call my wife. As I was escorted off the property by government agents, I was told to turn right. I was escorted to the protest area, where 5 minutes later, tear gas was deployed and I was struck by a paint ball gun. I was not protesting, I was simply being released without charges after an 8 hour detention. I was on the other side of the street, as instructed by the agents that released me and the agents shouting orders over a bullhorn. A passerby who was tear gassed was panicking and having an asthma attack, so I helped her find a medic to get her an inhaler. I used a stranger’s phone to co-ordinate pickup, and was picked up by my wife.
During my detention I knew that I was being released. I knew that as a citizen of the United States I have legal protection. The hundred or so other people being detained had no such protection. At this time I don’t need your help, it is the families that are being separated, abused, terrorized, harassed and killed that need your help. If this is happening to me, an American citizen born in the United States, then what is happening to the people in here that have no one calling lawyers on their behalf? That have no constitutional rights to due process? What is happening to the people that they will never be released to see their families, go to their jobs, or walk through their city ever again?
Please take care of yourselves, your family, and your community. I am safe and healthy, if you feel compelled to help, please offer your help to the Immigrant Defense Network at https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/. If you know someone detained by ICE, call or text CAIR-MN at 612-206-3360 for 24/7 legal intake.
KARE 11, “Taken by ICE & Detained | Breaking the News Plus”
What is it like in the Minneapolis ICE Detention Center? Patty O’Keefe & Brandon Siguenza join Jana to discuss their experience being detained for over 9 hours.
Ukrainian, abducted as a teenager from occupied Donbas in 2019, sentenced by Russian court to 22 years (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 9th)
‘Russian world’ in occupied Luhansk oblast: no heating and deliberately cut off from mobile telephones and Internet (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)
Desperate plea from Russian prison: Ukrainian political prisoners need to be freed now, not after ‘peace deal’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 7th)
Even Putin supporter debunks Russia’s lies about a ‘Ukrainian drone attack on civilians’ in occupied Khorly (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)
No answers & questions to Red Cross after Russia holds 64-year-old Melitopol journalist prisoner for third year (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)
Ukrainian leaders in UK call for Kemi Badenoch to sack David Wolfson, Russian assets to be used to aid Ukraine (USC, January 8th)
Upcoming events:
Thursday 15th January, at 7pm, Russia’s War On Ukraine, Us Strategy Review – Stopping The Authoritarians, organised by Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland, register here.
Thursday 5th February, at 6.30pm. Try Me For Treason reading and discussion event at Clore Lecture Theatre, Birkbeck College Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. Details here.
This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. To receive it by email each Monday, email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”
“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”
Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”
The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:
First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”
Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”
Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”
It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”
The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.
“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”
In September 2024, Alexander Krichevsky, a 58-year-old resident of Izhevsk, posted a lengthy comment on a Chechen opposition blogger’s Telegram channel. In the comment, Krichevsky compared Putin and the “FSB clique” to a “darkness” which must be destroyed. The security forces deemed this statement incitement to murder the president and FSB officers. They monitored the man and intercepted his internet traffic. Last December, Krichevsky was detained and remanded in custody to a pretrial detention center despite his ailments and the fact that he is confined to a wheelchair. His ailing mother was placed in a care home, where she died a month later. Today, at the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg, where Krichevsky’s case is being heard, the prosecutor requested that he be given the maximum sentence of six years in prison.
“That is why we listen to him, because he is not afraid—he’s a ray of freedom in a kingdom of darkness! And only together will we destroy this darkness, only when we understand that we have only one enemy—Putin and his FSB clique. . . . Both you and we must destroy this enemy to continue living as peaceful neighbors,” 58-year-old Izhevsk resident Alexander Krichevsky wrote in a chat on the channel of opposition Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov aka Abu Saddam Shishani, on 11 September 2024.
This was Krichevsky’s response to a user who had asked Abdurakhmanov himself in a chat: “Tumso, aren’t you afraid that Kadyrov’s people might find you?”
When questioned in court, Krichevsky said that he was sure he was responding to the user personally, not writing in a public chat. He repeated many times that he had only figurative “destruction” in mind and had been trying to “reconcile” Abdurakhmanov’s readership by pointing out that they had only one enemy.
“Of course, I wasn’t even thinking about physically destroying such a large number of people and didn’t understand how [what I wrote] would even look. Apparently, my love for pretty words—all those rays of light and other nonsense—let me down. I was thinking in terms of games: when a person plays checkers or chess, they destroy their opponent’s pieces. Roughly speaking, that was the image I had in my head,” Krichevsky said in court.
The FSB operative who discovered Krichevsky’s comment saw it not as criticism alone, but also as a “public call to murder the president of the Russian Federation and officers of the Federal Security Service.”
The same conclusion was reached by Polina Komova, a philologist and expert at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Forensic Center in Udmurtia. She acknowledged in court that the word “destroy” could have other meanings “depending on the context,” but in her opinion it could be understood only in its literal meaning—that is, “to end [someone’s] existence, to exterminate”—in Krichevsky’s comment.
“He was planning a terrorist attack involving self-detonation”: wiretapping and arrest
The security forces began monitoring Krichevsky in early December 2024. It emerged in court that the FSB had requested data on his calls and connections from Rostelecom and learned that on 11 September, when he wrote the comment, he had accessed Telegram from home. Megafon provided the security forces with information about the base stations in the area where Krichevsky’s phone number pinged that day.
On 5 December 2024, the Supreme Court of Udmurtia gave the FSB permission to tap Krichevsky’s phones, and a few days later it approved “gathering information from technical communication channels and acquiring computer information.” A few days before Krichevsky’s arrest, operatives monitored his apartment to “document illegal activities.” The report states that Krichevsky did not leave his home.
On 19 December 2024, Krichevsky was detained and sent to a pretrial detention center. He described his arrest to journalists.
“There was a knock on the door at seven in the morning, and seven people came into [our] small flat: five FSB officers and two eyewitnesses. I opened the door myself. They immediately sat me down on a chair in the hallway. My ailing mother was lying there, barely alive. They said, ‘Can you hand over [your phone]?’ They tried to intimidate me once: ‘If you refuse, we’ll take you away and charge you with additional offenses.’ I realized that resistance was futile. I gave them the phone, and they looked at it and took what they needed.”
The social media comment charges against Krichevsky were accompanied by an FSB report containing much more serious, but in effect unproven, allegations. The document states that, according to “intelligence,” Krichevsky, who opposes the “state’s political course” and the conduct of the “special military operation,” supported radical Islamists fighting for Ukraine and was planning to convert to Islam and carry out a terrorist attack in Udmurtia “by blowing himself up with cooking gas.” The court never did hear what this report was based on.
Photo: Mediazona
“None of my comments or my own thoughts bear this out. When I heard this business about blowing myself up . . . In this case, everything that the prosecutor has just read aloud is pure speculation on the part of the investigators. None of my quotes corroborates it,” Krichevsky said in court.
Judge Alexander Raitsky simply reminded Krichevsky that the case centered on a single [social media] comment, which the defendant himself did not disput, and that the court would evaluate the evidence in the deliberation room.
The case file also contains another comment by Krichevsky from the same written exchange: “Many empires have collapsed in this world. I myself foresee the end of the Russkies [rusnya]. I don’t feel sorry for them: let them collapse with a bang. That’s where they belong. I myself hate these FSBniks, pigs [cops], and other scum who suck the blood of our homeland and shit on our neighbors.”
The security forces deemed this “a statement containing a negative assessment of the group of persons sharing the profession of Federal Security Service officers and police officers,” but it was not included in the indictment.
Responding to the judge’s question about this comment, Krichevsky said that he sometimes tried to “adapt” to the rude tone of the conversation [on the Telegram channel’s chat].
“My mother died four weeks after my arrest”: wheelchair-bound in a detention center
Krichevsky had worked as a systems administrator in Izhevsk before his arrest.
As a child, Krichevsky had moved with his family from Udmurtia to Rostov-on-Don. After high school, he enrolled in medical school, but in 1989 he broke his spine and had to drop out because his left leg was paralyzed and he had lost feeling in his right leg. After a long period of rehabilitation, he was able to walk again, but was unable to recover fully: he had a severe limp and had difficulty going up stairs.
Krichevsky said in court that his father had committed suicide on 11 September 2008.
“He had terminal cancer. He was in serious pain and turned to me because I was in medical school. He wanted me to tell him what poison he could use to commit suicide. I refused to do it. Then, two days before his death, I noticed he was sharpening a knife in an odd way. He died in a rather original way, if that word is appropriate in this situation—he stabbed himself in the heart with a knife,” Krichevsky told the court.
In early 2010, during a trip to Thailand, Krichevsky broke his left leg, which had been paralyzed since his [accident in 1989]. He underwent surgery at a local hospital, but he could not stay in hospital for long because his visa had expired. Krichevsky returned to his hometown of Izhevsk, where he underwent a second operation, but his condition only worsened.
“My knee wouldn’t straighten. They tried to do something about it, but because I had spinal injuries, my knee spasmed, and it remained crooked and they couldn’t do anything about it. And my hip didn’t recover either; I also had a fractured hip,” Krichevsky told the court.
Since then, Krichevsky has been confined to a wheelchair. Other ailments have also emerged: kidney problems, emphysema, and head tremors.
“I don’t know whether it’s early Parkinson’s combined with Alzheimer’s, or something else,” Krichevsky said.
Krichevsky had been living with his elderly mother and caring for her since 2016. Last year, she was hospitalized with a complex fracture. After she was discharged, she was unable to walk, and Krichevsky would help her to sit up and do breathing exercises in order to prevent pulmonary edema and bedsores. After Krichevsky was arrested, the woman was sent to a care home. She died of a pulmonary edema a month later.
“They apparently left her lying in bed at the care home. When a person lies in a horizontal position for a long time, they develop a pulmonary edema. That’s what my mother died of,” he said in court.
Photo: Mediazona
While in pretrial detention, Krichevsky formally lost his Group I disability status, which he had prior to his arrest, and so he was unable to obtain a medical examination.
According to Krichevsky, a neurologist at the Izhevsk detention center promised to send him to a hospital, but instead Krichevsky was transferred to another pretrial detention center. “I thought they were taking me to a hospital, but they took me first to Perm and then to Yekaterinburg. They basically lied to me when they said they were taking me to a hospital,” he said on the stand.
Krichevskny never did get any medical attention: “We’ll only help you if you’re dying, [they said.] Otherwise, just sit there and suffer.”
“Radical views and hostility toward the current government”: trial and pleadings
Krichevsky’s trial was postponed five times in a row: it took a long time to bring him in his wheelchair, first to Detention Center No. 1 in Yekaterinburg, and then to the court. He was brought to the hearings late, and had to spend four to five hours in the police van, where, according to Krichevsky, the temperature was the same as outside.
At the beginning of the trial, Krichevsky filed a motion requesting that he be assigned an inpatient forensic examination and treatment. He said that he had never been examined by a neurologist at the Yekaterinburg detention center, only by a GP. He was taken for examination to the local medical unit, which was not equipped for people with disabilities: there was a “big step” in front of the toilet and sink which he could not get over. As a result, the doctors only checked his reflexes and sent him back.
In their medical report, the doctors at the detention center stated that Krichevsky had no disability and that his overall health was satisfactory, meaning that he was able to take part in the court hearings.
Before the proceedings, Krichevsky again requested to be sent for treatment, “in accordance with the neurologist’s recommendation” in Izhevsk, but Judge Raitsky denied the request, seeing no need for it. Prosecutor Artem Terentyev also asked that the request be denied, as it went “beyond the scope of the criminal case under consideration.”
During the trial, the prosecutor asked that Krichevsky be imprisoned for six years in a medium-security penal colony. The prosecutor stressed that the defendant had “radical views” and was “hostile toward the current government of the Russian Federation and its officials,” and that he had written the offending comment at a time when the mobilization had not yet been completed. The prosecutor considered these to be aggravating circumstances.
The prosecutor cited Krichevsky’s “poor health” as a mitigating circumstance.
You can support Alexander by writing him a letter.
Address: Russian Federation 620019 FKU SIZO-1, GUFSIN of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region • Sverdlovsk Region, Yekaterinburg, Repin Street, 4 • Alexander Anatolyevich Krichevsky, born 1967
You can also send letters through the online service Zonatelecom.
The name of the beautiful young woman in this photo, taken a month ago in Odessa, is Katya, and she is the mother of a wonderful young man, Timofey Anufriev, a Russian passport holder who went to war to defend Ukraine. Today we received news that he has been killed. You can learn more about him in the film to which I’ve linked in the comments. And try to think hard about [the difference between mere] words and real actions… May the memory of the heroes live forever!
The Insider, “‘War is like playing chess with death’: Confessions of a philosophy student from the RVC” (in Russian, no subtitles)
Until recently, 21-year-old Timofey Anufriev (son of the renowned artist Sergei Anufriev) was an ordinary university student in Petersburg. For over a year, though, he has been fighting for Ukraine in the ranks of RVC (Russian Volunteer Corps). Our film crewmet with him in Kiev. Timofey talks about why he made this decision and about war and death in this report by The Insider.
Source: The Insider (YouTube), 20 March 2025. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader. There is an egregiously machine-translated and machine-dubbed version of this same film which can be viewed here. |||| TRR
Timofey Anufriev
[The] 22-year-old Russian-Ukrainian fighter Timofey ‘Aeneas‘ Anufriev was kіlled in action while defending his second homeland.
“Timofey participated in many of the Corps‘ operations: assaults, cleanups, and capturing prisoners. He lived and dіеd like a true knight and poet, in a blaze of fiery glory! <…> Forever in the RVC, forever in the ranks!” the Corps wrote on its Telegram channel.
Anufriev served as a stormtrooper and had the call sign ‘Enei’ [Aeneas]. He was awarded the medal ‘For Assistance to Military Intelligence of Ukraine.’
“The son of a well-known conceptual artist [Sergei Anufriev], born in Moscow and raised in Odesa, Enei regarded both Ukraine and Russia as countries close to him. Highly intelligent and well-educated, open and kind, he sought to contribute to the Corps not only in combat but also beyond the battlefield.
From an early age, Enei was familiar with the cultural circles of two capitals. Unlike the detached, insular segment of the artistic elite that exists removed from reality, he was deeply concerned about the fate of his people.
The outbreak of the war coincided with his first year at university in Saint Petersburg, where he studied philosophy and planned to become a public intellectual. He was disturbed by the way many around him in Russia pretended that nothing was happening. As a result, he decided first to leave the country and later to join the Russian Volunteer Corps.
“There is always a choice,” Enei believed—and he made one guided by his sense of honor. Throughout his combat service, he served as an assault infantryman, one of the most dangerous roles in war.
He took part in numerous operations, including assaults, clearing operations, and the capture of enemy personnel. He lived—and died—in accordance with his convictions.” wrote RVC on its nocturnal post.
The son of a famous conceptual artist, he was born in Moscow and grew up in Odessa. Aeneas considered Ukraine and Russia to be his home countries. An exceptionally intelligent and educated, open and kind person, he sought to benefit the Corps not only in battle, but also beyond it.
From childhood, Aeneas was familiar with the cultural bohemian scene of the two capitals, but he was not part of the abstract and “airy” artistic elite that exists detached from reality. On the contrary, he was deeply concerned about the fate of his people.
The war began during his first year at university in St. Petersburg, where he studied philosophy and planned to become a public philosopher. He was disgusted by the fact that many of his peers in the Russian Federation pretended that nothing was happening. Therefore, he decided to first leave Russia and then join the Russian Volunteer Corps.
“There is always a choice,” Eney believed, and he made a choice dictated by honor. He spent his entire military career as an assault soldier — the most dangerous job in the war.
He participated in many operations of the Corps: he stormed, cleared, and took prisoners. He lived and died like a true knight and poet, in the rays of fiery glory!
He was awarded the medal “For Assistance to Military Intelligence of Ukraine.”
I am going to tell you about a political prisoner who seemingly no one has written about yet. I came across information about him quite by accident.
His name is Gordey Nikitin. Thirty-two years old and a native of Ryazan, Gordey worked at an oil refinery before his arrest. According to Gordey, he has been interested in politics and held opposition views since 2014. When the full-scale war [against Ukraine] broke out, Gordey went into shock. He was in this state of shock when he wrote several comments on Telegram.
As Gordey found out when reviewing the files in his criminal case, it was precisely because of these comments that, three years later, FSB officers would come after him, calling him on Telegram and introducing themselves as Ukrainian intelligence.
A few conversations with the “GUR” (actually, with the FSB) sufficed to charge him with and convict him of high treason and sentence him to seventeen (17) years in a maximum security penitentiary facility.
Gordey did not testify at his trial and he refused to make a closing statement to the court. He also did not bother to appeal the verdict, and so he will soon be transferred to a penal colony.
Gordey is currently being held in a remand prison in the town of Ryazhsk, Ryazan Region. He writes that the worst thing about the remand prison is the library: “Mostly third-rate military science fiction.” In the eight months he has spent in the prison, Gordey has only come across six decent books—by Remarque, Dostoevsky, and Chuck Palahniuk.
You can write a letter to Gordey. And if you use a digital service, a New Year’s miracle may occur, and he will receive the letter on January 30. In the worst case, it will arrive after the holidays.
Write to Gordey at the following address:
Russian Federation 391999 Ryazhsk, Ryazan Oblast • ul. Krasnaya, d. 1a, SIZO-2 • Nikitin Gordey Andreyevich (d.o.b. 28.09.1993)
You can also send letters through the online services F-Pismo, Zonatelecom, and PrisonMail.Online (the last should be used by foreign bankcard holders).
Source: Ivan Astashin (Facebook), 26 December 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader. Since letters to Russian prisoners are vetted by prison censors, they must be written in Russian or translated into Russian, something that can done more or less decently using an online machine translator like Google Translate. ||||| TRR
On 22 February [2023], scheduled tactical and drill exercises were held at Ryazhsk Remand Prison No. 2 (Ryazan Region, Russian Federal Penitentiary Service).
Remand prison staff practiced negotiating procedures, organizing combat groups, dealing with the aftermath of mass disobedience, and repelling attacks on the correctional facility.
The exercises were observed by Young Army cadets from Ryazhsk High School No. 3. Remand prison staff showed the kids their weapons and equipment. The boys and girls were able to try on bulletproof vests and hold automatic rifles and pistols. At the end of the tour, the schoolchildren were treated to hot porridge and tea.
“Today, the students got a closer look at the penal system,” said Alexei Ogurtsov, acting chief warden at Remand Prison No. 2. “Our staff demonstrated their professional skills, equipment, and weapons to the students and answered their questions. Perhaps some of them will choose to enlist in our service in the future.”
I reach out to you in anger and pain concerning the arrest of my sister and colleague Daria Egereva and the new, large-scale crackdown against representatives of Russia’s Indigenous Peoples. Phrases like “isolated incident” or “local overreach” do not describe what is happening today. This is a deliberate, targeted state policy of intimidating, suppressing, and criminalizing Indigenous leaders, of destroying the will of our peoples.
I speak about this not only as a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues but also as someone who has fallen victim to this crackdown myself. On 17 December 2025, my home in the village of Lovozero was searched. Security forces broke into my personal space and confiscated computer equipment, communication devices, and documents. Similar searches and interrogations took place in the homes of other Indigenous minority activists throughout Russia. It was a planned, well-coordinated campaign of intimidation.
This is not a new reality for us. Back in 2014, I and other representatives of Indigenous Peoples were persecuted by the security forces for trying to convey the truth about the circumstances of Indigenous Peoples in Russia to the international community when we were prevented from leaving the country to attend a UN conference. Today, this practice continues in a much more brutal form, and it has been happening across the country. Crackdowns against the people involved in the events in Baymak, criminal cases against Erzya activists, and the detention of social movement activists in the Altai Republic are just recent examples of how the state has been trying to destroy the independent voice of the peoples of Russia.
Indigenous human rights activists have been labeled “extremists” and “terrorists” simply because they have used peaceful means to defend their peoples’ rights to their traditional lifestyles, cultures, languages, and basic human dignity. This is punishment for those who are not afraid to speak the truth openly, including outside their country, at the UN and other human rights forums.
Particularly outrageous is the fact that the Russian authorities accuse activists of terrorism, a crime for which Russia today imposes monstrous sentences of fifteen to twenty years in prison on people who have not committed violent acts and have never called for violence. These sentences are not intended to “combat terrorism” but to intimidate. The Russian authorities have laid their hands on those who have led a traditional way of life for centuries, herding reindeer, fishing, hunting, and foraging for wild plants on their own land, thus preserving their knowledge of Nature bit by bit.
We must not mince words: this is not a fight against terrorism, it is political vengeance. It is direct punishment by the state for the fact that representatives of Indigenous Peoples dare to appeal to the UN, speak out about violations of their rights, take part in the work of international bodies, and tell the truth about what is happening in Russia. The Russian authorities are deliberately criminalizing the very idea of cooperating with the United Nations.
There is virtually no room left in today’s Russia for free and independent opinion. Any criticism, any dissent, any independent social activism is harshly squashed. It is particularly cynical that the blow is being dealt to the most vulnerable—to the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia and the Arctic, who are socially disadvantaged, dwell in remote settlements amid harsh natural conditions, have no political clout, and are invisible to “mainstream society.” Our peoples cannot defend their rights except through international law, and nd that is precisely why we are being punished today.
I would particularly like to emphasize the Russian state’s profound hypocrisy. While formally declaring its commitment to protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, it has been systematically destroying independent Indigenous Peoples’ organizations for many years by persecuting their leaders and using state-controlled structures such as RAIPON and councils attached to regional governments as puppets on the international stage. These puppets do not represent the real interests of Indigenous Peoples, serving only as a front for repressive policies and a means of propagandizing the “happy lives” of our peoples in Russia.
What is particularly cynical about the current developments is that just recently, in November 2025, Vladimir Putin decreed April thirtieth “Russia’s Indigenous Minorities Day” and September eighth “Languages of the Peoples of Russia Day,” and declared 2026 “Peoples of Russia Unity Year.” While the Kremlin announces celebrations and talks about “supporting” our peoples, the searches, interrogations, and arrests of their leaders continue at the local level.
I appeal to states, UN bodies, special procedures, international human rights mechanisms, international Indigenous peoples’ networks, and civil society organizations. A clear, principled, and public position is what is needed today. We must demand the immediate release of Daria Yegereva and the other activists who have been detained, as well as the immediate cessation of all forms of repression, criminal prosecution, and pressure against representatives of the Indigenous Peoples in Russia. We must demand an end to criminal prosecution for engaging in peaceful human rights work and cooperating with the United Nations.
For my part, I intend to raise this issue at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and other UN bodies. I will seek international condemnation of what is happening, protection for those who have been illegally persecuted, and attention to the gross and systematic violations of the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Russia.
In conclusion, I would like to address Daria personally.
Dasha, sister, you are not alone. Your courage and your voice have struck fear in those who are used to acting in silence and with impunity. We are with you, and we speak out and demand justice! The solidarity of Indigenous Peoples is stronger than prisons and political crackdowns. We are in this together!
—Valentina Sovkina, member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)
The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) condemns the wrongful arrest of IIPFCC Co-Chair, Daria Egereva, and demands her immediate release.
Daria Egereva speaking into a conference microphone. Photo courtesy of L&DC
Daria Egereva is a Selkup Indigenous person of Russia and a long-time member of the Centre for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North (CSIPN). After many years of valued involvement in the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus at the UNFCCC, she was elected Co-Chair of the IIPFCC in 2023.
On December 17th, Russian authorities searched Ms. Egereva’s home, confiscated her digital devices, and arrested her under accusation of participating in a ‘terrorist organisation’ in direct retaliation for her Indigenous rights advocacy, including her leadership of accredited Indigenous Peoples at last month’s COP30 United Nations Climate Conference in Belém, Brazil.
A court hearing held on December 18th determined that Ms. Egereva will continue to be detained for two months, pending a further investigation into her case. The accusation carries a potential prison sentence of 10 to 20 years.
“For the last three COPs, Daria has been foundational to the effectiveness of the IIPFCC. Not only a principled leader, she is warm and generous to friends and colleagues alike. Her arrest is completely unfounded and our whole caucus is very concerned for her,” says Dr Graeme Reed, former IIPFCC Co-Chair
Ms. Egereva’s arrest was part of a coordinated operation by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), which targeted at least seventeen Indigenous leaders across Russia whose homes were raided, electronic devices confiscated, and who were accused under spurious terrorism-related charges.
This targeted attack on Indigenous leaders represents direct retaliation for their participation in United Nations processes, and sets a dangerous precedent for the treatment of Indigenous Peoples who participate in global human rights and climate change meetings.
“These reprisals are part of a broader pattern of repression affecting Indigenous Peoples across the globe, and are an unacceptable attack on the right of Indigenous Peoples to engage in the global human rights and climate change processes,” says Sineia Do Vale, Ms. Egereva’s fellow Co-Chair, IIPFCC
The IIPFCC is deeply concerned for Ms. Egereva, and calls upon all state parties to the UNFCCC, and all allies of Indigenous Peoples to mobilise in solidarity to:
1. Publicly and privately call for Ms. Daria Egereva’s immediate release and the dropping of all charges against her, which constitute an illegal retaliation for her legitimate and peaceful participation in COP30 and other UN processes.
2. Acknowledge and register this complaint as a case of intimidation and reprisal connected to participation in UNFCCC processes under the Code of Conduct for UNFCCC Events, and keep the IIPFCC informed of steps taken.
3. Raise this case without delay with the Government of the Russian Federation through appropriate diplomatic channels, stressing that criminalizing a UNFCCC Indigenous Co-Chair as a ‘terrorist’ is incompatible with the UNFCCC Code of Conduct and with Human Rights Council resolutions/determinations.
“This is not a prosecution of terrorism. It is a defiance of the Human Rights Council’s findings and an attempt to use domestic courts to override international human rights determinations and silence Indigenous Peoples.”
– Joan Carling, Executive Director of International Peoples Rights International
“Around the world, Indigenous leaders face criminalization, persecution, and judicial harassment mechanisms designed to silence our voices, dismantle our institutions, and weaken our collective efforts to defend our rights and territories. These targeted practices constitute serious violations of human rights and international law.”
– Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Vice Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and former Co-Chair of the IIPFCC
The IIPFCC firmly rejects this unjust intimidation and detention. We stand with Daria, the other Indigenous leaders who have been detained, their families, and all Indigenous defenders whose safety, dignity, and freedom are under threat.
About the IIPFCC: The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) was established in 2008 as the caucus for Indigenous Peoples participating in the UNFCCC processes. It represents the collective positions of Indigenous Peoples from all seven socio-cultural regions.
. We’ve set up massive food donation and delivery infrastructure. We organize rides to school and work. People are literally taking in families.
Write to Gordey at the following address:
You can also send letters through the online services 
