Security forces raid university lecturer’s home over donations
Petersburg police released a video of a search carried out at the home of 58-year-old Igor Zaitsev, a philosophy Ph.D. and lecturer at the European University. He has been charged with “financing extremist activities.”
The grounds for this action were donations totaling 3,500 roubles [approx. 36 euros] to [the late Alexei Navalny’s] Anti-Corruption Foundation. [The foundation, often known by its Russian acronym, FBK] was declared an “extremist organization” and banned by the Russian Federation in 2021. It is now classified as a “terrorist organization.” Zaitsev has been detained pending a remand hearing.
In a video published online, a female investigator, a security officer with his face concealed who handcuffs the lecturer, and at least three men in plain clothes who rummage through his belongings (including an impressive bookshelf) turn up at the Petersburg resident’s flat on Nevsky Prospekt at seven in the morning. Zaitsev admits that he personally supported Navalny. However, Petersburg police edited out the lecturer’s remark that he “considered [Navalny’s] anti-corruption efforts to be a good thing.” This statement appears in another video [see the next item below], which was leaked by the security forces to Baza, a Telegram channel with close ties to the police.
Igor Zaitsev, lecturer at European University, detained in Petersburg over donations to Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)
⚪ The details. Zaitsev has been charged with “financing terrorism,” according to the Telegram channel Baza. According to the channel, the lecturer is accused of having donated money to the Anti-Corruption Foundation on at least seven occasions between 2021 and 2022. Baza has published a video of Zaitsev’s interrogation. In the recording, Zaitsev states that he donated money to Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption projects.
Neither the security services nor the university has publicly acknowledged Zaitsev’s arrest.
⚪ Who is he? Igor Zaitsev is a Ph.D. in philosophy and an associate professor at the European University in St. Petersburg. He is fifty-eight years old. He specializes in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and theology.
⚪ Cases against university faculty.Baza reports that in July, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case concerning [the dissemination] of “fake” war reports against Mikhail Turchenko, a former associate professor at the European University’s political science department. According to Life.ru, the case was prompted by Turchenko’s post about a Russian missile strike that resulted in the deaths of Ukrainians. Turchenko had fled Russia in 2022. Last August, a complaint was filed against Vladimir Gel’man, a former faculty member at the European University, alleging that he had “discredited” the army.
Finland has denied asylum to a Russian man who donated to the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), with migration authorities ruling that his political activity was not public or extensive enough to have drawn the attention of the Russian authorities.
Valentin Sergienko and his parents were ordered to report to police on 14 August after the Finnish Immigration Service rejected their asylum applications, former St. Petersburg municipal deputy Svetlana Utkina told TV Rain. If the family does not leave the country voluntarily, they could face forced deportation.
The Sergienkos fled Russia in September 2022 after Vladimir Putin’s announcement of mobilisation and initially sought international protection in Germany. Their case was transferred to Finland, where they filed asylum applications in July 2023. The Finnish Immigration Service denied their claims, and an administrative court subsequently rejected their appeal.
Authorities did not dispute that Sergienko had donated to FBK, the human rights group OVD-Info, and other organisations banned in Russia, or that he had taken part in protests. But officials concluded his political activity had not been large-scale or visible enough to put him at risk of persecution by the Russian government.
While the case was pending, Sergienko graduated with honours from Helsinki Business College, completed an internship, and received a job offer, which he was unable to accept as the asylum denial stripped him of his right to work in Finland. His mother is currently undergoing cancer treatment.
According to the independent outlet Mediazona, Russian authorities have opened at least 225 criminal cases over donations to FBK as of April 2026. Courts have handed down 167 convictions, with 24 people sentenced to prison time.
More than 2,300 Russians have applied for asylum in Finland since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but only 604 have received the status, according to politician and former political prisoner Andrey Pivovarov. Even so, the Finnish migration service has acknowledged that convictions in politically motivated cases have tripled in Russia.
Yabloko supporters outside the Russian Supreme Court, which decided whether the party should be barred from upcoming parliamentary elections (10 August 2026). Photo: Yevgeny Messman/TASS/Picture Alliance via DW
Following a nine-hour hearing, the Russian Supreme Court sided with the suit brought by the Motherland (Rodina) party and disqualified the Yabloko party’s federal list of candidates in the upcoming State Duma elections. Most of the plaintiffs’ claims concerned alleged copyright infringements in Yabloko’s campaign materials. In addition to these allegations against Yabloko, suspicions of “extremist” activity and foreign funding were also raised.
The case was heard by Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov, who has previously been involved in high-profile political trials. In particular, he ruled that the human rights organization Memorial was “extremist” and dismissed Alexei Navalny’s suit against the Federal Penitentiary Service and the wardens at the penal colony where he was imprisoned.
At least five hundred people gathered outside the Supreme Court building. They handed out apples [because yabloko means “apple” in Russian] and sang songs in support of the party. After the hearing concluded, security forces threatened the protesters with arrest and told the young people amongst them that they would be sent to a military enlistment office. Yabloko’s chair, Nikolai Rybakov, stated that the party had not broken the law and would appeal against the court’s decision within the five-day period stipulated by law.
“Moscow, 10 August 2026. Hundreds of people came to support the Yabloko party. Party chair Nikolai Rybakov had called on supporters to come to the Russian Supreme Court’s hearing of a lawsuit to disqualify the party from the elections. The suit was filed by the pro-Kremlin Motherland party. Alexei Zhuravlyov, Motherland party chair: ‘Freedom of speech is a word that would be good to shut up.’ The Yabloko party supports ending the war. Nikolai Rybakov: ‘We support the signing of a ceasefire agreement so that people stop getting killed.'”
Yabloko’s co-founder Grigory Yavlinsky wrote on Telegram that the authorities were afraid of the party’s campaign platform, which urged voters “to vote for peace, life, and liberty without fear,” because it is supported by an ever-growing number of people from across the political spectrum.
“Disqualifying a party with precisely this manifesto from the elections without any real grounds is a clear demonstration of the political system’s true nature,” he said.
DW has rounded up reactions to the court’s decision and asked experts what Yabloko’s disqualification means for the elections to the State Duma, which are slated for 18–20 September 2026.
Navalnaya: The Kremlin got scared and switched to ‘Plan B’
Motherland filed suit against Yabloko in the Supreme Court just as exiled Russian opposition politicians and cultural figures had publicly called on Russians to support Yabloko in the State Duma elections. Amongst those who had joined this appeal were Yulia Navalnaya, Lyubov Sobol, Ilya Yashin, writer Dmitry Bykov, and human rights activist Oleg Orlov.
After the court’s ruling was made public, Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Anti-Corruption Foundation founder Alexei Navalny and the organization’s current leader, said that the Russian authorities had originally planned to let Yabloko run in the elections but not let it garner more than two percent of the vote. [Parties need to clear a five-percent threshold to be seated in the Duma.] Later, however, “the Kremlin got scared” and “switched to Plan B,” disqualifying the party, she opined.
“They saw something happening that they didn’t want to see: people are beginning to unite. It wasn’t even a matter of support for Yabloko. The fact of the matter is that millions of Russians have a chance to say what they really think about Putin and about the war,” Navalnaya wrote on Telegram, adding that the Anti-Corruption Foundation had its own “Plan B.”
Exiled politician Andrei Pivovarov, coordinator of the Russian Antiwar Committee’s Consuls project, told DW that the opposition did not regard their support of Yabloko as a way of achieving instant political change or ending the war. Rather, they wanted to demonstrate the scope of antiwar sentiments in Russian society.
“There are a dozen parties on the ballot who support the war and one that supports peace. Even if Yabloko was seated in the Duma, the war wouldn’t end. But it would show that there are many antiwar Russians,” Pivovarov said. He argued that Yabloko had become the symbol of protest voting and the public’s antiwar sentiments wouldn’t vanish with the party’s disqualification from the elections.
Why did the authorities want to let Yabloko stand in the elections?
Political analyst Ivan Preobrazhensky, speaking to DW, suggested that Yabloko’s removal from the race could have been the result of “Kremlin bungling” or a power struggle amongst various influential factions. One of his theories is that a security forces bloc linked to the FSB may have backed Yabloko as a counterweight to New People, which is seen as the pet project of Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the presidential administration. According to another theory, Kiriyenko himself was attempting once again to generate the appearance of political competition, but underestimated the strength of antiwar sentiment.
According to Preobrazhensky, the authorities have underestimated the number of antiwar Russians who are willing to rally behind any political force advocating an end to the war. He noted that even official opinion polls point to significant support for this. He believes that Yabloko’s eligibility to stand in the elections had been agreed in advance, but the rise in support for the party alarmed the authorities.
Political analyst Ilya Grashchenkov wrote on his Telegram channel that the Supreme Court’s ruling could lead to a rise in the poll ratings of the mainstream opposition parties. According to him, Yabloko was initially allowed to stand in the election to act as a spoiler for New People: the assumption was that the votes of antiwar voters would be split between the two parties and thus would not go to a single political force calling for an end to the war.
“We’re expecting VTsIOM’s poll results in a week’s time. I reckon part of the opposition will see a bump again,” he wrote.
Political analyst Mikhail Vinogradov also expressed surprise at Yabloko’s removal from the ballots. In his view, the party’s presence would have enabled the authorities to announce a modest outcome at the polls for it, present this as evidence of public support for the war, and provoke fresh disillusionment amongst antiwar Russians. Furthermore, the campaign would have helped to single out new politically engaged citizens. Even if Yabloko had secured a mandate in the State Duma, Vinogradov believes, this could have been used to demonstrate to voters the futility of the party’s presence in parliament.
“There are certainly advantages to Yabloko’s not being registered. But the authorities are keeping this under wraps for the time being,” he concluded.
What does Yabloko’s ouster from the elections mean?
Yabloko’s ouster will complicate matters for independent election observers since the party loses the right to dispatch its own representatives to polling places, Roman Udot, an expert on elections in Russia, argues. In the past, Yabloko eagerly provided passes to independent observers, although they can still get accreditation from other parties, including the Communists, New People, and even United Russia, Udot adds.
“Besides, it’s not a certainty that a schoolteacher who back in the day would help to rig elections because she was told that this was how her school would get moneys for repairs will behave the same way when her husband or son could be called up for combat. People’s interests are at stake here: it’s every man for himself, especially with all the talk about a mobilization,” says Udot.
Udot argues that the involvement in the campaign of New People, with its proposal to end the war in Ukraine, is significant, even if the party is controlled by the Kremlin: politicians are forced to respond to public sentiment.
“We may see a shift from hawks to lesser hawks, and then to doves,” says Udot.
Furthermore, in rigged elections, it is not only the official result that matters but also the public’s impression of the election campaign, he says.
“It all depends on the mood of the populace. If the people show that the wind is changing and that there is a certain desire, and people start casting their votes for a particular stance, then some politician will catch the wind and capitalize on it.”
Do the authorities have a grip on the situation?
Elections to the Duma are taking place amidst growing anxiety in Russian society, Margarita Zavadskaya, a senior researcher fellow at the Finnish Institute of Foreign Affairs, reminded DW in an interview. She pointed out that FOM (Public Opinion Foundation) reported that 57% of the Russians it polled in late July were anxious about the state of affairs in their country, the highest percentage recorded by the pollsters since the military mobilization of autumn 2022. Although FOM’s polls should be treated skeptically, an uptick like this at the height of summer testifies to the fact that “something is out of whack,” Zavadskaya argues.
Zavadskaya sees a connection between the public’s dour moods and the increasingly frequent Ukrainian drone attacks, the deaths of civilians and warehouse fires caused by these attacks, and rumors of a new military mobilization. According to her, the summer of 2026 has been the most anxious since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. At the same time, the numbers of the most bellicose pro-war Russians have likely been dropping.
Anxiety is mounting in the Kremlin as well, since it is the authorities who have the most at stake in the election results, the political analyst argues.
“The ideal scenario for the Kremlin is boring elections with a sparse turnout in which nothing happens. But we can see that this scenario is now unlikely to materialize, because what’s happening on the eve of the elections doesn’t look normal, nor does it suggest that the authorities have a grip on the situation,” Zavadskaya told DW.
Statement of (partial) interest: Ages ago, in another life, I took part in a protest rally led by Ilya Yashin, then head of Yabloko’s youth wing, on Nevsky Prospekt in Petersburg. Also, my boon companion is personallly well acquainted with current Yabloko party chair Nikolai Rybakov who, they fear, will soon be arrested and imprisoned for his temerity. ||||| trr
Far-right activists once again turn up for annual reading of Great Terror victims’ names
The annual Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Great Terror is taking place in the Sandarmokh forest tract. Among those in attendance are nationalists from the so-called Russian Community (Russkaya Obshchina) and Cossacks. One of the far-right activists, his face covered by a mask, is brandishing a Russian flag, according to our correspondent.
For the most part, the provocateurs are being ignored, and they have not played any music.
“So far, no one has been aggressive,” our correspondent reported.
Journalists from pro-government TV channels 78 and Channel One also turned up for the reading.
A monument to the Jews murdered in the area had been toppled but was later restored to its original location.
What you need to know
In 1937–1938, Sandarmokh was the site of mass executions and burials during Stalin’s Great Terror. The site was discovered by members of the Petersburg and Karelian branches of Memorial in 1997.
Every year on August 5, official memorial ceremonies are held in Sandarmokh to honor the victims.
Last year, far-right extremists also attended the ceremony: they splashed water on those who had come to the memorial event and sang “Katyusha.” The year before last, they tried to drown out the reading of the names by playing military songs over loudspeakers.
The Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Great Terror is annually held on August 5 in Sandarmokh, [a] forest area in Karelia. Thousands of people killed by Stalin’s NKVD are buried in the area.
This year’s commemoration did not proceed without trouble.
A significant number of people had traveled to the memorial site to pay their respect[s]. Among them were representatives of the Finnish Embassy in Moscow, including Ambassador Marja Liivala.
They were met by militant activists from the ultraright group Russkaya Obshchina (Russian Community).
Many of the militants had their faces covered by balaclavas. They verbally attacked the foreign diplomats, accusing them of being ‘fascists.’
The provocateurs also told the guests at the commemoration that they were ‘collaborators’ and that they should “go to Donbass.”
At one point, several of the militants began to chant the patriotic song “Katyusha.”
The Barents Observer has gotten access to photo and video footage from the event.
The provocations were carefully planned by Russkaya Obshchina and its partners. The extremist group has close links to powerful people in the Putin regime. Lately, it has become more active and visible in the Russian public space, including in north Russian regions like Murmansk.
Representatives of the Finnish Embassy in Moscow, along with diplomats from the other Nordic countries, regularly attend commemoration events like the one in Sandarmokh.
The day before the commemoration event in Sandarmokh, a memorial event for victims of political repression took place at the Krasny Bor memorial cemetery near Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia. Activists read out the names of the terror victims. An 80-year-old veteran of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Tatyana Savinkina, who had been involved in the rehabilitation of the repressed for many years, attended the event, reported SOTAvision. In December 2024, Savinkina was convicted for “discrediting the army.”
Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Sandarmokh has repeatedly become a site for provocations. In 2022, pro-government activists stuck the symbol of the Russian invasion – the letter Z – on the cars of people who came to the site, placed leaflets with insults directed at the Ukrainian president, and attempted to distribute books by the well-known Karelian Stalinist Alexander Stepanov. In 2024, a group of Cossacks and unknown individuals arrived at the site, hiding their faces under balaclavas. They set up speakers between the pines, from which military songs played. Ukrainians holding a memorial service at their cross of sorrow were shouted at with “Glory to Russia,” and near the Holocaust monument, provocateurs shouted “Jews sponsored Hitler.”
Laura Loomer (left) is an American far-right conspiracist and influencer from Arizona who has suddenly (supposedly) seen the light on Ukraine after actually visiting the country that has endured an unprovoked Russian invasion for the last four and a half years. Lily Lynch (right) is a leftyish American foreign affairs writer from California who, apparently, does not need to see a place with her own eyes to give her readers the all-knowing lowdown on what’s happening there. Whose account of the Ukraine-Russia war rings truer to you?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech at NATO’s Defence Industry Forum in Ankara earlier this month was a hymn to drone warfare. Drones, the Ukrainian president proclaimed, had heralded ‘revolutionary changes in the very nature of war’ – as significant as the machine gun in the First World War, or as the modern tank in the Second. ‘Disruptive’ drone tech had allowed Ukraine to increase dramatically the number of Russian casualties, intercept Russia’s Shahed UAVs and hit targets as far away as Siberia. Recent attacks had succeeded in blackening the skies over Moscow and striking oil refineries 2,700 km away in Omsk. The country had transformed itself into a ‘drone superpower’, in the words of the Atlantic Council. Before 2022, there were just seven domestic drone manufacturers – today, there are over 500. And now, as restrictions on drone exports are being lifted, Ukraine will soon be selling them to the world.
The man most responsible for putting drones at the centre of Ukraine’s war effort has been the telegenic 35-year-old, now former Defence Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. This much-hyped tech wunderkind has acquired a following among both patriotic liberals at home and Atlanticists in the West. He has helped promote Ukraine as a kind of ‘start-up nation’ – a high-tech defence industrial powerhouse forged in war. When barely in his thirties, he was appointed Minister of Digital Transformation, where he was responsible for the ‘state in a smartphone’ initiative – which moved government services onto a USAID-funded app called Diiya. Though beloved by the liberal NGO set, Palantir-backed Fedorov has also learned to speak MAGA’s language; in January, he announced his ministry’s objective to kill 50,000 Russians per month, explaining it would ‘make the cost of war for Russia one it cannot sustain, thereby forcing peace through strength’.
In the weeks leading up to the NATO summit, Western media reports alleged that Ukraine had turned the tide in its favour. Russia was in trouble. The narrative was reminiscent of the ‘spring counteroffensive’ of 2023, much hyped in Western media – a supposedly transformational Ukrainian battlefield push that never quite materialized and cost tens of thousands of lives. In Ankara, the latest reversal of fortune was attributed to Ukraine’s drone tech capabilities, its thriving defence industry and its innovative young leadership, who apparently ran the country less like a post-Soviet state and more like a Silicon Valley start-up.
Just one week later, however, this optimistic story began to fall apart. Zelenskyy abruptly dismissed Fedorov, a move that left many feeling furious and betrayed. Fedorov’s loyalists responded by excoriating Zelenskyy on social media and assembling in Kiev, Lviv and Odessa, holding signs bearing messages like ‘Hands off Fedorov’ and ‘Stop Sabotaging Victory’. Ukraine’s supporters in the West did not hide their opposition to the decision either. ‘Firing Fedorov, one of the smartest, most competent and innovative ministers in all of Europe, is one of the dumbest things Zelenskyy has done’, Estonia’s former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves wrote on X. A consensus formed among the Atlanticist commentariat: Zelenskyy had sided with his sclerotic ‘Soviet’ generals – particularly Russian-born commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi – against an energetic young reformer. After several days of virulent backlash, Zelenskyy responded by dismissing Syrskyi too.
The decision to remove Fedorov forced a simmering Ukrainian political crisis into the public eye. In Ankara, NATO officials were intent on depicting Russia – and only Russia – as the country in dire political and economic straits. At one briefing, I listened to a senior NATO official speak of possible tensions within the Russian political elite. These days, he said, they look outside their windows and see oil refineries in flames from Ukrainian drone attacks. This, he asserted, must be having a psychological effect, and resentment towards Putin was likely mounting. A fracture could be coming any day now. The Russian economy, meanwhile, was ‘in the worst state it’s been in for decades’. He recited a litany of grim statistics: the federal deficit was now 2.3 times what it was during the same period last year, the economy was now 70 per cent security-related expenditures, which came at the expense of the regular economy and would be ‘very hard to reverse’. And despite rising oil prices due to the war on Iran, Russia would still have to cut non-military spending by 10 per cent this year.
Russia was also reportedly performing poorly on the battlefield and any progress it was making came at an enormous cost. According to the NATO official’s estimates, there had been between 1.3 and 1.5 million Russian casualties in the war, and between 30,000 and 35,000 Russians were now being killed each month. The military was now ‘increasingly relying on convicts, indebted citizens and foreigners’ to fill its ranks. Russia’s territorial gains had also been ‘far less steady’ in recent months: its forces were now purportedly advancing at just 3.79 sq km per day, down from a reported 16 sq km last year. Another morbid statistic touted at the summit was the alleged average life expectancy of a Russian soldier: thanks to Ukraine’s drones, I was told, the average Russian recruit only lived between 20 and 30 minutes at the front.
Listening to all this, I thought about what I’d heard [sic] about life in Russia. I was certainly aware of the mounting wartime pain. I knew there were now petrol shortages in parts of the country, though these are partly seasonal, and that this has meant long waits outside stations. Whereas the war had previously been experienced by most Russians as a distant conflict – only seen on social media or television – the drone attacks on Russian oil refineries had brought the war home. But the idea that this would inevitably provoke a major anti-government backlash didn’t quite follow. Videos have even surfaced on Russian social media showing people drinking and dancing as they waited in long queues for petrol. As one commentator put it, ‘coronavirus divided us, but petrol shortages brought us together’. The domestic problems were all very real and getting worse, but Russians appeared to be weathering them, at least for now. Prophesies of the Russian economy’s imminent collapse had been issued for years, but had all come to nothing.
Polls from inside Russia also hint at a more stable situation than that depicted at the NATO summit. Russia experts always caution readers to be sceptical of polls from inside the country, but even so, the results suggest that at least some of the graver prognostications might be exaggerated. According to a survey by the independent Levada Center, Putin’s popularity is indeed in decline, but as of May, as many as 79 per cent of Russians polled still said they approved of his performance. Only 15 per cent said they disapproved. In the same survey, 74 per cent of Russians said they supported their country’s actions in Ukraine. (Still, some 60 per cent of Russians reported that they favoured peace negotiations to end the war, and only 30 per cent said they wanted to continue fighting it.) Even adjusting for a degree of wartime self-censorship, these numbers do not exactly hint at a coming cataclysm.
But the question that most nagged at me throughout the summit was: what about Ukraine? The assessment of Russia’s position in the war included a host of criteria: a survey of the situation on the homefront, elite political fractures, the economy, the demography of its soldiers. Yet Ukraine’s position was portrayed according to a single hopeful indicator, its success in drone warfare.
According to a recent Gallup poll (one that was largely buried in the Western press), Ukrainians are even less enthusiastic about fighting this war than Russians are. Less than one in four adults (24 per cent) say Ukraine should keep fighting until it wins the war, while 66 per cent say Ukraine should seek to negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. And while NATO officials were eager to tout staggering casualty figures for Russia in Ankara, there was naturally far less said about Ukraine’s dead – unless they could be presented in terms of a favourable ‘kill ratio’ with Russia. According to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (which receives funding from the US government, Lockheed Martin and NATO among others) the Ukrainian military has suffered between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities. However, some believe the actual number is higher.
As NATO officials look for cracks in the Kremlin matrix, there are plenty to worry about in Ukraine. In addition to the rupture between Fedorov and the military brass, a ‘spectacular’ corruption scandal has implicated members of Zelenskyy’s inner circle, part of which involves corruption in drone procurement. Meanwhile, the ‘stable stagnation’ of the Ukrainian economy also rests on relatively fragile foundations – continued support from Western partners. Often missing from Western wartime reporting is the brutal economic reality of everyday life in Ukraine: the number of Ukrainians living below subsistence levels has increased dramatically in wartime; while Russians have been inconvenienced in this conflict, most haven’t faced the same material devastation.
The Ukrainian armed forces may be an even worse state than their Russian adversaries. A transition to a corps-based command structure last year may have aligned Ukraine with NATO standards, but no amount of restructuring can change the fundamentals. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 45. Mobilization remains a persistent problem. One of the reasons cited for Fedorov’s dismissal was his failure to fix this (ever the tech solutionist, Fedorov had reportedly pushed for a ‘digitalization’ of mobilization). The brutal practice of ‘busification’ – whereby military age men are snatched off the street – continues to inspire loathing. Reports regularly surface of forcibly conscripted men being beaten or killed. Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is suffering a desertion crisis. Though the exact figures were classified last year, in January, Fedorov said that 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers had gone AWOL.
The Russian armed forces may be filled with convicts and debtors, but they still haven’t had to resort to conscription[sic], while the Ukrainian side is partially composed of men who are middle-aged and don’t want to fight. Ukraine also increasingly relies on foreign fighters; while Russia has recruited hapless Africans to serve as cannon fodder, Ukraine now employs thousands of recruits from Colombia, Brazil and various European countries, designated as ‘volunteers’ to get around anti-mercenary laws. And there remains the fundamental problem of massive asymmetry: Russia still has Ukraine outmanned. Ukraine has attempted to make up for this difference with drones, but this has only succeeded in slowing the pace of Russian advances.
The image of a Ukraine filled with patriotic liberals eager to fight a high-tech war until total Russian collapse is a fiction. In reality, the majority of both Russians and Ukrainians want negotiations to end the war now. Only a minority want to continue fighting until their side’s most maximalist aims are met. Absent the propaganda of a youth-driven drone tech revolution in war, Ukraine looks in a remarkably similar situation to Russia: two countries hurtling toward demographic oblivion, in a conflict directed by a profiteering political elite and fought in part by the unwilling, the coerced, the foreign and the old. At the NATO summit, however, the alliance continued to promote its PR-manufactured image of Ukraine, through selective statistics and polite obfuscation.
Laura Loomer became infamous for spreading conspiracy theories online. Now, as she travels across Ukraine to see the damage inflicted by Russia in its years-long war, she wants to admit that she fell for some falsehoods of her own.
A close ally of President Donald Trump, Loomer has completely reversed her longtime criticism of Ukraine and is urging fellow conservatives to be wary of Moscow’s propaganda, which she blames for duping large swaths of the American right.
“You don’t need to listen to a podcaster and let them influence your opinion about a country. You can look at those facts yourself,” she told the Associated Press in Kyiv shortly after returning from a trip close to the front line in Ukraine’s east. The interview was supposed to take place in Loomer’s hotel, but it had to be moved to the building’s underground bomb shelter as the city faced another ballistic missile attack.
Loomer has remained influential with Trump despite not having an official role, and she said they spoke over the phone after she sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She also said that she expects to meet with Trump after returning from her trip.
Loomer’s turnaround on Ukraine has been welcomed by the country’s leaders, whose relationships with Trump have been strained at times. But it has also stirred confusion, surprise and suspicion in the United States. She continues to insist that Ukraine is not paying for her travels.
As Trump and Zelenskyy prepare to meet on Tuesday in Washington, Loomer said it’s clear that her trip has already made a difference, refocusing attention on the war as Congress debates new sanctions intended to punish Russia.
“It’s looking good for Ukraine, right?” she said. “Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good.”
Loomer says she was ‘bamboozled’ to oppose Ukraine
Loomer had spent years minimizing the war and amplifying Russian propaganda until she made a dramatic reversal this week.
“I’ve come to realize I was bamboozled by Russian propaganda and I came to believe a lot of untrue things about Ukraine. I used to think that this was a country full of Nazis,” Loomer told Zelenskyy as she interviewed him for her show on Rumble, an online video platform.
Loomer blamed her indoctrination on getting banned by American social media platforms, leading her to try Telegram, where Russian media is widely shared.
“The Russians,” she added, “are very good at capitalizing on people’s rage. And I was very angry,” she said, recounting her feelings about the 2020 election, which she falsely maintains was stolen from Trump despite all evidence to the contrary.
She said her change in perspective had been gradual as she started to see podcasters like Tucker Carlson “turn on President Trump” while having their rhetoric amplified by Russian sources.
Loomer, who casts herself as an independent journalist, told the AP she believed her reversal was already changing minds within Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
“Oh, 100%,” she said. “I’ve received messages all day from different people and media and politics and people just who follow me online who said, ’Wow, I didn’t realize how much we’ve been lied to.’ ‘Wow you really opened my eyes.’”
Loomer was welcomed with open arms
Ukrainian officials seemed to recognize the opportunity of winning over an ardent Trump ally with a large online following. In addition to her interview with Zelenskyy, Loomer had audiences with top Ukrainian officials and the country’s chief rabbi.
“It takes courage to come to Ukraine and not be deterred by Russian propaganda or air raid sirens,” Zelenskyy’s office wrote on social media.
“Laura is very powerful and she’s a very authoritative in the U.S., so I hope that everything she has seen by her own eyes will help her to spread the truth when she is back at the U.S.,” Tetyana Berezhna, the deputy prime minister and Ukrainian minister of culture told the AP. “I do really hope and I believe that her visit will have a huge impact on relations with the U.S. administration.”
While some have tried to downplay Loomer’s influence with the president, he has often followed her advice. She occasionally traveled with him during the 2024 campaign, and last year he purged his National Security Council staff after she raised concerns about their loyalty in an Oval Office meeting.
Trump appears to be tracking Loomer’s trip, sharing video of her conversation with Zelenskyy on social media.
“Very good!!!” he wrote on Thursday evening.
The conspiracist denounces conspiracy theories
Loomer has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories. She once shared a video that called 9/11 an “inside job” and amplified a lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats in Ohio, which Trump went on to repeat during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
Although Loomer may have changed her mind about Russia’s invasion, her bigoted views have not budged.
But in the interview, she bemoaned how influential podcasters can spread misinformation.
“They have been able to warp people’s minds to the point where people aren’t even capable of analyzing a subject with common sense anymore because they want to depend on these personalities to give them the opinion that they think they should have,” she said, calling the situation “a major national security threat.”
She said she thinks that “information war” has “the potential to be more destructive than any kinetic war that our country may ever face” and called on the Trump administration to take the threat of Russian propaganda, foreign interference and influence operations more seriously.
“I think that some of our leaders are being influenced by propaganda,” she said.
The White House has routinely downplayed the role of Moscow’s influence, especially because Trump has long chaffed at investigations showing that Russia worked to boost his 2016 candidacy.
Loomer has said repeatedly that Ukraine did not finance her trip and insisted she had traveled in her own capacity.
“I can guarantee you I wasn’t paid by anybody. I certainly wasn’t paid by the government of Ukraine to come here,” she said.
“If it’s fake, why did I risk my life? I’m in a bomb shelter right now. I barely slept this week,” she said.
A Pride flag near the Russian coat of arms during a protest outside the Russian Embassy in London, 16 March 2023. Krisztian Elek/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Russian authorities have banned nine groups that provide support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as “extremist,” Human Rights Watch said today. The apparent aim is to further suppress, stigmatize, and criminalize those who document abuses, share information, and provide legal, medical, and other assistance to Russia’s LGBT population.
“Russian authorities are intensifying their criminalization of those who provide critical support to the very LGBT people they have systematically persecuted,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Authorities should vacate all court decisions and criminal convictions based on these spurious ‘extremism’ charges.”
On April 22, a court in Orel banned Parni Plus, an LGBT media outlet. The court based its decision largely on an “expert assessment” by the Nizhny Novgorod Academy of the Internal Affairs Ministry, effectively a law enforcement university. It found that Parni Plus “belittled Russian spiritual values and showed contempt for Russian President Vladimir Putin,” criticized Russian laws, and attempted to create “an alternative, anti-state hierarchy of values.” Parni Plus said the authorities were “trying to label the visibility, voice and experiences of the LGBTQ community as ‘extremism’” and said it would continue its work.
A similar report formed the basis for the Moscow city court ruling banning the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives on April 23. The center said it “cannot ignore the fact that queer people have not ceased to exist and require support.” The group also said it would continue its advocacy and providing psychological, legal, and other support.
Centre T called the May 4 decision by the Moscow city court to ban the organization “unfounded and repressive.” The group pledged to continue its work to provide support and information for transgender and nonbinary people.
On March 3, the Saint Petersburg city court banned Coming Out, a prominent LGBT support group, as “extremist.” The group said the authorities have been expanding the definition of extremism to criminalize “virtually any independent activity, any dissent, or any act of solidarity to isolate, intimidate, and silence those who speak about issues and support vulnerable people.” Coming Out said it would continue its work to resist the state’s efforts “to make LGBT+ people unseen and unheard.”
Russian LGBT Network, which the Saint Petersburg city court on April 27 also banned as “extremist,” said the court’s judgment had “nothing to do with justice,” and that its activities essentially consisted of supporting the LGBT community, documenting discrimination, protecting rights, and discussing the situation of queer people in Russia. It also said it would continue its work.
On April 7, the Sverdlovsk Region court outlawed the LGBT Resource Centre. The court said the center engaged in “propaganda” and that its activities contradicted Russia’s state policy. On April 29, the Yaroslavl Region court banned Kallisto as “extremist,” claiming the movement aimed to “reshape and effectively destroy Russia’s fundamental spiritual and moral values, in particular traditional family values.”
On May 19, a court in Novosibirsk used the same reasoning to ban T9 NSK, an initiative that supported transgender people and their friends and family. The group shut down its website and social media accounts. In May, the Saint Petersburg city court registered the Justice Ministry’s lawsuit to ban the Alliance of Straights and LGBT for Equality as “extremist.” The group said it would continue working to provide support, security, overcome isolation and censorship, and focus on education and outreach. This was the last known case to be tried, in closed proceedings.
Under article 282.2 of Russia’s criminal code, participation in organizations banned as “extremist” carries penalties of up to 6 years in prison, while leading such an organization carries up to 12 years. Donations to such organizations are punishable with up to 8 years in prison under article 282.3, and repeated displays of “extremist” symbols, such as the rainbow flag or banned organizations’ logos, up to 4 years under article 282.4.
On March 6, a court in Samara convicted Artyom Fokin, the leader of Irida, a local LGBT community organization, on charges of leading an “extremist” organization and repeated violation of the country’s repressive “foreign agents” legislation and fined him 450,000 rubles (US$6,000). A Samara court subsequently banned the group on April 24.
Human Rights Watch monitoring has found that at least nine people had been convicted on criminal charges based on the “extremist” designation of the “International LGBT Movement,” including for allegedly leading organizations supposedly belonging to this movement, sharing content, organizing drag shows, conducting activism, or supporting same-sex dating. At least 25 others are facing criminal charges.
In 2023, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, condemned the Russian Supreme Court’s “LGBT-extremism” ruling. Independent UN human rights experts warned that the designation enables arbitrary and abusive application of the law and jeopardizes a wide range of activities protected under international human rights law.
“The Russian government’s banning of LGBT rights organizations is absurd, harmful, and discriminatory,” Williamson said. “Rights-respecting governments should support Russian LGBT groups and activists, including by enabling them to continue their work from abroad.”
Evgeny Pisemsky, founder and editor of Parni Plus, at the 2024 Pride parade in Bristol. Photo: Evgeny Pisemsky/DW
It has been nearly three years since the nonexistent “International LGBT Movement” was declared an “extremist” organization by the Russian Supreme Court, per its 30 November 2023 ruling. The decision unleashed a crackdown resulting in over one hundred convictions on charges of “LGBT propaganda.” Russian police have detained people at clubs and private parties, and queers have been remanded in custody and fined several thousands of rubles. Numerous LGBTQ+ organizations have been targeted, and many of them have been declared “extremist” as well, although they provided medical and legal assistance, hosted cultural events, and reported on the queer community via social media. Deutsche Welle spoke with members of these organizations about how they continue to operate in Russia and render assistance to people despite all the obstacles.
“The greater the pressure has been, the more attention we’ve paid to the LGBT movement”
Parni Plus, which has been around for eighteen years, is the principal Russian-language queer news website, and it has been closely linked to Phoenix Plus, an NGO that was founded two years earlier. Phoenix Plus focused on raising awareness, promoting free testing, and supporting HIV-positive people. Phoenix Plus’s chair, the cisgender male Evgeny Pisemsky, had also worked as a volunteer at the public awareness center Info Plus. Since Info Plus provided little specific information for HIV-positive gays, the idea arose to launch the site Parni Plus.
“Originally, running the site was my hobby, but at one point I realized it was a great way of reaching a bigger audience,” Pisemky, who became the website’s editor-in-chief, told DW.
Parni Plus has transformed along with the changing political climate in Russia. After the Russian State Duma passed a law banning “promoting LGBT to minors,” the site started publishing articles about the LGBTQ+ movement’s fight for its rights.
“The greater the pressure has been, the more attention we’ve paid to the LGBT movement,” Pisemsky explained to DW.
At one time, the media project tried to “navigate” the legal obstacles while also publishing articles criticizing the authorities for ignoring HIV prevention. This resulted in numerous instances when the authorities blocked the website.
“Our lawyer and I would send off complaints to Roskomnadzor [the Russian media watchdog] along the lines of ‘Where did you find that?’ and they would unblock us every time,” said Pisemsky.
When Phoenix Plus was declared a “foreign agent,” in 2020, Pisemsky had to shut it down in order to safeguard Parni Plus. But its consciousness-raising and activism continued, as Pisemsky consistently helped people get online HIV consultations from anywhere in Russia. The covid-19 lockdowns and Russia’s subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine did not put a stop to the organization’s work either: its team was ready to assist anyone and everyone remotely.
The team made the decision to reject the “18+” warning label it had been obliged to post on the website. In June 2023, they wrote that information about sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases were particularly vital to children and adolescents.
“[W]e are sick and tired of turning our back on queer children and teenagers. They are the most vulnerable segment of our communities, which are in particular need of support nowadays. We are not only freeing them from the need to lie when accessing the site. We [also] plan to publish many more articles just for minors,” they wrote.
After the LGBTQ movement was declared “extremist” in Russia, the Parni Plus team was forced to flee the country.
“We became ‘foreign agents’ twice: first as Phoenix Plus, and then as Parni Plus. Practically all our reporters were also declared ‘foreign agents’, and we racked up over twenty fines, totaling two million rubles,” Pisemsky recounted.
He argues that remaining open matters most of all.
“The ‘extremist’ label makes you worry about family members, and the authorities have been trying to erase us, but we have been surviving against the odds. It is vital to LGBTQ+ people that [our] organizations remain visible,” said Pisemsky.
80% of transgender people in Russia want to leave
Centre T is an organization specializing in assistance to trans people. It emerged in 2020 from a therapy group run by Yan Dvorkin, who is non-binary, and his colleague.
“We didn’t plan on founding a special organization. We were just psychologists who did sessions for trans people. But we quickly realized that our clients had a huge number of unmet needs in different areas, and that there was nowhere in Moscow for them to turn. There was nowhere to refer people for medical care or for meeting people and relaxing,” Yan explained.
That was how Centre T came into being. Its first project was called “Plush Toy Cat”—monthly tea parties featuring board games and dancing. These events took place for several years and, according to Dvorkin, would draw as many as 150 people.
“People from the regions would even come to hang out with other transgender people. It was an unbelievably positive experience: the participants found friends, partners, and future roommates at the get-togethers.”
Centre T gradually expanded. Its staff began providing consultations on emigration and means of obtaining medical care. They engaged in public education and community building, opened a shelter in Moscow, and set up regional associations.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Centre T team immediately sensed that negative changes were afoot in Russian society. According to Dvorkin, the active persecution of trans people in Russia kicked off precisely after February 2022, culminating in the 2023 law banning “sex change” (the correct term is “gender transition”).
“We worked with a medical board based at a clinic, and its physicians treated transgender people with respect. They issued diagnoses of ‘transsexualism’—a classification that enabled individuals to start redoing their identification papers and getting ready for surgeries. The passage of the law banning gender transition changed everything. We had fought against its adoption, and it was largely for this reason that our organization was designated a ‘foreign agent’ in 2023,” he said.
Dvorkin has no regrets that Centre T put up such a fierce fight. The team received many words of support in return.
Centre T staff members attended court hearings of cases involving LGBT individuals. Members of ultra-right gangs would occasionally attack them at the entrance to the courthouse.
Dvorkin described how the Centre T team coped with tough times.
“One time they attacked us with pepper spray and a child passing by got caught in the crossfire. His mother came to our defense and went with us to the police station. But our arguments about dangerous radicalization or the literal example of who was actually harming children fell on deaf ears in court. After losing such cases we would go to my place to ‘celebrate’ by eating a cake baked in advance and singing along to a guitar,” he recounted.
After the “LGBT movement” was ruled “extremist,” it became much harder for Centre T to operate, as many organizations voided their cooperation agreements with them, and they had to cancel in-person events. The situation in Russia changed drastically, and Centre T began moving its staff members abroad; many of them had been charged with violating the anti-LGBT “propaganda” law. Centre T also made the decision to close its Moscow shelter, which had attracted unwanted attention.
“This dude tried to kick down the door. We called the police. Our people saw through the window that he went outside, shook the policeman’s hand, and they went their separate ways,” recounted Dvorkin.
Currently, Centre T continues to operate online: it helps people access medical care and responds to crisis calls, providing support not only to trans people and their families but also to professionals at various levels. Centre T has also been providing more robust counseling on emigration matters.
“It has become clear that transgender people can no longer live a normal life in Russia. Eighty percent of transgender people in Russia want to leave and are looking for a way to do so,” concluded Dvorkin.
Although he sees Centre T’s new status as an “extremist organization” as dangerous, he has no plans to go into hiding.
“If I’m detained and extradited, then that’s life,” he said.
The MCC has gone underground
Unlike the majority of LGBTQ+ organizations, the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives (MCC) is still engaged in offline work in Russia and make it their emphasis. The MCC was formed in 2015 and conceived as a place where people could drop in, feel safe, and have a good time by reading books, drinking coffee, attending themed events, and meeting new eople. In 2019 it was transformed into a co-working café.
“We wanted casual passersby to be able to walk into our café, see the special ‘signs,’ and immediately realize they were in an LGBT space,” notes Olga Baranova, the MCC’s non-binary president.
Another of the MCC’s big projects is the queer festival OpenArt. Launched in 2017, it still takes place, under wraps, in Russia. Although it is hard to imagine now, the festival’s first edition was even guarded by police officers.
“An FSB officer arrived and asked what was going on. I told him to come in and have a look. He was afraid of possible riots and that skinheads would go after the festival attendees on the dark streets and beat them up. So we were assigned a police patrol. The provocateurs showed up at the doors, of course, but our guards kept everyone safe. No one inside noticed a thing,” Baranova recounts.
Despite the law against “gay propaganda” among children, the MCC managed to navigate the obstacles and and engage with a young audience: in 2022, for example, the festival was held in a two-story venue, with a 16+ area on the first floor. Nevertheless, it wasn’t without its challenges.
“Center ‘E’ officers [the Russian Interior Ministry’s anti-“extremism” police] came and talked with me. They asked me to shut everything down. Ultimately, though, the festival was a huge success,” Baranova recalls.
When the “International LGBT Movement” was declared “extremist” by the Russian authorities, the MCC went underground. The organization is now focused on emergency assistance, whether that means moving people abroad or getting them into a shelter.
“It’s important to remember that we cannot help everyone because we simply don’t have the resources,” Baranova points out. “If the police are pounding on your door, if you’re up against a tough situation in life, then you definitely should write to us and submit a request.”
Otherwise, the MCC continues to hold events on important topics, and their goal is to ensure that people do not end up being isolated.
“We see what are our beneficiaries need and every three to six months we change the focus of our meetings,” notes Baranova. “For example, right now many of them are looking for jobs.”
The community center wanders among various venues, and Baranova regrets the constant need to move from place to place. “In your own home you can put your favorite pillow on the bed and your favorite glass on the table. These are the things that create a sense of home, not bare walls,” she complains.
Members of the Russian LGBTQ community are persecuted for their identity
Eighteen years ago, a small community center called Coming Out opened in St. Petersburg. Since then, it has grown into one of Russia’s leading LGBTQ+ rights organizations. Coming Out also provided free psychological counseling and ran in-person solidarity groups, but its primary activities were legal support and consultations.
Thanks to Coming Out, there is an archive of accounts of discrimination against queer people in Russia.
“Long before 2022, we gatherd accounts of discrimination against queer people by law enforcement, of workplace and domestic discrimination, and of discrimination at medical and educational institutions. We analyzed the messages transmitted by the state propaganda machine and corroborated the existence of worrying trends with the numbers. We annually presented the outcomes of our work to Russian and international officials,” Denis Oleinik, a cisgender man and Coming Out’s executive director, explained to DW.
Coming Out was designated a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities in December 2021. A few months later, realizing they could no longer work in Russia because they could not guarantee their own safety, the organization’s staff gradually fled Russia and moved its entire operations online. When Coming Out was declared an “extremist” organization, in March 2026, all of its staff members were ready for this turn of events, according to Oleinik.
“Over the past four years, we’ve learned to do everything remotely, put together a secure volunteer system, and set up systems for gathering and storing information that are as anonymous as possible. It’s really important to us that the beneficiaries of our assistance are safe and that the help we provide doesn’t harm them. To date, there have been no cases of people being persecuted for receiving support or assistance,” he explained.
Oleinik wants anti-queer discrimination to disappear in the future, but Coming Out’s research paints a completely different picture.
“In 2025, members of Russia’s LGBTQ community were subjected to persecution and discrimination not only for things they said or wrote but also for their very identity. Thus, in 2025, posting personal photos featuring kissing, publishing a blog about the lives of a same-sex couple, and organizing meetings in one’s own home were classified as ‘propaganda’ and ‘extremism,'” its report says.
This means that Oleinik and his colleagues have their work cut out for them.
Kolya* says they would not dare to go to a state health-care facility for the therapy they are receiving for a mental health condition. The 19-year-old from a city in Russia’s far-east, who identifies as non-binary and gay, tells The Lancet they fear that information about their sexuality could be passed on to other state institutions and used against them in some way. “I wouldn’t have told the mental health specialist treating me about my sexuality if they weren’t a private doctor. I wouldn’t tell the municipal clinic, I wouldn’t want them to have that kind of information about me in case they passed it on somewhere”, they say.
Kolya chose a private clinic because, like many in the LGBTQ+ community, they perceive them to be less likely to divulge their gender identity or sexuality to others, and less likely to be discriminatory. Kolya’s distrust of the Russian health-care system, and their avoidance of it, is becoming increasingly common among the heavily marginalised LGBTQ+ community, according to one of the largest surveys of how LGBTQ+ people are living in Russia, released in May.
The survey of more than 6000 people in Russia by the Coming Out and Sphere Foundation organisations showed a significant rise in the number of LGBTQ+ people avoiding seeing a doctor for fear of discrimination or biased treatment last year, reaching 35%.
Many of the respondents who reported discrimination said they had faced inappropriate comments, jokes, or offensive remarks from medical professionals, as well as experiencing reproductive coercion. Others specifically mentioned issues that arose when seeking help from psychologists and psychotherapists. In such cases, respondents reported instances of outing and breaches of confidentiality, including the disclosure of information about sexuality or gender identity without their consent.
The report’s authors say LGBTQ+ people, and especially transgender people, are losing access to medical services due to this distrust. “In our latest survey we saw a 6 percentage point year-on-year rise in people avoiding seeing a doctor. Historically, annual increases for this indicator have been in the range of 1–2 percentage points. A 6-point rise represents a marked departure from that trend—that’s why it is significant”, Denis Oleinik, Executive Director of Coming Out, told The Lancet.
“If this rate of increase were to continue at the same pace annually, within 5 years a substantially larger proportion of LGBTQ+ people would be avoiding medical care, with serious consequences for both individual health outcomes and broader public health. The 6-point rise may not sound dramatic in isolation, but viewed against the historical baseline and the potential trajectory it represents a genuinely concerning shift”, he added.
Over the past decade, a series of repressive anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been passed in Russia, including bans on any public information or activities supporting LGBTQ+ rights or displaying non-heterosexual orientation, on same-sex marriage, and on transgender people officially or medically changing their gender. A 2023 ruling by the Supreme Court also banned the international LGBT movement, declaring it extremist, allowing people to be fined or prosecuted for anything that could be construed as promoting “non-traditional sexual relations”.
In previous years, authorities have used these tools to crack down on groups and activists taking action to support LGBTQ+ rights, but now they are increasingly being used against individuals, with prosecutions even for displaying or wearing rainbow-coloured materials. “The persecution has moved to people being targeted not for something they have done, but just for being LGBTQ+,” said Oleinik. This in turn has made many in the community concerned about going anywhere, including health-care facilities, where their gender identity or sexual orientation could be identified and possibly disclosed.
Vitaly Djuma, Executive Director at the Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity told The Lancet that, in many cases, an LGBTQ+ person with a particular complaint that could be linked to non-heterosexual sexual behaviour would “not give up that kind of intimate information unless they really trusted the doctor, especially if they thought it could lead to disclosure [of their sexual orientation]”. Instead, he said, they would be forced to go to a private clinic, if they could afford it, or risk seeking treatment within state health care. “They would have to just try and deny the complaint is any indication of their sexuality”, he added.
Groups providing harm reduction services in Russia say that LGBTQ+ people are accessing their services, which they can legally provide to other key populations, to resolve health issues. “The LGBTQ+ community is increasingly reaching out to us in a more discreet way, sometimes through third parties. People are afraid to disclose that they are LGBTQ+”, a worker at a non-governmental organisation in a major Russian city, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Lancet.
The situation is especially difficult for transgender people, who, the survey shows, are more likely to face discrimination in health care, and more likely to avoid going to a doctor, than other members of the LGBTQ+ community. Oleinik said there were “few cases where doctors or clinics outright rejected providing services to someone just because they were gay or lesbian, but for trans people, it’s much worse”.
He added that there had also been cases of transgender people who, with medical changing of gender banned, turned to the black market to get the medicines they needed to transition, administered them unsupervised, and subsequently became ill.
Lucy Shtein of the North Caucasus SOS crisis group, which evacuates persecuted LGBTQ+ people from Russia, pointed out that following the ban, transgender people had become even more vulnerable as a group. “After the ban on gender transition, access to medical care became even more restricted for them”, she told The Lancet.
Furthermore, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has forced groups which provided health services for members of the community, such as harm reduction, prevention of sexually transmitted infections, or psychosocial help, to either close down or leave the country, cutting off another line of access to health care for people who do not trust state medical services. Experts say it is difficult to determine what effect this avoidance of, and inability to access, health care, is having on health among the LGBTQ+ community in Russia.
Data for some common health indicators in the community, such as numbers of HIV/AIDS cases and other sexually transmitted infections, as well as depression and other mental health conditions, are not always available or lack relevant detail. Although there are official figures for the number of people currently living with HIV and new infections, specific data on epidemiological trends among key populations is either not publicly available or, according to experts, not reliable.
Routes of transmission—according to some reports most new infections are now transmitted through heterosexual contact—are determined through self-reporting, while historical data have shown the proportion of overall HIV testing carried out among key populations is decreasing year on year.
This makes it very difficult to get an accurate picture of the epidemiological situation for the disease among the community, which could indicate potential wider consequences of individuals avoiding health care.
“Data for transmission routes is unreliable with the use of self-reporting and a large amount of unidentified transmissions. The HIV epidemic is absolutely still ongoing among men who have sex with men and other members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially in big cities where the practice of chemsex is burgeoning”, Djuma said.
Oleinik added that systematic research on LGBTQ+ people has become essentially impossible as researchers, non-governmental organisations, and public health professionals cannot gather such data without risking being associated with extremist activity. “If anything does exist in official sources, it tends to appear exclusively in negative framing—for example, linking same-sex behaviour to HIV transmission in ways that stigmatize the community rather than support it. Such studies or statistics cannot be trusted as objective public health data”, he said.
Additionally, apart from physical health, there are serious concerns of a deterioration of mental wellbeing among the community, with studies having previously established links between discrimination and mental health among LGBTQ+ people.
There are no specific data available on mental health in the community— statistics for relevant indicators, such as suicide, are not up to date—but there is some anecdotal evidence of worsening mental health in the general population, and all those who spoke to The Lancet said mental health among the community was inevitably being impacted by the government’s repressive legislation and an increasing normalisation of homophobic discourse among politicians and society.
Kolya says that “aggressive government anti-LGBTQ+ narratives” were one of the key reasons they were in psychotherapy and taking anti-depressants. “It’s stressful as hell sometimes. Every queer person I know feels that same stress [caused by these narratives]”.
Groups working with LGBTQ+ people in Russia said they had seen a rise in demand for their mental health services. “We have received significantly more requests for psychological support, especially from young LGBTQ+ people. Many have become more willing to seek support, are less afraid of psychotherapy, and are more open to working with psychologists and psychiatrists. This is likely connected both to the deterioration of mental health due to repression and to a broader understanding of the importance of mental health in general”, said Shtein.
“The number of people who come to us seeking psychological support is higher than last year and it’s growing every month”, added Oleinik. “The number of people thinking about suicide or who [harmed] themselves is also growing every year”, he said.
Kolya, and others who spoke to The Lancet, said that suicidal ideation and attempts were common among the community, again especially among transgender people. However, Oleinik said that despite the grim situation facing the community, groups like his would continue to help LGBTQ+ people access health care. “Our role in the current situation is increasingly important. We understand that people in the community need us—a lot of organisations have closed, stopped offering some programmes, but we can still reach the community. It might look like there is little hope at the moment, but we won’t stop”, he said.
A magistrate in Moscow has been delivered a complaint of “LGBT propaganda” (as defined by Article 6.21.3 of the Russian Federal Code of Administrative Offenses) filed against Olga Baranova, program director of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives. Apparently, this is her first fine—coming after the MCC was designated an “extremist” organization.
The hearing will take place on July 8, according to the court’s website. The court has not disclosed which agency drafted the report. Cases involving “LGBT propaganda” can be launched by various agencies: the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor’s Office, or Roskomnadzor. However, in politically motivated cases, the instigator is most often Center “E”—the Interior Ministry’s department for “combating extremism.”
In late April, a court ruled in favor of the Justice Ministry and designated the MCC an “extremist” organization. It is one of ten LGBT groups that were given this designation in 2026. The Center is currently appealing the decision, so it is not yet listed in the registry of extremist organizations.
Alexander Klimov, art director of the Orenburg bar Pose. Source: Social media/Moscow Times
A court in the Orenburg region on Monday handed down prison sentences to a bar owner and two of his employees in Russia’s first criminal case targeting people accused of belonging to what authorities call the “International LGBT Movement.”
The trio was arrested on LGBTQ+ “extremism” charges in March 2024, representing the first instance of criminal charges being pressed in connection with the Russian Supreme Court’s designation of the non-existent “LGBT movement” as “extremist” the year before.
Bar owner Vyacheslav Khasanov received a seven-year sentence, according to Ostorozhno Novosti. Manager Diana Kamilyanova was sentenced to six years and three months, while art director Alexander Klimov received two years and three months.
All three were accused of organizing events that demonstrated “affiliation with individuals of unconventional sexual orientation under the guise of running a nightlife venue.” According to the exiled news outlet Mediazona, the bar hosted drag shows.
The trio denied the charges during the court proceedings, which were held behind closed doors.
While the case represents the first instance of criminal charges being brought under the LGBTQ+ “extremism” designation, Russia’s first actual prison sentence under the ban was issued separately in January 2025 in the Kemerovo region.
The Orenburg court said Monday that its verdict has not yet taken effect and remains subject to appeal.
In addition to the prison terms, the court seized 1 million rubles ($12,800) in revenue from Khasanov. It also barred all three defendants from working in the entertainment and hospitality industries for two to three years following their release.
A crowd gathers outside city hall in Springfield, Ohio, to react to the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe. Photo: Jim Swift/The Bulwark
Forward Together, Backward by Order
by Jim Swift
SPRINGFIELD, OHIO—What organizers had hoped would be an evening of celebration was instead an interfaith prayer service. Ministers, immigration lawyers, community organizers, Haitian families, and hundreds of their neighbors gathered in front of Springfield City Hall beneath the city’s motto, “Forward Together,” alternating between English and Creole as they decried the Supreme Court’s decision and prepared for what many fear could become mass deportations.
Thursday morning, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary protected status for Haitians, the people who helped revive Springfield, Ohio, were trying to figure out how long they could keep their jobs and their driver’s licenses, and whether they should start preparing for deportation. Pastor Carl Ruby captured the mood: “We had hoped this would become a time of celebration . . . but it has become a time of lament.”
Fleeing gang violence and what has become a de facto civil war, thousands of Haitians have helped reverse decades of decline in Springfield since 2010. They filled factory jobs, opened businesses, started churches, and helped stabilize the city’s population after years of shrinkage. But that growth stopped after JD Vance amplified a pernicious lie about Haitians in Springfield eating dogs and cats.
Now the Trump administration is set on removing many of the very people who helped bring Springfield back.
Yesterday’s 6–3 ruling by the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end TPS, meaning that although litigation may continue, many Haitians here in Ohio and all across America under TPS are subject to deportation immediately.
On a live zoom press conference earlier yesterday held by Springfield G92, a volunteer-led group of churches and faith advocates that focus on immigrant rights and mutual aid, Geoff Pipoly, a lead attorney on the TPS case, Mullin v. Doe, explained that while they’re reviewing what’s left of the case to determine whether any further legal appeals from his plaintiffs were tenable, the situation for Haitians here varies by their status.
Haitians here under TPS could consider filing asylum claims—if they can find an immigration lawyer to help them. The immigration court system is, to put it mildly, a shitshow right now. Donald Trump is purging judges who don’t deport a lot of people, the New York Times reported this week.
The data say the purge is having its desired effect: In Fiscal Year 2025, the denial rate for asylum claims more than doubled—from 14.3 percent to 30.8 percent—while the grant rate fell from 12.0 percent to 9.9 percent, its lowest level since 2017.
Those here under TPS alone are facing a lot: Their state-issued driver’s licenses are set to expire on July 6, as Ohio provided them with temporary extensions due to the uncertainty of their TPS status. Before the stay, Haitians were unable to renew their driver’s licenses because DHS made it clear that Trump wanted to end their protected status. Their expiry in ten days will make driving illegal, not that many are going to be venturing out due to the chance that ICE could stop them and deport them. And, unless they have another legal basis to remain, they won’t have jobs to drive to: the end of TPS will mean the end of their work authorization.
Biassou Pierre, a community organizer from Haiti, told the crowd: assembled in front of city hall, “Today many people call me asking, ‘How will I feed my children if I lose my job? What will happen to my family if I get detained by ICE?’ Unfortunately, we don’t have a good answer.”
But even if one had the money and could find an immigration lawyer with availability to take up their case, that doesn’t mean a quick return to work. “People who have pending asylum applications may be eligible to apply for a work permit after their application has been pending for 180 days,” Katie Kersh, a senior attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality in Dayton, told reporters. “But the administration is trying to extend the required waiting period to one year.”
At the rally last night, Kersh put this avoidable tragedy in these terms: “These individuals followed the law. They followed the law and applied for TPS, and often asylum. The law abandoned them.”
There is some hope in Congress in the form of H.R. 1689, which would extend TPS until the end of the Trump administration. By some small miracle, it passed the House in April on a bipartisan basis, with ten Republicans, including Ohio’s Mike Carey and Mike Turner (who represents Springfield), supporting it. But Haitians here now have to depend on the Senate, and Ohio’s senators are notably silent.
Sens. Moreno, an immigrant himself, and Jon Husted, who is up for election this fall, having been appointed to fill Vance’s seat, do not have a position on the bill. Outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine, who grew up in the area and has done charitable work in Haiti with his wife, has supported extending TPS and called Thursday’s ruling a mistake that was “not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio.”
This has the potential to become a big campaign issue for both Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy, the controversial Republican candidate for governor. As Jonathan Cohn reported in these pages earlier this week, Haitian immigrants are a bedrock in multiple industries around the country, most notably healthcare.
Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, running against Husted, has been vocal in his support for the Haitian community, calling on both Husted and Moreno to support an extension of TPS for Haiti. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, has been more careful in her wording, saying: “Law enforcement should be keeping people safe by going after dangerous criminals, not terrorizing communities.”
Viles Dorsainvil is a Haitian pastor and co-founder of the Haitian Support Center, which has been helping with utility bills, rent assistance, legal services, and transportation for Haitians who have been looking over their shoulder since Trump and Vance propagated heinous lies about them.
“Everything has changed in the community” Dorsainvil told reporters early Thursday, “And the worst thing now is that the employers will terminate workers immediately. . . . It was predictable that our community will be in trouble and that the decision will amplify the humanitarian crisis that we’ve already had here. That’s the reality. So as a center, we’ll continue to do our best, but we don’t know how long we’ll be able to survive.”
What awaits these Haitians in Springfield? Pastor Ruby, who welcomed me into Springfield Central Christian in February to talk and show me the preparations they had made to provide this community sanctuary, said, “We have had to think about issues of civil disobedience. We’ve had to think about the issue of providing sanctuary, and when there’s a conflict between man’s laws and God’s laws, we have an obligation to side with God’s laws.”
The situation in Haiti remains bleak. The State Department doesn’t advise Americans to travel there, as it’s one of the “most dangerous places on earth right now” Ruby says. He recounts a conversation with a young boy, about his life before coming to America: “I was talking with a 12-year-old boy . . . we were talking about farm animals. And he started talking about seeing huge pigs. . . . I said, ‘What were the huge pigs doing?’ And he said, “The huge hog was eating bodies.”
He added: “So that’s what Haitian children have observed. They’ve all been traumatized. This is gonna re-traumatize them. I can’t imagine the fear that they’re experiencing right now. There’s another person in our church . . . the decapitated body of a friend was left in front of his house. That’s what Haiti is like right now, and our justices knew that.”
Dorsainvil, for his part, is appreciative of the support his center has gotten from around the country. “We are grateful for people who’ve been standing in solidarity with us . . . because you understand our struggle . . . We will continue to count on you to stand in solidarity with our community here in Springfield.”
“I am no different from other folks.” he told reporters, “I just have a pending asylum. . . . Everything is in limbo now. I don’t know how that will be.”
Pierre, speaking to an audience beyond those assembled in front of him, pleaded: “We are not just immigration cases or statistics. We are your neighbors, your coworkers, and members of your church.”
“Please don’t forget us.”
You can donate to the Haitian Support Center here and other local charities here.
America today has lots of hard-working immigrants, and plenty of native-born citizens who accept and respect them. But there are also plenty of Americans these days who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.
I hasten to say there’s no fault in being born on third base. Indeed, all of us, whether rich or poor, who were born in today’s America might be said, in the grand historical scheme of things, to have been born on third base. A healthy American patriotism begins with acknowledgment of our good fortune, and with gratitude for what our forebears—most of whom were not born on third base—did to make our privileged lives today possible.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with also taking pride in what we and our contemporaries have accomplished. And if we sometimes overestimate our own achievements and underrate those of our predecessors—and therefore underrate our simple good fortune in being born here—well, that’s human nature, and it’s probably not worth getting all worked up about.
But what is worth getting worked up about is those who have no sympathy for others who didn’t happen to enjoy good fortune. What’s worth getting worked up about is those who have contempt for and who revel in cruelty toward the less fortunate.
There are lots of those people in America today. They include our president. They include many in his administration. They include many in the world of MAGA.
And they include Megyn Kelly, who was so proud of what she said on her show yesterday after the Supreme Court’s TPS decision that she then posted the clip on X:
Megyn sends a message to the Haitians who lost their TPS today:
“Go home! Get out! We know our country is better than yours. That’s because we filled it with our work ethic, culture, and values. You being here only dilutes it for us . . . GO BACK TO FUCKING HAITI!”
Kelly thinks that “we” made America great with “our work ethic, culture, and values.” But most Americans of Kelly’s generation—and, to be clear, of mine—have had to do little in the way of heavy lifting to make America great. And is it clear that today’s culture and values are so exceptionally wonderful?
It was our forebears who made America great. Many of them were immigrants and refugees, whom earlier generations of nativists treated with hostility, bigotry, and cruelty.
The rhetoric of yesterday’s Court ruling is not itself bigoted or cruel. But the policies it permits are bigoted and cruel. They are the policies of people who found themselves, mostly by good fortune, standing on third base. Many of them aren’t particularly good hitters or fast runners. But they’ve decided to protect their status by making sure no one else—especially no one else of a different skin color or background—will have a chance to get up to bat.
Source: “After SCOTUS Ruling, Haitians Prepare for Disaster,” The Bulwark, 26 June 2024. Despite (or maybe even because of) my own leftist sympathies, I’m a proud subscriber and reader of The Bulwark, an online publication anchored by “recanted” (?) neocons like Bill Kristol. The younger me would have wondered how such an unbelievable thing could have come to pass, but I would explain to him that we need a united front against fascism right now, and the Bulwarkers, Kristol included, are quite explicitly, vocally, and usefully part of that front. ||||| trr
May 21st marks Circassian Remembrance Day, or the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Russo-Caucasian War. This war, spanning from 1763 to 1864, resulted in the loss of independence for the North Caucasus region and, for the Circassians (one of the region’s indigenous peoples), in genocide and mass exile from their historical homeland.
In the 1990s, Circassian activists, public figures, politicians, and scholars successfully secured official recognition for this date as a day of mourning. Since then, two official narratives have coexisted in the North Caucasus, particularly in Kabardino-Balkaria, Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, and the Krasnodar Krai: one asserting the voluntary integration of North Caucasians into Russia, and the other describing a colonial war, genocide, and expulsion.
The state actively supports the first narrative in every way possible, while the second is methodically squeezed out of the public discourse.
Every year on May 21st, a mourning procession, comprising both walkers and horsemen, winds its way through Nalchik. They proceed along the central thoroughfare, passing the monument to Maria Temryukovna, the Circassian wife of Ivan the Terrible, which bears the inscription “Forever with Russia,” before continuing on to another monument: Psezhig (The Tree of Life), created in memory of the Circassian victims of the Russo-Caucasian War.
Since 2016, Ored Recordings has been releasing projects timed to coincide with this somber date. The liner notes for these albums remains unchanged: again and again, we speak of trauma, and of the immense difficulty in discussing it, as the state systematically closes off any space for dialogue. While in the early years we opted for highly neutral phrasing, since 2022, officials have begun banning commemorative events; consequently, finding the right words has become increasingly challenging. We are permitted to remember, mourn, or reflect only within strictly prescribed forms. Thus, cultural projects and musical releases serve as an insufficient, yet absolutely necessary, form of resistance against assimilation and suppression.
This year, we decided to shift our focus away from the trauma itself or the specific subject of the Russo-Caucasian War, choosing instead to present a cross-section of new Circassian music — music that is not merely being preserved, but is actively evolving.
Shyshagh (ЩIыщIагъ, meaning “underground” in Adyghe) offers a snapshot of an imagined Circassian underground scene, as curated by Ored Recordings.
Three artists have contributed their distinct visions of independent Circassian music to this compilation.
For this release, Cherim (Maykop born, Tbilisi based) has departed from his signature industrial hip-hop and hauntological ambient styles, recording two indie-folk ballads featuring lyrics that are at once simple and deeply poignant. The tracks contain echoes of both Soviet-era pop music and the lo-fi underground tradition exemplified by acts such as Low or Rivulets.
Temir (from Nalchik, based in Paris) is an electronic producer, collagist, and vocalist who translates Circassian aesthetics into the realms of deconstructed club, ethereal pop, and other forms of emotive avant-garde music. Ethnographic archives from the last century, along with rehearsal raw recordings from Jrpjej, served as the foundation for these qafe without dancing.
Two additional tracks come courtesy of duos featuring Timur Kodzoko (originaly from Nalchik, Göttingen based), a co-founder of Ored. From our archives, we unearthed an old rehearsal recording by Zafaq, a dormant Circassian Black Metal project. It is raw, instrumental bm-rooted in traditional melodies, yet one that explicitly rejects the aesthetics of folk metal. In 2020, the drums were handled by Amar Abazov, founder of the Zhest records.
The second track comes from Shkhafit (meaning “free” in Adyghe), a drone-folk project by Timur and his son, Astemir Kodzoko. It is a semi-improvised acoustic ambient piece performed on the shichepshin (Circassian fiddle), as well as various other string and wind instruments. It evokes the ghosts of an unfulfilled future and the spirit of new pshynatles-sagas. It is a soundscape where Mark Fisher visits Murdin Tesh.
Shyshagh stands as Ored Recordings’ most ironic and chaotic release to date. As yet another May 21st passes, we see no immediate light at the end, yet we remain ready to unite and carry on!
Cherim – recorded in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2026. All music by Cherim Tsei. Production for the song “Pari (Nothing)” by Temir.
temir – recorded in Paris, France, in 2026. All music by temir. “Duguj” based on Jrpjej rehearsal recordings. “Zechir” based on archival Circassian recordings.
Zafaq – recorded at the House of Radio, Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, in 2020. Timur Kodzoko – guitar Amar Abazov – drums
Shkhafit – recorded in Göttingen, Germany, in 2026. Timur Kodzoko – strings, bowed instruments, and effects Astemir Kodzoko – physharmonium and wind instruments
Cover photo: Tulip tree in the village of Golovinka, Lazarevsky District, Krasnodar Krai/Shapsugia. Photo by Lilit Matevosyan Cover design: Milana Khalilova Text: Bulat Khalilov (English translation by Bella Mirzoeva)
Source: Ored Recordings (Bandcamp). I have included the entire album here for your listening pleasure, but I would urge to download it from Bandcamp, paying what you can to Ored Recordings to support their fine mission. That’s what I just did. \\\\\ trr
Over four years into Russia’s war in Ukraine, some of the Russians imprisoned in its early days are still in jail. Even people with no previous political activism have been landed with long prison sentences in order to crush dissent.
Yevgeny Zateyev and Anna Arkhipova attend a court hearing in the case against the Vesna movement, one of the leading voices of antiwar protest in Russia. A court in St Petersburg sentenced six defendants in the case to prison terms of up to 12 years. (Andrei Bok/ SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Russia’s political prisoners are “outcasts in their own land,” Sergei Dudchenko, a biker tortured and framed by the security services, told his trial judges this month before being handed a seven-year prison sentence.
Those arrested for opposing the war in Ukraine had “fewer rights than a stray dog, and on top of that they bear the humiliating brand of ‘terrorist’ — and all this for their active civic stance.”
Dudchenko and his friend Nikolai Murnev, who received the same sentence, were arrested with others in October 2022 in Stavropol, in southern Russia.
While in detention on minor charges (petty hooliganism and drug possession), they were brutally tortured. A case was put together that they were preparing a “terrorist act” — setting fire to a military recruitment office. Another of the group died in pretrial detention, one fled the country, and one turned state’s witness.
The invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, “split life into before and after, it divided the world into black and white,” Dudchenko told the court.
Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Kazakhs, Turkmens, Jews, and others had “paid an unimaginable price” to resist Nazism in World War II. How, decades later, could “so much hatred and anger” be directed against Ukraine?
Within days of the invasion, Dudchenko made a solo protest — a motorbike ride with the Ukrainian flag. In court, four years later, he said: “When I sped along, with the banner of the oppressed streaming behind me, past an astonished crowd of militarists, I felt the human in me come into bloom.”
Dudchenko is one of dozens of wartime protesters who have exercised one of the few constitutional rights that remains accessible: to say a “final word” before sentencing.
Some who exercise this right, like Dudchenko, are citizens whose antiwar protest was their first political action. Some, like the powerlifting champion Yulia Lemeshchenko, are Russians who joined the Ukrainian armed forces. She told her trial, in November of last year: “I am not a citizen of the country for which I decided to fight, but for me, Ukraine is home.”
Some are political activists, like Anna Arkhipova, one of six members of the Vesna protest network sentenced at a show trial in St Petersburg last month. “When the war began, it was my conscience that would not let me stand idly by,” she stated.
On Sunday May 17, Try Me For Treason: anti-war protesters’ speeches in Russian courts, an English-language film featuring readings of speeches, will be released on YouTube.
The title comes from a speech by Andrei Trofimov, who is serving ten years for pro-Ukrainian statements on social media — plus three for ending his “final word” to a closed court by saying: “Glory to Ukraine! Putin is a d–khead.”
At the second trial, before getting the three extra years, Trofimov scorned the charges of “discrediting the armed forces” and “justifying terrorism,” and invited prosecutors to charge him for deserting to Ukraine’s side. “Try me for treason. I betrayed your deranged state,” he told the judges.
The fifty-minute documentary was put together on a zero budget by a group of actors in Britain, to make the Russian antiwar movement more visible internationally.
Maya Willcocks, the actor-producer who reads a speech by Darya Kozyreva, said: “These are not well-known political leaders, they are people who have taken a stand against the state. I felt it was very important to have their words translated into English and out there for people to hear — to send the message that occupation is a crime, whether in Palestine or in Ukraine.”
Anthony Aldis, the videographer, said: “What I found compelling about these stories is that the beginning of any fightback is very often when people stand up against an apparently unassailable power.
“These people are not organized. It’s a raw push against something that they don’t believe they can beat, but they think they have to take a stand anyway, in solidarity with someone else who is being attacked and murdered.
“That idea is very important to us in the West, given what we face here in the UK, and in the USA, with the rise of the far right.”
As one of a small group of translators that helped prisoner support groups, I worked on the script, and on the book Voices Against Putin’s Warfrom which it derived.
Having traveled to Russia and Ukraine since Soviet times, I was struck by the political depth and heterogeneity of antiwar protest, even as it is constrained by state terror to individual acts of defiance. Those punished with long sentences range from pacifists who quote Leo Tolstoy to Soviet-era dissidents who ooze contempt for the judges, and Russians who go out of their way to justify Ukraine’s defensive military action.
It would be easy — and stupid — to dismiss the “final words” as atomized cries into a dark, authoritarian night. Rarely are they pleas to judges or government; more often, they are consciously crafted appeals to society.
The “last words” often try to situate those who say them historically. Sergei Dudchenko, born in 1987, said in court that “people like us will always keep emerging, to pick up the fallen banner of good and reason” . . . and recalled the seven protesters arrested on Red Square in 1968 for opposing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Noteworthy, too, is the infrastructure of support for political prisoners, comprising established human rights organizations such as Memorial: Support Political Prisoners, OVD-Info, and Mediazona; newly formed groups such as Fires of Freedom and Solidarity Zone, a website featuring “last words” going back to the 1950s; and Telegram groups caring for individual prisoners.
From California to the Caucasus, dozens of informal groups of Russians in exile gather and write letters to prisoners.
All these organizations support lawyers and activists in Russia who visit prisoners, send parcels, and support relatives — themselves now risky activities.
Bohdan Ziza, who features in our film, has family and friends who know where he is. (He is serving fifteen years for throwing blue and yellow paint, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, as well as a petrol bomb that was quickly extinguished by a security guard, at a municipal council’s office in Crimea.) So do many Crimean Tatar activists victimized by Russia’s racist, Islamophobic crackdown in the peninsula in 2017–19.
But hundreds, possibly thousands of Ukrainians are at unknown locations in Russia’s twenty-first-century gulag.
The Ukrainian government today counts ninety thousand people as “missing”: many are soldiers, imprisoned or killed, but at least sixteen thousand are civilians, according to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Many are victims of abductions, widespread in the territories occupied by Russia. Ukrainian lawyers and human rights activists have compiled a register of more than five thousand “enforced disappearances,” in addition to the widely publicized cases of kidnapped children.
Long prison sentences, imposed with little or no pretense of legal procedure, and savage torture — especially of those suspected of sympathizing with Ukrainian resistance — are ubiquitous in the occupied territories. The indefatigable Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group’s website reports a stream of life-destroying sentences for peaceful activities deemed dissident.
Doing all we can to provide practical support for political prisoners and engaging with their compelling articulations of their motives is central to international solidarity.
Try Me For Treason premieres on Sunday, May 17. You can sign up to watch it here.
In this newsletter we will share how much support of political prisoners really matters.Darya Kozyreva, a 20-year-old activist from St. Petersburg (and a former defendant of OVD-Info), was set free from prison this spring. Her story became an example of how publicity can bring attention and support from all around the world.
Darya Kozyreva in court 18 April 2025. Photo: Andrey Bok for OVD-Info
Darya’s troubles with Russian repressive laws began when she was just 18. She was kicked out of medical school because she spoke out against the war. Then, she was arrested for putting a poem by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko on his monument in St. Petersburg. This, along with an interview where she criticized the war, led to her being sent[enced] to a penal colony for over two and a half years.
Her case got a lot of attention in Russia – and surprisingly, outside of it too. A popular group called A Mighty Girl shared Darya’s story, showing her courage and giving a link to our Vestochka service so people could write to her. The post got over 38,000 reactions, proving that one act of sharing can bring many people together to help.
Because of this media attention and the kind people who helped, Darya received more than 600 letters from abroad. For someone in prison for political reasons, a letter is more than just a message from a stranger – it’s a connection to the outside world. For people who lost their freedom for their beliefs, it shows them that people remember them, that their fight matters, and they are definitely not alone.
Darya’s release was also made possible by the financial support of people like you. OVD-Info organized three major fundraising campaigns to pay for her legal defense, including her lawyer’s work in the appeals court and visits to the detention center. Together, we raised over 500,000 rubles (over €5,000) to ensure she had the best possible protection.
Right now, our Vestochka list has 1,098 people who are still in prison. Many of them don’t get the same media attention that Darya did. These people are in prison because of their political beliefs or anti-war views. They deserve human connection and support just as much. For them, a letter can be the only source of comfort and hope.
> 2100 people in Russia are behind bars because of their political views. We believe that no one should face this kind of injustice alone.
You can bring that comfort. You don’t need to know their whole story to help. You can write to a random person, or find someone with similar interests to be a pen-pal. This can give someone in prison a bit of warmth and attention.
You don’t need to speak Russian to help! Our volunteers translate your messages. This makes sure your letters can get past prison censors and reach the people who need them most.
Write a Letter: Go tovestochka.ioand pick someone to write to. You can write to a random person or find someone with similar interests.
Support Vestochka: Running a service that translates and sends thousands of letters for free (for both the sender and the recipient) costs money. Your donation helps us keep this important service going.
Remember: everything OVD-Info does from legal help to sending letters is only possible because of you. Since we can no longer take donations in rubles, support from other countriesis more important than ever.
Thank you for being with us and for believing that no one should face the system alone.
TRY ME FOR TREASON is a 50-minute film, in English, featuring speeches made by anti-war protesters in Russian courts. It has been made by a group of actors to draw English-speaking audiences’ attention to the stand taken by Ukrainians, and Russians, against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The YouTube premiere of the film will be broadcast on Sunday 17 May at 20.00 UK time. To participate, go to this link and hit “Notify me”:
□ Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, thousands of people have been arrested for protesting against the war. Many appear in court, facing years of imprisonment. What do they say to the judges? What would any of us say? This 50-minute film, in English, features some of their speeches in court.
□ The speeches are from the book Voices Against Putin’s War: protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts (Resistance books, 2025). You can buy a copy, or download a free PDF, via this page.
□ Readings by John Graham Davies, Leila Mimmack, Gareth Brierley, Maya Willcox and Nick Evans. Script by Simon Pirani and John Graham Davies. Videography by Anthony Aldis
□ From Sunday 17 May the film will be free to view, or download, on YouTube, under a Creative Commons licence.
And here is a trailer to share:
There will be an in-person film premiere in London at 6.30pm on Sunday 17 May, just before the YouTube premiere – all welcome! – details below.
Source: Ukraine Information Group. Thanks to Simon Pirani for the heads-up and all the invaluable hard work. ||||| TRR
