Tag: Alexandra Astakhova

Elections Wrap-Up

Photo by Alexandra Astakhova

Voting in prison is not a bad form of entertainment. Dozens of prisoners are escorted to the ballot boxes simultaneously, providing a rare opportunity to chat and exchange news with your neighbors.

We were assembled in the “gully” and launched in pairs into a room equipped for a polling station. The convicts had fun arguing who to vote for. Mostly, of course, there were juicy quotes from Leningrad’s song about elections….

“Elections! Elections! The Candidates Are Buggers!” The song, written by Alexei Kortnev for the theater production Election Day (2003), was performed in the eponymous film (2007) by Sergei Shnurov and Leningrad

With a clear conscience, I wrote “FOR RUSSIA WITHOUT PUTIN” on my ballot paper. After that, I conducted a spontaneous exit poll at the prison polling station, thanks to which it transpired that most of the inmates had voted for anyone, just not for [ruling party] United Russia. Only one of them admitted that he had ticked the box for [incumbent Moscow mayor Sergei] Sobyanin. The guy, however, is a United Russia activist himself: he embezzled a factory and is now serving a sentence for fraud. So it all makes sense.

And I also saw and hugged Sergei Klokov (Vedel) for the first time in several months. For a year and a half, the man has been doing time for a telephone conversation with relatives, bugged by the security services, during which the murders in Bucha were discussed. He looks tired and misses his family, including his two young children. But he is slightly encouraged by the news that Ukraine is willing to exchange its collaborators for Russian political prisoners. I hope Sergei will be released soon. He’s a good guy.

Source: Ilya Yashin (Facebook), 11 September 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Olga Kolokolova’s campaign poster in the 10 September 2023 elections in Krasnokamensk (Perm Territory): “I’m for peace!” Image courtesy of Igor Averkiev

Olga Kolokolova, the head of the Perm regional branch of the Yabloko Party for many years, won the elections to the City Duma in Krasnokamsk (a satellite city of Perm). Moreover, she won running on the slogan “I’m for peace!”

Having received 55.2% of the votes cast, Olga Arkadyevna was returned to the Krasnokamsk City Duma, of which she was a deputy from 2005 to 2018.

Kolokolova is a veteran of the Perm loyal democratic opposition. (I say this without the slightest hint of judgment: the loyal opposition has its own positive mission, especially during periods when the regime relaxes the rules.) She is one of the most well-known politicians in Krasnokamsk, and the most consistent and most well-known Yabloko Party activist in the region.

Despite her status as a member of the loyal opposition, the election of Olga Kolokolova as a deputy in our time, and running on such a slogan, is really an unusual event, a kind of relic or vestige of the Putin regime’s bygone hybridity. In any case, it is impossible not to be happy for Olga Arkadyevna.

Source: Igor Averkiev (Facebook), 11 September 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

A screenshot of the front page of the Moscow Times website, 11 September 2023

Inside Russia’s sham ‘election’ in occupied Ukrainian territories (Open Democracy, September 6th)

Ukrainians in occupied territory forced at gunpoint to vote for fake candidates in Russia’s pseudo-election (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, September 4th)

Source: News from Ukraine Bulletin 63 (11 September 2023)

The Sasha Skochilenko Trial: 7 July 2023

Petersburg anti-war activist and political prisoner Sasha Skochilenko at her trial, 7 July 2023. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova

At today’s hearing, the issue of remand was considered. The court could have released Sasha [Skochilenko] to house arrest or restricted her from doing certain things, or left her in pretrial detention for another three months.

This hearing might not have happened if the court had agreed to consider the issue during the remaining time at the previous hearing. But that did not happen, and today Sasha was once again transported from the pretrial detention center, and had to spend another day without food in poorly ventilated rooms. In an effort to ease Sasha’s suffering, the defense petitioned to move the hearings to an air-conditioned courtroom, to permit Sasha to drink water during the hearings, and to turn on the microphones and speakers in the courtroom so that the windows and doors could be opened. Judge Demyasheva ruled all these petitions “extra-procedural” and ignored them.

Prosecutor Gladyshev could not produce a single argument in favor of leaving Sasha in pretrial detention. He only repeated the vague arguments, made earlier by police investigators, that Sasha would resume her “criminal behavior” and could leave the country, possibilities which had already been ruled out by the court at previous hearings. Most memorably, the prosecutor declared, bombastically, “Skochilenko committed a grave crime against public safety, undermining the foundations of the Russian state.” (After he said this, the bailiffs had to remove a member of the public who had burst out laughing from the courtroom, and the judge declared a recess.) When Sasha’s lawyer Yana Nevodinnova pointed out to the prosecutor that his arguments were unfounded, Gladyshev was cut to the quick. “Reprimand the lawyer,” he asked the judge, “She insults Russia’s judicial system!”

Despite the numerous arguments about the critical state of Sasha’s health, which the defense had made at the previous hearing, the judge ordered that Sasha remain in pretrial detention until October 10.

Many thanks to everyone who keeps coming to court! The next hearing—this time on the merits of the case—will take place very soon, on July 18 at the Vasileostrovsky District Court. Please come out and support Sasha!

Source: Sasha Skochilenko (Facebook), 7 July 2023. Photos and text by Alexandra Astakhova, presumably. Translated by the Russian Reader