In Izhevsk

A [billboard] advertising the delivery of “Cargo 200” has gone up in Izhevsk.

It’s a timely service with good prospects.

Source: Andrei Pivovarov, Facebook, 28 December 2022. Earlier this years, Mr. Pivovarov, a well-known Russian opposition politician, was sentenced to four years in prison for “leading an undesirable organization,” i.e., Open Russia.


Prominent opposition politician Ilya Yashin has been transferred to a detention facility some 1,000 kilometers from Moscow even though his sentence must still be approved by an upper court, his lawyer said Tuesday.

A Moscow court sentenced Yashin, 39, to [eight and a half years in a penal colony] earlier in December after he was charged with spreading “false” information about the Russian military for comments he made during a YouTube stream about the civilian massacre carried out by the Russian army in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha this spring.

The Moscow city councilor’s whereabouts were unknown when the city’s prison monitoring commission reported on Monday that Yashin had been moved to “a different region.”

Lawyer Maria Eismont said that Yashin was transferred to a pre-trial detention facility in the city of Izhevsk, the capital of the republic of Udmurtia, some 1,000 kilometers east of Moscow.

Yashin’s prison sentence has not yet taken effect, as an upper court must still reject his appeal and confirm his sentence, which means he must remain in pre-trial detention rather than being sent to a penal colony.

Eismont ironically called Yashin’s transfer an “early New Year’s gift” from the authorities, noting that his mother had been scheduled to visit him in Moscow later this week.

Source: “Jailed Kremlin Critic Yashin Transferred to Prison Outside [sic] Moscow,” Moscow Times, 28 December 2022

Elena Zaharova: “Russia Out of Syria Now!”

“Syria. What are we killing them for?”

“Russian citizens! Your children will pay for your wars!”

“No to the bombing of Syria! No to the siege of Eastern Ghouta! No to the murders of children!”

“The Russian national idea is Cargo 200 for itself and others. Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Syria: who’s next?”

These pictures were posted yesterday on the Facebook page of Olgizza Vishenetskaya. The woman holding the placards is Elena Zaharova, who on her own Facebook page identifies herself as a former ballet accompanist at the Opera and Ballet Theater in Bishkek, now resident in Moscow.

The photos were taken yesterday. The setting is near the entrance to the Historical Museum in Moscow, which is located between Red Square and Manege Square.

If I am not mistaken, Ms. Zaharova and two or three other brave women held a similar picket against Russia’s disastrous intervention in Syria a year or two ago in the same place.

As far as I know, these lonely solo pickets have been the only public protests in Russia against that reckless and cruel military adventure since the Kremlin joined the conflict on the side of hereditary dictator and war criminal Bashar Assad in September 2015.

Since nearly all her compatriots have remained resolutely and eerily silent on the subject, it is hard to overestimate Ms. Zaharova’s bravery and determination. TRR