Vestochka (A Way to Write Letters to Russian Political Prisoners)

Hello and welcome back to the Digest!

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 to vestochka.io and 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 countries is more important than ever.

Thank you for being with us and for believing that no one should face the system alone.

The OVD-Info team

Have a tip, a suggestion, or a pitch? Email us at newsletter@ovdinfo.org

Source: The Dissident Digest (OVD Info’s English-language email newsletter) 116, 14 May 2026

Alexander Skobov: Behind Bars in the USSR and Putin’s Russia

The number of Russians who find themselves behind bars for opposing the authorities who launched the war with Ukraine grows by the day. There are hundreds of political prisoners in the country. We try to remind our readers about these people every chance we get. Today, Mediazona’s David Frenkel tells the story of Alexander Skobov, 67, a historian from St Petersburg, a defendant in the last criminal case against ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’ in Soviet history, a convinced Marxist, and a veteran of the dissident movement, who after decades has found himself on a very familiar path: searches, arrest, psychiatric ward, jail.

Alexander Skobov is one of the most experienced political prisoners in Russia. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was twice sent to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment: the first time as an editor of samizdat, the second time for slogans in favour of political prisoners, which Skobov wrote on the walls of Leningrad houses.

Almost half a century later, in April 2024, the authorities came after him again. Skobov was accused of ‘justifying terrorism’ because of his post about the explosion on the Crimean Bridge and sent to a pre-trial detention centre. In protest, he refused to take his glasses and medication with him. Later, an article on participation in a ‘terrorist community’ was added to the charge, and Skobov was transferred from St Petersburg to Syktyvkar.

“We were left alone for a long time. The reasoning being: we’ll die out on our own. Or we’ll leave and live out the rest of our lives off the once acquired (quite deservedly) political and moral capital. The blow came to other people, most of them much younger,” he wrote from the pre-trial detention centre.

Skobov maintains an active correspondence in pre-trial detention. He discusses philosophical and political topics, his letters are even published in historical journals. Write to Alexander, argue with him, disagree with him, I’m sure it would be valuable to him. The only thing is that his wife asks that the letters to him be written in 18-point Sans Serif font. Skobov can’t even see his own texts well: he first drafts them on the back of used sheets of paper and then blindly transfers the texts to the reply form.

Address:

167028, г. Сыктывкар, поселок Верхний Чов, д. 99 , ФКУ СИЗО-1 УФСИН России по Республике Коми. Скобову Александру Валерьевичу 1957 года рождения

Please write letters in Russian, otherwise the prison censors won’t let them through. You can send letters online via a special services called PrisonMail.

You can also write in English, using the websites Letters Across Borders and Lifeline, two projects by OVD Info, a media outlet and human rights defense group.

Source: Mediazona, 29 November 2024. I lightly edited the text, above, for clarity’s sake. Featured image courtesy of the Moscow Times. ||| TRR

1001 Letters for Azat Miftakhov

687 letters out of 1,001. “I wish [you] much strength and determination. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

💌The Azat Miftakhov letter writing campaign continues!

🔥 Since the last appeal to write to Azat, the Solidarité FreeAzat Association has received 687 letters out of its goal of 1,001 letters!

✈️ We received letters from a huge number of countries. Azat is supported by people in France, Russia, Belgium, Nicaragua, Mexico, Germany, Lithuania, the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Canada, Finland, Australia, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Georgia, South Korea, Armenia, New Zealand….

Fifty countries in all!

🫠Today we learned that the military court’s first hearing in Azat’s case has been scheduled for February 12 in Yekaterinburg. We have even less time than we thought. There is one week left to get all the letters.

🫶 We urge everyone who hasn’t written yet to write a letter to Azat Miftakhov before February 12, to show solidarity with and verbal support for a person who has been imprisoned for no particular reason.

😳You can write to the Association’s e-mail—libertepourazat@gmail.com—or use the Google form.

😳We would like to remind you that Solidarité FreeAzat Association is going to send the letters via Zonatelecom, an electronic service for dispatching letters to Russian inmates, and therefore we need your full support.

😳You can make a donation to offset the cost of sending the letters.

🤮 If you have a Russian bank card, send money to:

Mastercard 5469 3800 5929 3380 (Sberbank)
Elena Gorban

🤮 If you want to donate using a non-Russian bank card you can use this payment service:

https://www.helloasso.com/associations/solidarite-freeazat/formulaires/3

Please note that the service will charge a commission on the payment, and you need to manually lower the amount of the commission to 0 euros.

Write letters to those who need them so much now!

❣️*The postcard [above] was drawn by Hans, an artist from Germany.

Source: FreeAzat! (Telegram), 5 February 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Posle for the heads-up. Please note that the Google letter-writing form, linked to above, is in Russian not least because the correspondence received by Russian inmates must be in Russian in order to pass censorship. If you need help negotiating this, don’t hesitate to write to me at avvakum@protonmail.com.

We’re launching a fundraiser to pay for mathematician Azat Miftakhov’s lawyer

Azat Miftakhov is a political prisoner, anarchist and mathematician convicted in 2019 on charges of disorderly conduct for allegedly breaking a window at a United Russia party office. In 2023, Azat was detained when he was released from prson and charged with “condoning terrorism.” According to police investigators, Miftakhov “deliberately in the presence of two convicts publicly condoned terrorism” while serving his sentence for disorderly conduct in Penal Colony No. 17.

According to the testimony of the other inmates, while watching the evening news on TV in May 2023, Miftakhov said that he would “avenge” a friend who had been killed while fighting for the Ukrainian army. The principal testimony in Azat’s new case was given by a identity-protected witness. He claimed that Miftakhov had condoned the actions of Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who carried out a suicide bombing at the Arkhangelsk offices of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

We are now raising 500,000 rubles [approx. 5,100 euros] to pay the lawyer defending Miftakhov against the new charges of violating Article 205.2.2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

You can click the link, below, to support the fundraiser using a non-Russian bank card [via Stripe].

I want to help!

You can send a transfer in Russian rubles to Tinkoff card 5536 9140 9963 7302, tied to phone number +7 (991) 938-0181, Roman Vyacheslavovich P. (Mark the reason for payment as “mathematics.”)

Source: Memorial Political Prisoners Support, 9 Februrary 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Posle for the heads-up.

#FreeIrdorath

Yulya Tsimafeyeva
Facebook
August 14, 2021

#FreeIrdorath

It’s known now that Uladzimir Kalach, Nadzeya Kalach, Anton Shnip, my brother Piatro Marchanka and his wife Yuliya Marchanka (Yunitskaya) are imprisoned in the pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Valadarskaha street [in Minsk].

You can send them telegrams, letters and postcards. Getting a letter from the outside world is one of the best things the imprisoned can have there.

Piatro has his birthday on Monday, August 16. Please send him some birthday wishes.

Some important tips. (I’m also using the information from the website politzek.me.)

1) Your letter should be in Russian or Belarusian only. At every prison or detention center there is a censor check of all the mail the prisoners get. Usually those censors do not read any other languages, so the letter can just be thrown away. I think Google Translate can help.

Please write surnames, first names, patronymics and address in Cyrillic. Like this:

Владимир Александрович Калач
Надежда Робертовна Калач
Пётр Петрович Марченко
Юлия Анатольевна Марченко
Антон Валерьевич Шнип
СИЗО-1
ул. Володарского 2,
Минск
220030
Belarus

2) Some technical tips:

a) Put blank paper and an empty reply envelope into your mail. Sometimes prisoners have difficulty obtaining paper and envelopes.

But if they do not have Belarusian international stamps it could be complicated for them to send a reply to you abroad. They need a special kind of the stamp (with the letter P). The stamps can be bought here online:

https://shop.belpost.by/Catalog/Product/959
https://shop.belpost.by/Catalog/Product/141217

But I do not know if Belarusian post sends them abroad. Maybe you can ask anyone in Belarus to send them to you? Or you can just hope that the prisoners will buy the stamps themselves. It’s a crazy system, I know. But believe me, even if you do not get any reply, your letter still could bring a lot of joy to those behind the bars.

b) Structure your mail flow. In each letter, put the date and number, so it will be immediately clear which letter did not reach its addressee.

c) It is better to photograph all the letters – answers may come in 3-4 weeks. Do you remember what you wrote to a friend the day before yesterday? Unlikely. And then weeks!

3) What to write about?

Write about yourself and your life, write about some national or international news. People in jail lack the information from the outer world. But do not put in any intimate details and exclude the political context. You shouldn’t write “Long live Belarus” or the names of officials. Don’t forget that your letter will be read by a strict and unfriendly censor first. He (or she) might just throw it away.

Some more tips about writing to political prisoners you can find here: https://www.politzek.me/help/mails

You can also write a letter online through this free service: https://vkletochku.org/en (but the musicians in Irdorath are not in their database yet)

To read about other political prisoners and find their addresses you can look here:

https://prisoners.spring96.org/en
https://dissidentby.com/en

#MusicIsNotACrime #ArtIsNotACrime

This post has been very lightly edited for the sake of clarity. ||| TRR