Maria Ponomarenko – The Russian Reader

Hundreds have been unlawfully imprisoned by the Russian authorities for opposing the war and dictatorship.

Join us to write letters to Russia’s political prisoners and support them!

1 March 2026 (Sun), 6:00-09:30 pm • Shoty Georgian Cafe & Restaurant (upper ground), 30 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3DL

No knowledge of Russian is required.

All materials and guidance will be provided.

Why do we write letters? In the words of Maria Ponomarenko, sentenced to six years in prison for anti-war posts:

I’ve already explained it multiple times that the letters are highly valuable to all of us who are unjustly imprisoned. But I’m ready to repeat it again and again, even 1000 times!

Your letters inspire us, give us strength and confidence that there will be a dawn and the changes are inevitable.

Your letters serve as a support — solid ground beneath our feet.

Your letters are uplifting and help distract us from the unpleasant realities of the Russian penitentiary system.

Write letters to political prisoners! Write, even in the absence of feedback!

The letters are also very important because they demonstrate to the authorities and other inmates that the political prisoner has support outside the prison and is not alone. That we have not been abandoned and have not been forgotten!

#RussiansAgainstWar #RussiansAgainstPutin

Source: Facebook. Thanks to News from Ukraine Bulletin for the heads-up.

Why it’s crucial

Political prisoners find themselves in physical, social and informational isolation. Thanks to the letters, prisoners feel supported and that they are not alone. In pre-trial detention centres, prisons and colonies, it is not often possible to find like-minded people, but letters give prisoners a chance to be heard and a much-needed connection with one another.

In addition, in prison a person quickly ceases to understand what is happening on the outside, so letters are also a way to stay informed about external events: they can be about big news or something less significant, but important for the political prisoner himself (for example, about changes in countries or what is happening in his work\interest spheres, and so on).

Finally, when prisoners receive regular letters, it is an indicator to prison and colony staff that the world outside is paying attention to them, so the risks of pressure are reduced.

This is safe

It is legal and safe to send letters to political prisoners. It is important to remember that all letters go through a censor, but if you follow certain rules you will be safe.

However, there is a list of topics to avoid.

– Do not write about war and combat, such letters will almost certainly not pass the censor.

– Do not write about the details of their criminal case: this may be a painful topic for discussion, but on the other hand, such correspondence may harm them legally.

– Do not write anything about LGBTQ+ people, as based on the history of cases this may harm the political prisoner in the eyes of homophobic prisoners and prison staff.

– Do not write direct insults to the authorities and their representatives or calls to overthrow the government.

– Avoid any topics related to what law enforcement agencies may consider extremism and terrorism.

– In addition, do not use obscure abbreviations, ciphers, foreign words – anything that the censor may not understand or find suspicious. Finally, do not use foul language in your letters.

Where to start

First, you need to decide who you want to write to. You can write to political prisoners whose stories you already know from the news, but it is important that not only media figures receive letters: there are many lesser-known prisoners who need support just as much. You can find their names and stories on our website (general list and religious list of political prisoners), and you can also find addresses where you can write to them. A great reason to start a correspondence would be, for example, a birthday greeting.

What to write about in the first letter

Introduce yourself and tell about your experiences, so that the political prisoner understands who he is communicating with. If you do not want to use your real name, you can sign with a pseudonym – the main thing is that your addressee can later recognize you among other interlocutors.

In an interview with Novaya Gazeta, Elena Efros – founder of the letter-writing project “Tales for Political Prisoners” says: “It’s just the way to write it, a standard text like: Hi, I learned about your case from the media or the Internet, do you want to correspond with me, if yes, what topics are interesting to you. And don’t worry – if you don’t get a reply, just write to someone else.”

How to send letters

The fastest way would be to send one online. Our colleagues from ‘Memorial France’ have launched a service for sending letters to political prisoners in Russia and Belarus.

The website itself is still only available in French, but you can write to political prisoners in different languages: French, English, Belarusian, Russian, and any other are also accepted for translation.

Go to the Mémorial France website
Choose any political prisoner from the lists of Mémorial or Viasna.
Write a letter and paste it into the online form
Our colleagues will translate the text and send it to the addressee
When and if the inmate responds, they will send you their letter

The service has more detailed instructions for each step, as well as recommendations on what to talk about and what to avoid in letters.

You can also use one of the following services available in English:

Letters Across Borders is an OVD-Info project to collect letters to Russian political prisoners in English (or other languages) and translate them for free. You can support the project with a donation.
PrisonMail (payment with international bank cards)

In Russian:

F-letter – payment by Russian bank cards only;
ZT – payment by Russian card only, but the service works in more colonies;
RosUznik – a volunteer project that sends letters in Russian for free or for a donation (you can write from abroad if you translate your letter yourself).

You can also send a paper letter and put something that will please the prisoner: photos, printed pictures, extracts from a magazine, herbarium and so on. You can put unsigned postcards so that the prisoner can send them to their loved ones. Please note that the weight of the letter mustn’t exceed 99 grams and letters in languages other than Russian are highly unlikely to reach the recipient.

Write legibly so that your handwriting can be understood by both the addressee and the censor. When sending a letter, put not only the address but also the full name of the institution on the envelope and write the year of birth after the addressee’s name. If you want a reply, put a blank sheet of paper, another envelope and stamps in the envelope with the letter.

To receive a reply letter, a reply form must be paid for. Usually, the censor sends a scan of the letter to the email address you specify, but it is worth bearing in mind that Prisonmail does not cooperate online with all colonies – then the website when you send the letter will say that you can only receive a reply in paper form.

Source: “How to write letters,” Memorial Human Rights Center Support Program for Political Prisoners

<Vsevolod Korolev

During his closing statement in court today the documentary filmmaker Vsevolod Korolev read a poem by Grigori Dashevsky:

Across the river they’re making chocolate.

Out there the river-ice is breaking up.

And upriver we’re waiting, but for now

no bus comes, only its vacant ghost,

a desolate fleshless light flying ahead

to the engine’s howl

and the clatter of

the ad-slates changing.

We’re not cold, we bide our time.

The sky a deeper blue, the burning streetlights.

To wait for each new minute as for a ghost,

to put on stage-paint for him alone,

to powder your face with light––and poorly it sticks,

but without it there’s nothing

to tell you apart: not from the many

faces—multitudes—

but from the lived-through years

which, like a star, are distant and weightless as smoke.

But from the sweet smoke, the glory of heaven,

look up for a moment,

tear your eyes away
as from a book:

As much as a star has its shining

or a factory its smoke,

all things have

their limit: a book’s gilded edges

or a band of cloud.

And turned from weddings not my own, and graves,

not waiting for the end, I rose

and saw an enormous room, a hall,

walls, walls, Moscow, and I asked:

where is the light that lit these pages,

where is the wind that rustled them like leaves?

It’s late to be asking: each person is lit bright,

thrown open to the right dream

for the minutes, like pupils widened,

unscathed, like smoke or sleep:

they fly in, gleam, collect a promise:

Remember, remember (take leave of) me.

“I don’t intend to speak for very long. Your Honor, I am in some sense a colleague of yours, since I’ve worked as a third-tier soccer referee; I understand that you’re in a tough situation, it’s hard to envy someone stuck in the middle of this whole business. But nevertheless I have always believed in people and will continue to do so, even when it makes absolutely no sense. In any case I know this is really hard for you, but I think you’ll figure it out.” (Vsevolod Korolev)

“To ask for ten years when the maximum is ten and given the absence of aggravating circumstances and the evidence of mitigating ones—this goes against the fundamental norms of the criminal code. And this demonstrates for the umpteenth time the invalidity and baselessness of the prosecution’s case.” ([Korolev’s defense] lawyer Maria Zyrianova)

Source: Irina Kravtsova (Facebook), 18 March 2024. Translated by the Fabulous AM. Grigori Dashevsky, “Across the river they’re making chocolate,” trans. Ainsley Morse and Timmy Straw, The Hopkins Review 16.2 (Spring 2023): 18–19. Translation © 2023 Ainsley Morse and Timmy Straw, reproduced here courtesy of the translators.

Discourse journalist and documentary filmmaker Vsevolod Korolev has been sentenced to a three-year prison term on charges of “disseminating fake news” about the army.

During the trial on March 18 defense lawyer Maria Zyrianova noted that the case file did not indicate what information in Korolev’s posts had been determined to be knowingly false. Korolev is accused of making two posts on [the Russian social media network] Vkontakte about the mass murders of civilians in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Borodianka, as well as about the shelling of Donetsk.

The prosecution requested a nine-year prison sentence for Korolev. This, noted Discourse, was the longest prison term ever requested by state prosecutors for the charge of disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army.

During the court hearing on March 20, bailiffs at St. Petersburg’s Vyborg District Court recorded the names of those who came to support Korolev, SOTA reports. Earlier, SOTA published a recording of a telephone conversation between the bailiffs, in which they announced their intention to provide the lists of those who came to the trial to Center “E” [the “counter-extremism” police].

The Case of Vsevolod Korolev

Vsevolod Korolev is a documentary filmmaker and poet. He worked as a correspondent for the culture magazine Discourse and made films on social themes — about children with disabilities and political prisoners.
Korolev was detained in July 2022. During the search, his electronic devices were confiscated.
The prosecutors argued that Korolev’s documentaries about the political prisoners Maria Ponomarenko and Alexandra Skochilenko should be deemed an aggravating circumstance.
Linguistic expertise in the case was provided by linguist Alla Teplyashina and political scientist Olga Safonova from the Center for Expertise at St. Petersburg State University.
One of the prosecution’s witnesses later recanted their testimony.
In his closing statement at the trial, Korolev quoted a poem by Grigori Dashevsky: “It’s late to be asking: each person is lit bright, / thrown open to the right dream / for the minutes, like pupils widened, / unscathed, like smoke or sleep: / they fly in, gleam, collect a promise: / Remember, remember (take leave of) me.“
Memorial has designated Korolev a political prisoner.

You can support Vsevolod Korolev by sending him a letter to the following address:

196655 St. Petersburg, Kolpino, Kolpinskaya Street, 9, FKU SIZO-1, Vsevolod Anatolyevich Korolev (born 1987)

You can also use the service FSIN-Pismo.

Source: “Discourse journalist Vsevolod Korolev sentenced to three years for ‘fakes’ about the army,” DOXA, 20 March 2024. Translated by the Fabulous AM and the Russian Reader. People living outside of Russia will find it difficult or impossible to send letters to Russian prisons via regular mail or using online prison correspondence services such as FSIN-Pismo. In many cases, however, you can send letters (which must be written in Russian or translated into Russian) to Russian political prisoners via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. You can also write to me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending such letters.||| TRR

Tag: Maria Ponomarenko

We Write Letters to Political Prisoners in Russia

“Across the River They’re Making Chocolate”: Vsevolod Korolev’s Closing Statement in Court