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!
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.
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)
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.
There are political prisoners whose names are not mentioned often and so they have few chances of making it onto prisoner exchange lists.
In a nutshell: political prisoner Lyubov “Lyuba” Lizunova, who is now nineteen years old, was arrested along with her boyfriend Alexander “Sasha” Snezhkov in 2022, when she was sixteen and still in high school (Sasha was nineteen at the time). This is the so-called Case of the Chita Anarchists or the Case of the Transbaikal Leftist Association. Why were they arrested? For writing the graffiti “Death to the regime” on the wall of a co-op garage on the outskirts of Chita, and for moderating Antifa Telegram channels. She was the drummer, and he was the vocalist in a band. They recorded songs and played concerts. . . . Lyuba was originally sentenced to three and a half years behind bars; Sasha, to six years. They are both behind bars now: Sasha is in prison in Krasnokamensk, while Lyuba is in a penal colony in Ulan-Ude.
I have been corresponding with Lyuba. The last letter I got from her arrived yesterday, the twentieth of January.
Now here’s the bottom line.
The very same day, yesterday, a court ruled that the Transbaikal Leftist Association is a “terrorist” organization, and named Lyuba and Sasha as its organizers and leaders. This means that they could be charged with, and found guilty of, violating Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 205.5 [“organizing and participating in the activities of a terrorist organization”].
The penalty for violating this law is fifteen to twenty years in prison. If she is convicted on the new charges, Lyuba Lizunova could be released in the 2040s.
The 2040s!
She will be around thirty-nine years old.
She wrote me a letter earlier, on the sixteenth of January:
“I don’t know what to expect. […] It’s a rather hefty sentence for a social media post and a bit of graffiti, right? I’m slowly shedding my usual calm confidence that I’ll be released on 19.02.2027. Don’t think I’m complaining or being dramatic—it’s just the way it is. The prisoner transport is also not clear. I will go either this month, or in March. The trip to Yaroslavl is long: it will take two months, including stops, just to get there, and the same amount of time for the return trip. I need to stock up somehow. […] Everything is kind of shaky and unreliable. The only things which are strong are ideals, principles, and love.”
I would argue that very young people should be at the top of the prisoner exchange lists, that we should drag children, schoolchildren, and university students out of prisons by any means necessary. These prison sentences are Stalinist [in their severity].
Actually, this is my main point. What follows are personal details.
I will later publish excerpts from Lyuba’s letters if she permits it.
While Lyuba was jailed in the pretrial detention center, she studied for the Unified State Exam and managed to finish eleventh grade. (I don’t know how she managed that.) During the ten months in jail and later, during the long prisoner transport (in a Stolypin wagon and paddy wagon) to the penal colony in Tomsk and then to Chita, she read about one hundred books (all of Solzhenitsyn, Kafka, Schopenhauer, Aristotle, Frankl, and Dante—basically, whatever she could find). She has no time to read that much in the penal colony, although she has recently been reading Anna Seghers: she has only one day off, and that day she is kept busy with “squad” assignments. But she asked me to send her something to read; I’ll try to send something, I’ve never done it before. She is the “detachment artist,” so she designs all the holiday celebrations, posters, and props. She writes poetry for her own amusement and sometimes borrows a guitar from a “local lady.” In the next barracks, someone has a synthesizer.
I am including these details on purpose, as they make it possible to visualize Lyuba’s story: the daily lifestyle, including sewing and cleaning the premises; eating Dosirac instant noodles (Lyuba is a vegetarian and cannot eat the food served in the penal colony, because everything is cooked in a meat broth); and the nitty-gritty of the prisoner transports.
Strikingly, Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression was observed at Lyuba’s penal colony: she drew a poster for the occasion. Actually, our correspondence and acquaintance began that same day: I chose her letter from a long list of letters from other political prisoners to read aloud at our Returning the Names event. It had a particularly poignant ring. I later realized why she takes the Stalinist crackdowns so personally. She wrote to me that her great-grandfather was a bigwig in the Chita KGB. When she was taken to FSB headquarters for interrogations, she was escorted past a stand dedicated to him, featuring a framed portrait, documents, and awards. It sounds like a movie—a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl being led down a corridor past a portrait of her great-grandfather—but it isn’t a movie.
If you have ideas about who can publicize this case, or who can help make the media cover the cases of very young political prisoners, please write to me. And write letters to them, please.
FKU IK-7 UFSIN of Russia in the Republic of Buryatia • Lyubov Vitalyevna Lizunova (born 2006)
Source: Alexandra Selivanova (Facebook), 21 January 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader. Since letters to Russian prisoners are vetted by prison censors, they must be written in Russian or translated into Russian, something that can done more or less decently using an online machine translator. ||||| TRR
A court in Russia’s Transbaikal region has designated the informal youth group known as the Transbaikal Left Association (ZLO) as a terrorist organisation and banned its activities nationwide.
According to the ruling by the Transbaikal Regional Court, the group, which was founded in 2019, operated with its own symbols and maintained pages on social media. The court concluded that elements of terrorist activity were present in its actions, as outlined in a lawsuit brought by prosecutors, Caliber.Az reports via Russian media.
The case named Alexander Snezhkov and Lyubov Lizunova, described by authorities as the group’s unofficial leaders, as defendants. Snezhkov was sentenced to six years in prison, while Lizunova received a sentence of three and a half years. They were convicted on charges including vandalism, incitement to terrorism, and extremism.
Snezhkov rejected the accusations, stating that ZLO functioned primarily as an information platform through which he expressed his personal views. At the same time, he acknowledged that in 2022 he had asked Lizunova to prepare a post that he later published online. He said he subsequently deleted the post after realising that it could be interpreted as justifying terrorist activity, including attacks on military enlistment offices.
Brandon Siguenza (center) and his wife, Julia Rose (left) in happier times. Source: Facebook
Good morning,
My name is Brandon Siguenza, and I am a US citizen from Minneapolis. Yesterday, while doing legal observation, ICE stopped their cars to harass my friend and me. They sprayed pepper spray into the vent of our vehicle. We held our hands in the air and told them we were not obstructing, that the car was in park and they were free to drive forward and away. There was no active immigration raid. They returned to their cars, and drove forward a bit, then decided to stop again. They surrounded us, smashed the windows of our car, opened the doors (they were unlocked), ripped my friend and I out of the car and arrested us on charges of obstruction.
I was put in an unmarked SUV, separated from my friend. As I was put in the back seat an ICE agent tore the whistle off my neck and said “I’ll be taking this, I might need it later.” My phone was knocked out of my hand while being arrested. As we drove away I asked the driver and the passenger if they wouldn’t mind buckling my seatbelt, as they were driving erratically. I was ignored. I asked them if I could have the handcuffs loosened, as I was losing circulation, and was told no. At one point the passenger realized his own driver’s license was in the backseat next to mine, and tried to surreptitiously grab it without me seeing it.
We were taken to the Whipple federal building, where I saw dozens of brown people being processed in an unheated garage. I was frisked, told of my charges, and saw buses and vans being prepped. I later learned that these were being filled with detainees and driven to the airport for deportation. As we were led in, I noticed that the building was very busy. I got the impression that one of the 2 agents bringing me around was being trained. At multiple points throughout my stay, government agents were unable to open doors, not sure where they were meant to be going, and overall confused and overwhelmed. They couldn’t figure out how to use the building phones, or complained about a lack of cell service preventing them from checking the internet or making calls.
The people in the cells were extremely scared. We heard people screaming “let me out!”, crying, wailing and terrified screams. There were cells with as many as 8 people. I have no way of knowing how long they have been there, if they were allowed any contact with the outside world, or if they were being brought food or water. Most people were staring at the ground with almost no energy. I was not allowed to talk to anyone imprisoned. I distinctly remember seeing a desperate woman. She was staring at the ground with her head in her hands crying, hopeless, while her friend or family member sat on a bathroom seat observed by 3 men.
My friend and I were put in an area for “USCs,” which we eventually learned meant US citizens, separated by gender. We were imprisoned for 8 hours, during which my friend was never allowed a phone call. I was allowed to call my wife and tell her where I was. During my interview with Special Agent William and Special Agent Garcia, they asked me to empty my pockets. When I pulled out gloves, Agent William said those were meant to be taken when I was processed, and complained about having to fill out the form again. He frisked me once more, where he found glass in my pocket from when our car window was shattered. He filled out the form listing my personal items again, but put the wrong date. I was read my rights, I pleaded the fifth and was led back to my cell.
Food, water, and bathroom breaks were extremely difficult to acquire. I would ask over the intercom provided in the cell for a bathroom break, be told someone was on their way, then ask again 20 minutes later, be told someone was on their way, wait another 20 minutes, etc. Eventually they either turned off the intercom or it stopped working, because no one would respond. I could get water and bathroom breaks by pounding on the glass when someone happened to walk by and beg them directly. Hours would go by without anyone checking on us. I am vegan and the only food they offered were turkey sandwiches, fruit snacks with gelatin, and granola bars with honey. I eventually ate a granola bar out of hunger.
I was in the cell alone for between 1 and 2 hours, then another man was put into my cell, whose shirt was ripped open from his arrest, and an injured toe, who was carried aggressively into an unmarked car during his arrest. After about 4-5 hours, another man was brought in who had a cut on his head from his arrest. He told me he was tackled by 4 or 5 agents during his arrest. At no point was he offered medical assistance.
Later I was told that a lawyer was here to see me, and I was able to speak with him in a visitation room. The special agent told me that the door could not be closed all the way, so it was cracked during my interaction with my lawyer. I got the impression that they were not used to having lawyers present, and were trying to follow procedure as best they could. I asked an agent if the other detainees were allowed lawyers and was not answered.
At one point, 3 men from the department of Homeland Security Investigations brought me into a cell. They insinuated that they could help me out. After inquiring several times what exactly they meant they finally told me that they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don’t), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.
Finally, after hours of detention, I was told to follow an agent. At no point was I told whether or not I was being charged, or where I was going, but I was led out of the building. I asked if I could use a phone to call my wife to pick me up, and was told I could not. After pleading for several minutes eventually Special Agent William let me use his phone to call my wife. As I was escorted off the property by government agents, I was told to turn right. I was escorted to the protest area, where 5 minutes later, tear gas was deployed and I was struck by a paint ball gun. I was not protesting, I was simply being released without charges after an 8 hour detention. I was on the other side of the street, as instructed by the agents that released me and the agents shouting orders over a bullhorn. A passerby who was tear gassed was panicking and having an asthma attack, so I helped her find a medic to get her an inhaler. I used a stranger’s phone to co-ordinate pickup, and was picked up by my wife.
During my detention I knew that I was being released. I knew that as a citizen of the United States I have legal protection. The hundred or so other people being detained had no such protection. At this time I don’t need your help, it is the families that are being separated, abused, terrorized, harassed and killed that need your help. If this is happening to me, an American citizen born in the United States, then what is happening to the people in here that have no one calling lawyers on their behalf? That have no constitutional rights to due process? What is happening to the people that they will never be released to see their families, go to their jobs, or walk through their city ever again?
Please take care of yourselves, your family, and your community. I am safe and healthy, if you feel compelled to help, please offer your help to the Immigrant Defense Network at https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/. If you know someone detained by ICE, call or text CAIR-MN at 612-206-3360 for 24/7 legal intake.
KARE 11, “Taken by ICE & Detained | Breaking the News Plus”
What is it like in the Minneapolis ICE Detention Center? Patty O’Keefe & Brandon Siguenza join Jana to discuss their experience being detained for over 9 hours.
Ukrainian, abducted as a teenager from occupied Donbas in 2019, sentenced by Russian court to 22 years (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 9th)
‘Russian world’ in occupied Luhansk oblast: no heating and deliberately cut off from mobile telephones and Internet (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)
Desperate plea from Russian prison: Ukrainian political prisoners need to be freed now, not after ‘peace deal’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 7th)
Even Putin supporter debunks Russia’s lies about a ‘Ukrainian drone attack on civilians’ in occupied Khorly (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)
No answers & questions to Red Cross after Russia holds 64-year-old Melitopol journalist prisoner for third year (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)
Ukrainian leaders in UK call for Kemi Badenoch to sack David Wolfson, Russian assets to be used to aid Ukraine (USC, January 8th)
Upcoming events:
Thursday 15th January, at 7pm, Russia’s War On Ukraine, Us Strategy Review – Stopping The Authoritarians, organised by Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland, register here.
Thursday 5th February, at 6.30pm. Try Me For Treason reading and discussion event at Clore Lecture Theatre, Birkbeck College Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. Details here.
This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. To receive it by email each Monday, email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.
Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”
“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”
Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”
The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:
First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”
Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”
Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”
It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”
The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.
“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”
In September 2024, Alexander Krichevsky, a 58-year-old resident of Izhevsk, posted a lengthy comment on a Chechen opposition blogger’s Telegram channel. In the comment, Krichevsky compared Putin and the “FSB clique” to a “darkness” which must be destroyed. The security forces deemed this statement incitement to murder the president and FSB officers. They monitored the man and intercepted his internet traffic. Last December, Krichevsky was detained and remanded in custody to a pretrial detention center despite his ailments and the fact that he is confined to a wheelchair. His ailing mother was placed in a care home, where she died a month later. Today, at the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg, where Krichevsky’s case is being heard, the prosecutor requested that he be given the maximum sentence of six years in prison.
“That is why we listen to him, because he is not afraid—he’s a ray of freedom in a kingdom of darkness! And only together will we destroy this darkness, only when we understand that we have only one enemy—Putin and his FSB clique. . . . Both you and we must destroy this enemy to continue living as peaceful neighbors,” 58-year-old Izhevsk resident Alexander Krichevsky wrote in a chat on the channel of opposition Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov aka Abu Saddam Shishani, on 11 September 2024.
This was Krichevsky’s response to a user who had asked Abdurakhmanov himself in a chat: “Tumso, aren’t you afraid that Kadyrov’s people might find you?”
When questioned in court, Krichevsky said that he was sure he was responding to the user personally, not writing in a public chat. He repeated many times that he had only figurative “destruction” in mind and had been trying to “reconcile” Abdurakhmanov’s readership by pointing out that they had only one enemy.
“Of course, I wasn’t even thinking about physically destroying such a large number of people and didn’t understand how [what I wrote] would even look. Apparently, my love for pretty words—all those rays of light and other nonsense—let me down. I was thinking in terms of games: when a person plays checkers or chess, they destroy their opponent’s pieces. Roughly speaking, that was the image I had in my head,” Krichevsky said in court.
The FSB operative who discovered Krichevsky’s comment saw it not as criticism alone, but also as a “public call to murder the president of the Russian Federation and officers of the Federal Security Service.”
The same conclusion was reached by Polina Komova, a philologist and expert at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Forensic Center in Udmurtia. She acknowledged in court that the word “destroy” could have other meanings “depending on the context,” but in her opinion it could be understood only in its literal meaning—that is, “to end [someone’s] existence, to exterminate”—in Krichevsky’s comment.
“He was planning a terrorist attack involving self-detonation”: wiretapping and arrest
The security forces began monitoring Krichevsky in early December 2024. It emerged in court that the FSB had requested data on his calls and connections from Rostelecom and learned that on 11 September, when he wrote the comment, he had accessed Telegram from home. Megafon provided the security forces with information about the base stations in the area where Krichevsky’s phone number pinged that day.
On 5 December 2024, the Supreme Court of Udmurtia gave the FSB permission to tap Krichevsky’s phones, and a few days later it approved “gathering information from technical communication channels and acquiring computer information.” A few days before Krichevsky’s arrest, operatives monitored his apartment to “document illegal activities.” The report states that Krichevsky did not leave his home.
On 19 December 2024, Krichevsky was detained and sent to a pretrial detention center. He described his arrest to journalists.
“There was a knock on the door at seven in the morning, and seven people came into [our] small flat: five FSB officers and two eyewitnesses. I opened the door myself. They immediately sat me down on a chair in the hallway. My ailing mother was lying there, barely alive. They said, ‘Can you hand over [your phone]?’ They tried to intimidate me once: ‘If you refuse, we’ll take you away and charge you with additional offenses.’ I realized that resistance was futile. I gave them the phone, and they looked at it and took what they needed.”
The social media comment charges against Krichevsky were accompanied by an FSB report containing much more serious, but in effect unproven, allegations. The document states that, according to “intelligence,” Krichevsky, who opposes the “state’s political course” and the conduct of the “special military operation,” supported radical Islamists fighting for Ukraine and was planning to convert to Islam and carry out a terrorist attack in Udmurtia “by blowing himself up with cooking gas.” The court never did hear what this report was based on.
Photo: Mediazona
“None of my comments or my own thoughts bear this out. When I heard this business about blowing myself up . . . In this case, everything that the prosecutor has just read aloud is pure speculation on the part of the investigators. None of my quotes corroborates it,” Krichevsky said in court.
Judge Alexander Raitsky simply reminded Krichevsky that the case centered on a single [social media] comment, which the defendant himself did not disput, and that the court would evaluate the evidence in the deliberation room.
The case file also contains another comment by Krichevsky from the same written exchange: “Many empires have collapsed in this world. I myself foresee the end of the Russkies [rusnya]. I don’t feel sorry for them: let them collapse with a bang. That’s where they belong. I myself hate these FSBniks, pigs [cops], and other scum who suck the blood of our homeland and shit on our neighbors.”
The security forces deemed this “a statement containing a negative assessment of the group of persons sharing the profession of Federal Security Service officers and police officers,” but it was not included in the indictment.
Responding to the judge’s question about this comment, Krichevsky said that he sometimes tried to “adapt” to the rude tone of the conversation [on the Telegram channel’s chat].
“My mother died four weeks after my arrest”: wheelchair-bound in a detention center
Krichevsky had worked as a systems administrator in Izhevsk before his arrest.
As a child, Krichevsky had moved with his family from Udmurtia to Rostov-on-Don. After high school, he enrolled in medical school, but in 1989 he broke his spine and had to drop out because his left leg was paralyzed and he had lost feeling in his right leg. After a long period of rehabilitation, he was able to walk again, but was unable to recover fully: he had a severe limp and had difficulty going up stairs.
Krichevsky said in court that his father had committed suicide on 11 September 2008.
“He had terminal cancer. He was in serious pain and turned to me because I was in medical school. He wanted me to tell him what poison he could use to commit suicide. I refused to do it. Then, two days before his death, I noticed he was sharpening a knife in an odd way. He died in a rather original way, if that word is appropriate in this situation—he stabbed himself in the heart with a knife,” Krichevsky told the court.
In early 2010, during a trip to Thailand, Krichevsky broke his left leg, which had been paralyzed since his [accident in 1989]. He underwent surgery at a local hospital, but he could not stay in hospital for long because his visa had expired. Krichevsky returned to his hometown of Izhevsk, where he underwent a second operation, but his condition only worsened.
“My knee wouldn’t straighten. They tried to do something about it, but because I had spinal injuries, my knee spasmed, and it remained crooked and they couldn’t do anything about it. And my hip didn’t recover either; I also had a fractured hip,” Krichevsky told the court.
Since then, Krichevsky has been confined to a wheelchair. Other ailments have also emerged: kidney problems, emphysema, and head tremors.
“I don’t know whether it’s early Parkinson’s combined with Alzheimer’s, or something else,” Krichevsky said.
Krichevsky had been living with his elderly mother and caring for her since 2016. Last year, she was hospitalized with a complex fracture. After she was discharged, she was unable to walk, and Krichevsky would help her to sit up and do breathing exercises in order to prevent pulmonary edema and bedsores. After Krichevsky was arrested, the woman was sent to a care home. She died of a pulmonary edema a month later.
“They apparently left her lying in bed at the care home. When a person lies in a horizontal position for a long time, they develop a pulmonary edema. That’s what my mother died of,” he said in court.
Photo: Mediazona
While in pretrial detention, Krichevsky formally lost his Group I disability status, which he had prior to his arrest, and so he was unable to obtain a medical examination.
According to Krichevsky, a neurologist at the Izhevsk detention center promised to send him to a hospital, but instead Krichevsky was transferred to another pretrial detention center. “I thought they were taking me to a hospital, but they took me first to Perm and then to Yekaterinburg. They basically lied to me when they said they were taking me to a hospital,” he said on the stand.
Krichevskny never did get any medical attention: “We’ll only help you if you’re dying, [they said.] Otherwise, just sit there and suffer.”
“Radical views and hostility toward the current government”: trial and pleadings
Krichevsky’s trial was postponed five times in a row: it took a long time to bring him in his wheelchair, first to Detention Center No. 1 in Yekaterinburg, and then to the court. He was brought to the hearings late, and had to spend four to five hours in the police van, where, according to Krichevsky, the temperature was the same as outside.
At the beginning of the trial, Krichevsky filed a motion requesting that he be assigned an inpatient forensic examination and treatment. He said that he had never been examined by a neurologist at the Yekaterinburg detention center, only by a GP. He was taken for examination to the local medical unit, which was not equipped for people with disabilities: there was a “big step” in front of the toilet and sink which he could not get over. As a result, the doctors only checked his reflexes and sent him back.
In their medical report, the doctors at the detention center stated that Krichevsky had no disability and that his overall health was satisfactory, meaning that he was able to take part in the court hearings.
Before the proceedings, Krichevsky again requested to be sent for treatment, “in accordance with the neurologist’s recommendation” in Izhevsk, but Judge Raitsky denied the request, seeing no need for it. Prosecutor Artem Terentyev also asked that the request be denied, as it went “beyond the scope of the criminal case under consideration.”
During the trial, the prosecutor asked that Krichevsky be imprisoned for six years in a medium-security penal colony. The prosecutor stressed that the defendant had “radical views” and was “hostile toward the current government of the Russian Federation and its officials,” and that he had written the offending comment at a time when the mobilization had not yet been completed. The prosecutor considered these to be aggravating circumstances.
The prosecutor cited Krichevsky’s “poor health” as a mitigating circumstance.
You can support Alexander by writing him a letter.
Address: Russian Federation 620019 FKU SIZO-1, GUFSIN of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region • Sverdlovsk Region, Yekaterinburg, Repin Street, 4 • Alexander Anatolyevich Krichevsky, born 1967
You can also send letters through the online service Zonatelecom.
I am going to tell you about a political prisoner who seemingly no one has written about yet. I came across information about him quite by accident.
His name is Gordey Nikitin. Thirty-two years old and a native of Ryazan, Gordey worked at an oil refinery before his arrest. According to Gordey, he has been interested in politics and held opposition views since 2014. When the full-scale war [against Ukraine] broke out, Gordey went into shock. He was in this state of shock when he wrote several comments on Telegram.
As Gordey found out when reviewing the files in his criminal case, it was precisely because of these comments that, three years later, FSB officers would come after him, calling him on Telegram and introducing themselves as Ukrainian intelligence.
A few conversations with the “GUR” (actually, with the FSB) sufficed to charge him with and convict him of high treason and sentence him to seventeen (17) years in a maximum security penitentiary facility.
Gordey did not testify at his trial and he refused to make a closing statement to the court. He also did not bother to appeal the verdict, and so he will soon be transferred to a penal colony.
Gordey is currently being held in a remand prison in the town of Ryazhsk, Ryazan Region. He writes that the worst thing about the remand prison is the library: “Mostly third-rate military science fiction.” In the eight months he has spent in the prison, Gordey has only come across six decent books—by Remarque, Dostoevsky, and Chuck Palahniuk.
You can write a letter to Gordey. And if you use a digital service, a New Year’s miracle may occur, and he will receive the letter on January 30. In the worst case, it will arrive after the holidays.
Write to Gordey at the following address:
Russian Federation 391999 Ryazhsk, Ryazan Oblast • ul. Krasnaya, d. 1a, SIZO-2 • Nikitin Gordey Andreyevich (d.o.b. 28.09.1993)
You can also send letters through the online services F-Pismo, Zonatelecom, and PrisonMail.Online (the last should be used by foreign bankcard holders).
Source: Ivan Astashin (Facebook), 26 December 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader. Since letters to Russian prisoners are vetted by prison censors, they must be written in Russian or translated into Russian, something that can done more or less decently using an online machine translator like Google Translate. ||||| TRR
On 22 February [2023], scheduled tactical and drill exercises were held at Ryazhsk Remand Prison No. 2 (Ryazan Region, Russian Federal Penitentiary Service).
Remand prison staff practiced negotiating procedures, organizing combat groups, dealing with the aftermath of mass disobedience, and repelling attacks on the correctional facility.
The exercises were observed by Young Army cadets from Ryazhsk High School No. 3. Remand prison staff showed the kids their weapons and equipment. The boys and girls were able to try on bulletproof vests and hold automatic rifles and pistols. At the end of the tour, the schoolchildren were treated to hot porridge and tea.
“Today, the students got a closer look at the penal system,” said Alexei Ogurtsov, acting chief warden at Remand Prison No. 2. “Our staff demonstrated their professional skills, equipment, and weapons to the students and answered their questions. Perhaps some of them will choose to enlist in our service in the future.”
“Try me for treason. I betrayed your deranged state”, the Russian anti-war protester Andrei Trofimov told the Second Western District Military Court in May.
In 2023, Trofimov was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, for opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine in social media posts, and trying to join the Free Russia Legion that fights on Ukraine’s side. At that hearing, Trofimov said he hoped for Ukraine’s victory, and called president Putin “a dickhead”.
On the basis of that statement alone, he was further accused of “justifying terrorism” and defaming the Russian army. For those “crimes”, the judge at the hearing in May this year, Vadim Krasnov, added three years to Trofimov’s sentence.
Before sentencing, Trofimov told the court that he had not justified terrorism, but supported the Ukrainian armed forces’ legitimate military actions against aggression, and had not defamed the Russian army whose actions were unconstitutional and illegal. He told the court that he considered himself guilty of a much more serious crime: treason – taking the enemy’s side in war.
And there will be another chance to hear these powerful readings in London – on Thursday 5 February 2026, 6:30 p.m., at Birkbeck College. Here are the details.
You can order copies of Voices Against Putin’s War, or download a free pdf, here.
We published the book against the background of repeated claims that a peace agreement is about to be signed between Russia and Ukraine. These are louder than ever after this week’s talks in Berlin. At the time of writing this, it is not clear to me that the Kremlin is really interested in stopping the war, or what the “security guarantees” being offered to Ukraine actually mean.
I would recommend following the excellent arguments made about the peace process by Oleksandr Kyselov (most recently here, also here and here), Hanna Perekhoda (who writes on Facebook here), and other Ukrainian socialist writers.
If you want to know why the 20% of Donbas that Ukraine still controls matters so much, this comment by the Institute for the Study of War is worth reading. This speech by Valery Zaluzhny helps us understand what the Ukrainian political elite thinks.
Whatever the outcome of the talks now in progress, if any, the defence of victims of Russia’s military occupation of Ukrainian territory, and domestic political repression, will remain a central issue for our movement, right across Europe.
Kushnir (2025), a film about the late pianist and antiwar protester Pavel Kushnir (in Russian and English, with subtitles)
Pavel Kushnir was a virtuoso pianist, a writer, and a courageous man whom the world discovered only too late. He died on July 27, 2024, in a Birobidzhan detention center following a dry hunger strike. The formal pretext for his arrest was a series of anti-war videos posted on a YouTube channel that had only 5 subscribers.
This film is an attempt to understand the man who played Rachmaninoff until his fingers bled, who dreamed of flying to Mars, who idolized Kurt Cobain, and who called the war by its true name while living in complete isolation.
We have gathered archival footage, previously unknown recordings of Pavel, fragments of his poignant cut-up novel, and memories from close friends and colleagues, including Clean Bandit soloist Grace Chatto, music expert Mikhail Kazinik, and publisher Dmitry Volchek. This is a story not just about a death in prison, but about an extraordinary life that became an act of art and resistance.
In this video:
Unique footage of Kushnir’s performances and artistic actions.
The story of an unmade avant-garde film and friendships with global stars.
The Birobidzhan Diary: a chronicle of loneliness and the fight against fascism.
Why a brilliant musician went unnoticed by the cultural establishment, but not by the prison system.
Our film about the pianist Pavel Kushnir has dropped. […] Honestly, the film was ready to go in late April, but we spent a long while navigating the legal maze around the music, copyrights, and permissions. That was not even the main reason for the delay, though. I wanted to wait until the media hype had subsided and we could take a look at Pavel’s legacy from a certain historical distance, to talk about him not as a victim (although that viewpoint is legitimate, of course) but as a rebel whose choice was deliberate. Similarly, if you will, there are different takes on Christ: some view him as a needless victim who arouses pity, and the more maudlin that pity, paradoxically, the stronger their hatred for his crucifiers; while others see him as a rebel whose heroism was deliberate.
In my opinion, seeing Pavel as a pure “victim” robs him of agency, turning him into an extra in someone else’s play, in which the crucifiers have all the starring roles.
The film is based on Pavel’s own diaries. In terms of composition, I reprised the structure of his screenplay for the unmade film The Six Weary Ones. Three states of madness—prophetic madness, creative madness, and the madness of protest—figure as the three aspects of his personality. As in Joyce, each of Kushnir’s chapters has its own color and symbol. We have added music to these chapters. The music for the red chapter, “Prophet,” is by Rachmaninoff. Bach supplies the music for the blue chapter, “Creator”: blue stands for the heavens and the cosmos, and fugues are cosmic in nature. The third, black-and-white chapter, dealing with rebellion and Birobidzhan, is set to Scriabin’s Prometheus, a [tone] poem about the first rebel in history. Camus writes, in The Rebel, that rebellion confers agency on us, turning us from beasts into human beings. Again, it’s all in the eye of the beholder: some feel pity for Prometheus, chained and tortured by the eagle, while others see in him the power of the unbroken human spirit. And Scriabin’s idea of transforming all of humanity meshes perfectly with the cosmic utopia begun in the previous chapter. Prometheus: The Poem of Fire is a mystery play; as [Russian poet Konstantin] Balmont put it, it is “a vision of singing, falling moons, of musical stardoms, arabesques, hieroglyphs, and stones sculpted from sound.”
The film is chockablock with musical, literary and philosophical allusions which I won’t burden you with now. But if you’re interested, I’ll set up a cozy stream on my tiny Telegram channel where we’ll discuss the film and unpack its hidden layers, and I’ll answer your questions. You can write in the comments about whether this idea seems viable, and I’ll decide what to do based on your feedback.
Once again I want to thank everyone who did their part and helped commemorate a major artist. Thanks to you, we raised 1,185 euros and 533,954.51 rubles [approx. 5,800 euros], which is not just a large sum but a phenomenally large sum, considering that the major media practically ignored our fundraising campaign. That being said, many friends and former colleagues supported us by reposting [our fundraising appealing], which is eloquent testimony to the fact that a person and his reputation are more vital than any institution, and for this I am endlessly grateful to them.
The money we raised was enough for several full-fledged scouting trips and location shoots. Considering the geographical scope of our shoots, which included traveling to Birobidzhan itself, our grassroots war chest was emptied at some point. It became clear that without outside help we wouldn’t be able to complete the project properly, avoid devolving into a Skype interview format, and pay all the courageous artists, editors, and cameramen who had agreed to shoot a film in Russia at their own peril. I understood that asking folks for money again was not a good plan. So, after consulting with our small team, I accepted an offer from the online platform Votvot. They covered our remaining expenses and, most importantly, agreed to our condition that the film would be freely available. Our promises to our donors have not been broken: this grassroots film is being released in a way that is accessible to the grassroots—on YouTube.
I want to thank my friend and colleague Alexander Urzhanov from the bottom of my heart: he was quite emotionally invested in this film and provided us with his fabulous production resources. I would also like to thank all the folks at Narra: they have asked me not to name them, but you know who you are. Misha, Dasha, Ira, and Nastya, I couldn’t have done it without you and by myself! Particular thanks go to Boris Barabanov and Darina Lukutina from Votvot, without whom this film would scarcely have been possible.
I would like to thank Pavel’s relatives for permitting us to use his voice to read his diaries. Getting ahead of myself, I should say that this is the only digitally generated thing in the film. Everything else was filmed or recorded using analog methods: the diaries, the posters, and the drawings of a certain incomparable artists were all done without synthetics or computer glitz. All you see is life’s pleasant graininess.
I thank Pavel’s friends for sharing their archives and letters, as well as everyone who appears in this film.
I have one final request to you. Watch this film tomorrow. More to the point, share this film. I’m afraid that the film will get lost in the ruthless algorithmic desert without your reposts. May this film find everyone who needs it.
Pavel Kushnir was a classical pianist. But according to Russian authorities, he was also a dangerous dissident. In July 2024, he died on hunger strike in a remote prison in Far East Russia. Who was Pavel Kushnir, and why did he end up in jail? Liza Fokht from BBC Russian has been trying to piece together Pavel Kushnir’s story.
This isn’t a show of unity but a photo montage from La Stampa: (left to right) Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov, and Vladimir Kara-Murza all lay claim to leadership of the Russian opposition in exile and the Russian antiwar movement.
Vladimir Kara-Murza has resigned from the [Russian] Antiwar Committee after Garry Kasparov’s offensive outburst in Paris.
I was there when it happened.
What happened, exactly?
At a dinner before a morning meeting with the leadership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Kasparov adopted a mobsterish tone with Kara-Murza, demanding to know why he would not sign the Berlin Declaration. Kara-Murza tried to respond constructively, explaining that he had been in prison when the Berlin Declaration was drafted.
“Aren’t you ashamed to say that you only served two years in prison, when there is a man here who served ten years?” Kasparov said, (referring to [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky. — A.G.).
To which the retort was: “Are you speaking as someone who fled Russia in 2013? As far as we know, you have served five days in jail in your entire life.”
At that point, Garry Kimovich lost it and started yelling that all true militants against Putin’s regime had left [Russia] and were fighting for Ukraine, rather than serving time in prisons.
“Why aren’t you fighting for Ukraine yourself, instead of serving time in a restaurant in Paris?” I asked.
“Why aren’t you fighting?” the chess player blurted out.
“But you’re a man, aren’t you?”
“I’m sixty-two years old!”
***
“You scoundrel!” Kasparov shouted at Kara-Murza. “Who got you out of prison?! I got you out! You’re not signing the Berlin Declaration because you can’t say that Crimea belongs to Ukraine!”
FYI: In 2014, after Kasparov had already emigrated, Kara-Murza declared that Crimea was part of Ukraine during an [anti-war] march in Moscow.
***
But here is the most “brilliant” thing the future member of PACE’s Russian platform said:
“Kara-Murza has a British passport, he swore allegiance to the Queen! But I haven’t sworn allegiance to anyone. I have a Croatian passport… just for traveling.”
He’s a traveler all right.
Croatian, my ass.
This was how PACE’s Russian platform was assembled.
PACE has decided to create a Platform for Dialogue between the Assembly and Russian democratic forces in exile.
Participants in the platform – whose composition has yet to be decided, based on a set of criteria – would be able to hold two-way exchanges with the Assembly on issues of common concern. They would also be able to attend meetings of selected committees during part-sessions.
Unanimously approving a resolution based on a report by Eerik-Niiles Kross (Estonia, ALDE), the Assembly said participants in the platform would be “persons of the highest moral standing” who, among other conditions, all share Council of Europe values, unconditionally recognise Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and are working towards “regime change” in Russia.
The parliamentarians said the new platform – among other things – would help to strengthen the capacity of Russian democratic forces to “bring about sustainable democratic change in Russia and help achieve a lasting and just peace in Ukraine, alongside ensuring the responsibility of Russian actors for the international crimes committed”.
The Assembly said it honours the commitment of “those Russian human rights defenders, democratic forces, free media, and independent civil society who oppose the totalitarian and neo-imperialistic Russian regime, fight for democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and support Ukraine, sometimes at the risk of their lives and freedom”.
However, unlike Belarusian democratic forces, “Russian democratic forces do not have a single, unified political structure”, the Assembly pointed out. It encouraged Russian groups and initiatives in exile to join forces to advocate for democratic change in Russia, expose the crimes of the Russian regime and support Ukrainians.
On 1 October 2025, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution to establish a Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces (RDF). The initiative is intended to provide a framework for exchanges on issues of shared interest. The decision has sparked some controversy, which appears likely to grow.
A “Legitimate Alternative” Without Legitimacy
According to the report presented by the PACE General Rapporteur on RDF, Eerik-Niiles Kross, the Platform is designed to facilitate the participation of Russian opposition representatives in the Assembly’s activities. Approved candidates will form a delegation, gain access to committee meetings, and be able to address them. Yet the nomination procedure remains vague: Russian opposition groups are expected to reach a “common decision” on who will attend PACE sessions and then submit a candidate list to the President of the Assembly. This process is supposed to be completed by early next year.
The report describes Russian democratic forces as “a legitimate alternative to Putin’s regime.” However, the basis for such legitimacy remains unclear. Unlike the Belarusian opposition, which can point to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s electoral mandate from the 2020 presidential race, Russian opposition figures lack any comparable representative legitimacy. Strictly speaking, they represent no one but themselves.
PACE further specifies which actors it considers part of these “democratic forces”: structures associated with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov’s Free Russia Forum, Vladimir Kara-Murza’s Free Russia Foundation, as well as unspecified “representatives of the peoples of Russia.” The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by Alexei Navalny, is also mentioned, but the report explicitly excludes it from the category of democratic forces. The reason given is that the FBK refused to sign the Berlin Declaration, defined by the rapporteur as a conditio sine qua non for cooperation with PACE. In response, FBK representatives reiterated their lack of interest in working with what they called a “talk shop for expressing concerns” and branded the report “rude and vile.”
Defining Democratic Credentials
However, it is not only about the FBK. Some influencers and activists who denounce Russia’s crimes in Ukraine refuse to sign the Berlin Declaration, viewing it not as a universal document, but rather as an act of swearing personal allegiance to Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his Anti-War Committee, which drafted it. Even human rights defenders who did sign the Declaration question why it, in particular, has come to serve as the benchmark of democratic credentials. They regard its inclusion among the criteria for assessing the democratic legitimacy of a potential member as “odd,” since the Berlin Declaration represents “a private statement by one particular segment of the Russian opposition.”
Indeed, it is worth recalling that eight months before the Berlin Declaration, Alexei Navalny’s “15 Points”—a set of principles to which a significant number of Russian political activists still profess commitment—were published. These points outline similar foundations: ending hostilities and withdrawing Russian troops from the occupied territories, compensating Ukraine for the damage caused by the war, condemning imperial policies, committing to a European path of development, as well as dismantling the Putin regime and transforming Russia into a political system that would make the usurpation of power impossible. At the same time, both documents contain elements that appear puzzling. Notably, neither the Berlin Declaration nor Navalny’s 15 Points frames the war in Ukraine as Russia’s war, and both remain silent on the future of captive nations in Russia.
But even if one sets aside the questions raised by Navalnists as to why the “15 Points” are not adopted as the criterion of democratic legitimacy, how will PACE respond if other Russian opposition groups come up with similar declarations of their own?
Ukraine: Scepticism and Restrained Acceptance
Unsurprisingly, initiatives to create platforms involving Russian opposition figures within international organisations are viewed with deep scepticism in Ukraine. Most prominent Russian émigré politicians do not take part in armed resistance against the Putin regime, prefer to shift all responsibility for the invasion onto Putin personally, reject the idea of dismantling the Russian empire, and instead lobby for easing sanctions against “regular Russians.” Increasingly, they blame the west—rather than themselves—for the failure of democratisation in Russia. Nearly four years into the war, the exiled Russian opposition has proven largely irrelevant to Ukraine’s struggle against the invasion.
These arguments were strongly echoed by members of the Ukrainian delegation during the debate. Seven deputies took the floor. None opposed the resolution outright, but all signalled their distrust of the Russian political figures present in the chamber, stressing that they do not view them as a genuine opposition to Putin. Dialogue, they insisted, should be held only with Russians fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces and with representatives of captive nations.
Another concern raised was the lack of clarity in the procedure for determining Russian participants. The Ukrainian delegation succeeded in nearly doubling the criteria for candidate selection, but the Assembly rejected amendments that would have formalised Ukraine’s role in approving the list. This gave the impression that there is no genuine consensus within PACE on the establishment of the Platform for Dialogue with the RDF. As a result, some Assembly members began to doubt the wisdom of the initiative, suggesting that consultations with Russian opposition figures remain at the informal level.
Still, indirect signs suggest that communication between the PACE’s leadership and the Ukrainian delegation had taken place before the resolution was put to a vote. Notably, Ukrainian deputies refrained from openly torpedoing the resolution and instead largely abstained from the vote. Such restraint likely reflected a compromise, which may include the following items. First, the right of Ukraine to nominate representatives of Russian volunteer battalions serving in the Ukrainian armed forces, such as the Russian Volunteer Corps, which has already expressed willingness to join the Platform. Second, a commitment by PACE to establish a separate forum for indigenous peoples and national minorities of Russia, with one-third of seats on the current Platform reserved for them until that forum is created. Third, indirect Ukrainian involvement in controlling the Platform’s activities, possibly through performance indicators such as “feedback from Ukrainian civil society.”
Risks of Division Within the Platform
The creation of the Platform seems to carry potential risks for PACE while offering few tangible benefits. One of the key objectives declared by the resolution’s initiators is to foster greater unity among the highly fragmented Russian anti-Putin forces. In practice, however, it may have the opposite effect—further deepening and cementing the existing divisions among Russian diaspora political groups.
Besides, the inclusion of a diverse array of groups engaged in mutually irreconcilable conflicts raises the question of whether PACE can manage the level of potential tensions within the Platform itself. Frictions are likely to emerge between Russians fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces and well-known dissidents espousing pacifist convictions. Similarly, some Russian émigré politicians—despite condemning imperial policies—still advocate the armed suppression of any hypothetical secession by the North Caucasus. Such a position is unlikely to resonate with representatives of oppressed peoples, who view supporters of continued Russian control over their territories as foes.
It is also unclear whether PACE has a contingency plan should Ukrainian criticism intensify amid internal conflicts within the Platform. Such a scenario could place the Assembly in a difficult position, straining relations with Ukraine, a country whose citizens are dying daily for their independence and the values that the Council of Europe stands for. Were that to happen, the Platform would be remembered alongside PACE’s scandalous decision to restore the credentials of the Russian delegation in 2019 and the leadership’s attempts to shield its disgraced president, Pedro Agramunt—further damaging the Assembly’s image in Ukraine.
Defending his resolution proposal during the debate, Eerik-Niiles Kross drew a parallel with the Soviet occupation, noting that the Estonian diaspora played a vital role by representing the idea of an independent Estonia. By analogy, he argued, Russian democratic forces could play a similar role today, potentially producing their own Willy Brandt or Konrad Adenauer. The comparison, however, is not entirely accurate. Estonian émigrés did not enjoy a formal platform within PACE, but they still managed to convey their message effectively and ultimately saw it realised. Besides, the case of Germany clearly shows that it is not the establishment of a dialogue platform in Strasbourg that increases the chances of Russian Brandts and Adenauers emerging, but Ukraine’s victory on the battlefield. So far, there is scant evidence that prominent Russian emigrants have contributed anything of tangible significance to this cause.
In this darkest hour, we declare our strategic goals – to stop the aggression against Ukraine and create a free, rule of law based, federal Russia. To do this, we consider it necessary to strengthen the coordination of our actions.
We declare our commitment to the following fundamental positions:
The war against Ukraine is criminal. Russian troops must be withdrawn from all occupied territories. The internationally recognized borders of Russia must be restored; war criminals must be brought to justice and the victims of aggression must be compensated.
Putin’s regime is illegitimate and criminal. Therefore, it must be liquidated. We see Russia as a country in which the individual freedoms and rights are guaranteed, in which the usurpation of state power is eliminated.
The implementation of imperial policy within Russia and abroad is unacceptable.
Political prisoners in Russia and prisoners of war must be released, forcibly displaced persons must be allowed to return home, and abducted Ukrainian children must be returned to Ukraine.
We express our solidarity with those Russians who, despite the brutal repressions, have the courage to speak up from anti-Putin and anti-war positions, and with those tens of millions who refuse to participate in the crimes of the Putin’s regime.
The signatories of the Declaration share the values of a democratic society, respectful communication, recognize human rights and freedoms, the principles of diversity and equal rights, rejection of discrimination.
The signatories refrain from public conflicts in the democratic and anti-war movements.
We call on the citizens of Russia to join this Declaration.
We commit to uphold this Declaration until our common strategic goals are achieved.
According to eyewitnesses who spoke to SOTA, the reason for Vladimir Kara-Murza’s departure from the “Anti-War Committee” today was an argument that took place in a restaurant where potential PACE delegation members were seated. The quarrel began with Garry Kasparov accusing Vladimir Kara-Murza of a lack of teamwork.
According to Kasparov, Kara-Murza deliberately brought Yulia Navalnaya and Ilya Yashin to meet the PACE President, bypassing the general meeting—despite neither of them having signed the Berlin Declaration, which implies support for Ukraine. It should be noted that the opposition will receive only 12 seats in PACE, 4 of which are allocated to “decolonizers.”
Alexandra Garmazhapova, who is close to “Free Russia” and heads the “Free Buryatia” foundation created under its protection, omitted the beginning of the conflict with “Free Russia” Vice-President Kara-Murza in her Facebook post.
According to the former journalist, “Kasparov started questioning Kara-Murza in a thuggish tone about why he had not signed the Berlin Declaration. Kara-Murza tried to respond constructively that he was in prison when work on the Berlin Declaration was underway.”
Meanwhile, Kara-Murza himself stated on X (formerly Twitter) today that he and his colleagues from “Free Russia” were allegedly ready to sign the declaration but did not explain why they have not done so yet.
Back in October, Kara-Murza had virtually refused to sign the declaration: “When the criterion for participation in the Russian democratic platform at PACE is signing a document that a significant number of people associate only with one specific political group—that, in my opinion, is a completely clear element of political manipulation, and it is strange, to say the least. Many colleagues feel the same way, including those who were here in Strasbourg last week at the PACE plenary session.”
The “political group” he referred to is the “Anti-War Committee,” which Kara-Murza only left today under the pretense of a conflict with Kasparov, who is only one of its participants.
Garmazhapova further reported that Kasparov accused Kara-Murza of having “only served two years” in prison, unlike Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Garmazhapova then intervened in the conflict on the side of her “Free Russia” colleague, asking why 62-year-old Kasparov is not on the front line but demands it of others.
It should be noted that Natalia Arno—head of “Free Russia”—and Ilya Yashin, who conducts his world tours with funds from this foundation, also joined the public conflict.
Arno stated that “G. Kasparov allowed monstrous insults directed at my colleague Vladimir Kara-Murza,” called it “dirty methods,” called Kara-Murza a hero, and Kasparov someone who fled Russia in 2013. Arno herself emigrated in 2012.
Ilya Yashin, on X, urged Kara-Murza to believe that “he is there for him.”
Thus, the conflict for leadership in PACE between Khodorkovsky and Kara-Murza, as Arno’s protégé, which SOTA previously wrote about, became public today: Kara-Murza’s self-removal from the “Anti-War Committee,” despite the formal conflict with Kasparov—who is only one of its members—only highlighted the brewing contradictions and “intrigues” that Kasparov had mentioned.
“My friends died at the hands of Russian soldiers. Why can’t I talk about it?”
This question will cost Varvara Volkova 7 years in a Russian penal colony. Here’s her story.
Varvara was a flight attendant, not an impassioned political activist. In a neighbourhood chat, she stated the obvious: Russian forces are killing civilians in Ukraine. The prosecution framed it as “fake news” motivated by hatred toward the armed forces, and the court accepted it.
The mechanism used to go after her relies on a Soviet-style culture of snitching: a Russian tank driver complained about her comments, then a professional informer, who intentionally hunts dissidents, amplified the case and demanded she be jailed.
In fact, there’s a whole network of these informers — they call themselves “SMERSH.” For those who don’t know Russian history, it is a reference to Stalin’s WWII counter-intelligence service. It means “Death to Spies” — a direct revival of the terror methods of the 1930s. They published screenshots of her messages everywhere trying to ruin her life; claimed she called the soldier a “fascist”; said she offered to make tea for Ukrainian soldiers if they reached the Moscow region. For words spoken in anger, the system decided to smash her life to pieces.
There is a grim irony in this tragedy: the regime destroyed Varvara to protect the “honor” of the military and her accuser. But the tank driver who reported her is already dead: he was killed in the war earlier this March.
Observers abroad often underestimate the price of resistance in today’s Russia. It is not just a fine anymore, but years and years of one’s life. Varvara Volkova shows us the true bill — and it is devastating.
I track the consequences of speech in modern-day Russia, make sure to follow for more updates.
Preface by the Editorial Board: Below we publish the translation of an article of our Russian comrades about state repression in their country. The article reports, among others, about the situation of comrade Felix Eliseev. He has been in prison for 2.5 years as part of a 14-year prison term. Felix was sentenced for “treason” as he was accused of making propaganda against Putin’s imperialist war against Ukraine and sending money to Ukraine to buy weapons. While the prison authorities do everything to break him, Felix does not lose his spirit and endures his imprisonment stoically. (See https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/felix-eliseev-a-revolutionary-communist-in-russian-prison/)
We call readers to support Felix by spreading this information about a communist and anti-fascist serving an unjust sentence!
According to the human rights organization Memorial, there are currently over 1,000 political prisoners in Russia, while other groups estimate the number could be as high as 2,500. This number is three times higher than in 2020, more than twice as high as in 2022, and continues to grow. In 2025, there was a sharp increase in criminal cases under articles on “justification of terrorism,” “sponsoring terrorist activity,” and “treason.” This is not due to increased terrorism, but to the fact that the security forces, having perfected their repression mechanisms, have begun to intensify their crackdown on “sponsorship” cases, such as those of the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation, recognized as an extremist organization in Russia) or cases related to money transfers to the Ukrainian army, which occurred back in 2022. The term “terrorism” itself has become so vague that even the average person doesn’t always understand what it actually means.
Among political prisoners are many individuals with progressive leftist views, serving time for anti-war activities or “inaccurate” public statements online. The “Foundation for Support of Left-Wing Political Prisoners” provides support to at least some of these individuals. Among them are: defendants in the “Tyumen Case”; defendants in the “Chita Case”; Anton Orlov, a trade union and leftist activist, coordinator of the independent medical workers’ union “Action” in Bashkortostan; Daria Kozyreva, an activist from St. Petersburg known for her anti-war protests and criticism of the Russian army; Gagik Grigoryan, a young activist imprisoned in 2023 at the age of 17; Azat Miftakhov is a Russian mathematician and anarchist, sentenced in 2021 to six years in prison for allegedly setting fire to the United Russia office in 2018. After serving this sentence, he was arrested again in 2023 on charges of “justifying terrorism” in a private conversation with a prison cellmate and sentenced to four years in prison; defendants in the “Kansk teenagers case”; defendants in the “Network case”; Boris Kagarlitsky is a left-wing publicist known in many parts of the world; Ruslan Ushakov is the author of articles published on opposition Telegram channels, sentenced to eight years in prison for posts in a public chat.
The case of the communist Felix Eliseev
Another political prisoner is Felix Eliseev, a Russian communist, blogger, and administrator of the Telegram channels “She Fell Apart” and “Kolkhoznoye Madness.” He was arrested in December 2022 and charged with justifying terrorism. According to investigators, Eliseev posted two anti-war posts on his Telegram channel, one of which endorsed a Ukrainian Armed Forces helicopter strike on an oil depot in Belgorod. The charges were later upgraded, and Eliseev was charged with “treason”. The court alleges that he transferred funds through a cryptocurrency account to a “curator,” who used the funds to purchase equipment and weapons for Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers.
Felix, like many other political prisoners convicted of “terrorist and extremist” offenses, is serving his sentence under intense pressure from the prison administration. He is regularly placed in solitary confinement cells, where they do everything they can to break him mentally and physically.
However, political repression in Russia involves more than just horrific criminal cases of “terrorism,” “treason,” and other “betrayals of the nation.” It also includes the persecution of undesirable and dissenting youth who dare publicly speak out against the war and the ruling elite, thereby gathering many other concerned young people around them.
The “Stop Time” case
One example of such government abuse is the “Stop Time” case. The “Stop Time” case concerns the persecution by Russian authorities of members of the St. Petersburg street music group “Stop Time” – Diana Loginova (pseudonym Naoko), Alexander Orlov, and Vladislav Leontyev – for their participation in impromptu concerts, including one near the Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro station, where they performed anti-war songs by artists designated by the authorities as “foreign agents.” On October 16, 2025, Loginova was arrested and sentenced to 13 days of administrative arrest for performing a song by an artist unpopular with the authorities. The other members of the band were also arrested and sentenced to 12-13 days. These events resonated in the media (both pro-government and opposition) and society, becoming a topic of discussion in the context of artistic freedom and the tightening of censorship in modern Russia.
On October 29-30, the musicians received another 12-13 days of arrest, and on November 11, two of them were arrested for another 13 days. On November 23, the musicians were released from arrest. The lead singer and one of the band members left Russia that same day.
In many Russian cities, street bands followed “Stop Time’s” example and performed opposition songs by artists-foreign agents to large audiences in public squares. They also faced pressure from the authorities and harassment from Z-Neanderthals.
Also, recently, spiders in a jar have started eating each other. Criminal cases have been brought against several well-known military Z-bloggers for discrediting the army! More than two years after Strelkov’s imprisonment and Prigozhin’s murder, a new steamroller of repression is purging those loyalists who are too undesirable.
All of the above demonstrates that Russian society has no legal means to publicly express its attitude toward the events unfolding around it. For any word “against,” the sword of Damocles of Russian justice hangs over every citizen. Despite this, concerned Russians, especially young people, are finding ways to rally together and show the world that not all is lost in this country.
Meanwhile, cowardly security officials and government officials tremble at the mere thought that the masses will sooner or later awaken from their slumber and rise to deliver justice to the imperialist oppressors in the Kremlin. In Russia, literal punishments are being introduced for thought crimes. Thus, in September of this year, an administrative law punishing “searching for extremist materials” came into force. This law allows the FSB to view any citizen’s internet search history, and if it contains views of materials deemed extremist or terrorist, the user faces a visit from masked officers and a fine. The first cases under this law have already been filed.
Furthermore, the country is introducing a so-called “white list” for the internet—only those websites approved by Roskomnadzor are permitted to be accessed; others are inaccessible, and VPNs cannot be connected. So far, in the spirit of Russian tradition, this system is poorly functioning and flawed, but the day is not far off when Russian society will find itself locked in a “cheburnet.” (*)
Freedom for political prisoners!
For freedom of speech, conscience, and the internet!
Down with political repression!
Radical democratization of the country, not the fascist regime of a dictator!
All power to the working class and the working masses, not to a handful of oligarchic monopolists!
(*) Cheburnet is a mixture of two words: Чебурашка (Cheburashka) and internet. Cheburashka is a character from Soviet cartoon for children. Despite it is kind and helpful, in modern mass consciousness it is associated with Soviet censorship. So cheburnet basicaly means internet under the censorship of Russian government and intelligence agencies.
My name is Elena Nikolaevna Bogatova, and I am the mother of political prisoner Ilya Alexandrovich Shakursky. I am crying out for help to save my son so that he does not rot away in solitary confinement.
They took my only son away when he was twenty-one years old. He is now twenty-nine. He has been tortured. He has serious health problems that we still cannot solve. He still has eight years to serve, and they could turn him into a disabled person. I cannot help him on my own, so I am asking all caring people to help us.
It is impossible for a mother to know that her child is being destroyed, and that she cannot save him!
Although he committed no crime, he is in prison under the harsh Article 205 [of the Russian Criminal Code; Article 205 proscribes “terrorist acts”], enduring all the hardships of prison life, without ever receiving any encouragement; we cannot even hope for parole. Right now, [the prison authorities] want to turn him into repeat offender so that he cannot have any visits, phone calls, letters, or packages. They want to take everything away from him.
I ask you to write an appeal. I understand that there are many of us now, and everyone is exhausted. But we must stand together for the sake of our loved ones, for the sake of the younger generation, which is currently being destroyed. Hear the cry of a mother who cannot bear the pain for her son and for all those behind bars. If we push with our shoulders, the walls will collapse….
OVD-Info Faces a Critical Situation: We Have Lost All Our Ruble Donations
26.11.2025
Russian payment services have refused to continue working with us, without providing any explanation, and have cut off our ability to accept one-time and recurring donations. This has severed our connection to our main source of support—the 12,000 individuals who regularly transfer money to OVD-Info.
The services’ refusal to cooperate with us is one of the many manifestations of state pressure on human rights organizations and independent media. Some of them even had to close due to the loss of donations in rubles.
This is a severe blow to our work. With these donations we were able to pay for the work of defense lawyers and legal experts, travel to the regions, maintain our free hotline, and help those who are politically persecuted in Russia. Furthermore, regular donations allowed us to plan our long-term work and development.
We do not plan to close or reduce the scope of our work, because repression is not diminishing. Any political activity, expressing a view against the invasion of Ukraine, or criticism of Putin instantly becomes grounds for persecution. We simply cannot abandon Russians to face this brutal, repressive system alone. We are defending over 90 defendants in criminal cases, almost every day we send lawyers to police stations, courts, searches, penal colonies, and pre-trial detention centers. We answer dozens of messages and calls daily—and we want to continue doing this.
However, now everything depends on whether we can find another 12,000 people who will regularly support OVD-Info.
Yulia Lemeshchenko. Photo from the Memorial website
The Second Western Military District court in Moscow last week sentenced Yulia Lemeshchenko to 19 years’ imprisonment for high treason, sabotage, and preparing and training for an act of terrorism.
Yulia, 42, is a Russian citizen, born in Staryi Oskol, in Belgorod region. She lived in Voronezh in southern Russia, until 2014. Then she moved to Kharkiv, Ukraine, with her son and her husband, who had found work there. Later on the couple separated.
Yulia took up powerlifting and in 2021 was named Ukrainian women’s champion.
In 2024 Yulia did military training in Kyiv – firearms, explosives and flying drones – and returned to Russia, via a third country. She sabotaged power transmission infrastructure near St Petersburg, and in Voronezh conducted surveillance on Aleksei Lobodoi, an air force commander responsible for bombing Kharkiv.
Yulia was arrested in January this year. She did not deny the facts outlined in the prosecution case, but told the court that “from a moral standpoint” she considered herself not guilty. This is a translation of her final statement to the court, published by Mediazona.
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Ukrainian Champion in a Russian Court: Yulia Lemeshchenko’s Final Statement
As you see, I don’t have any sheets of paper and I haven’t especially prepared, but I think I will improvise. I will now probably say a few things that were already said during this hearing, but let this be a sort of summing-up, in a monologue.
So I already spoke here about the fact that, in any war, two sides clash, and each side insists that it is right and that its cause is just. I took one of these sides. I am not a citizen of the country for which I decided to fight, but, all the same, for me, Ukraine is home. I love that country. And I love Kharkiv, with all my heart.
There is a district in Kharkiv called Severnaya Saltovka. About 500,000 people lived there. Half a million. A few people I knew lived there. My hairdresser lived there. After the Russian shelling and bombing, not a single house in that district was left undamaged. Not a single one. And I am not just talking about a few broken windows. I am talking about whole blocks of flats in ruins.
Right next to the block where I lived, there were explosions. In my block, on the ground floor, my neighbour Anya lived with her four-year-old son Nikita. A shell exploded right under their window. Their apartment was completely destroyed. What has happened to Anya and her son I don’t know. I don’t know whether they are still alive.
Friends of mine have died in this war, one relative – my second cousin – and colleagues of mine. War is monstrous. I could not stand aside. When war comes, people who are affected can either try somehow to fight, or they can flee. People flee – I don’t know – maybe because they are cowardly or weak. I don’t consider myself to be a cowardly or weak person. So I decided to fight back – to fight against Russian military aggression.
It is possible that, by saying these things, I am getting myself still deeper into trouble. But my honour, and my conscience, are important to me. I did what I believed to be necessary. I did what I could. To regret, to repent – who knows, maybe I will do that on my deathbed. But for now, what will be, will be. I have nothing further to say.
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When the court hearing began, Mediazona reported that the judge, Vadim Krasnov, read out evidence that Yulia gave after being arrested in January. After the all-out Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Yulia at first moved to Germany. In 2023 she returned to Ukraine and made contact with the “Free Russia” legion, but did not join.
In 2024, when she did her military training, the instructors – who did not answer questions about which part of the armed forces they served in – said that, by way of payment for her work, she could receive Ukrainian citizenship.
The judge asked if she had done so, to which she replied, with a smile, “not yet”.
During the hearing, Judge Krasnov asked Yulia why she had chosen such a radical method of struggle, rather than, for example, providing medical help to the wounded.
“I can only answer that question with another, rhetorical question”, she replied. “Why did Russia decide to use violent methods to destroy Ukrainian cities? A war had started. Do you understand?”
The judge responded that, by 2022, the war had already been underway for eight years. Yes, but it had become frozen, Lemeshchenko said. After the invasion, she wanted to help Ukraine however she could, and was invited to become a saboteur.
“How far were you prepared to go?” asked the judge. “I did not want to do anything that would take human lives”, Lemeshchenko replied. “They accepted that point. On that we had an agreement.”
The judge said that the sabotage Lemeshchenko carried out near St Petersburg left hospitals without electric light. She replied that the aim had been to paralyse a drone factory, that she was sincerely sorry if anyone in Petersburg had suffered. And that she and her son had many times sat in their apartment, without light, when Kharkiv was being bombed.
Lemeshchenko also told the court that, during interrogation, agents of the federal security service (FSB) had threatened to murder her, and pushed her head against a wall. She had tried to tell them the truth. She said that she did not retract her evidence – and nor would she complain about her treatment, as she did not believe that those responsible would be punished.
□ Here is Yulia’s statement in court, recorded with English interpretation. Yulia is recognised as a political prisoner by Memorial, and her case was reported by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
□ The last word in court by Anton Khozhaev, a trainee officer accused of desertion to the Ukrainian side, and more on Russian anti-war protesters
Thursday 20 November, 7:00 p.m. UK time: TRY ME FOR TREASON – Readings from anti-war protesters’ speeches in Russian courts, and book launch for Voices Against Putin’s War.
You are welcome to attend in person at Pelican House, 144 Cambridge Heath Road, London E1. Or watch the livestream here on Facebook, or on Youtube.
What can courtroom speeches by imprisoned protesters tell us about the breadth of anti-war resistance in Russia? British historian Simon Pirani discusses his new book Voices Against Putin’s War with independent Russian journalist Ivan Rechnoy.
Simon Pirani is a British researcher and author who has written about energy and ecology, the history of the Russian Revolution, the labor movement, and post-Soviet Russia. His recent book Voices Against Putin’s War: Protesters’ Defiant Speeches in Russian Courts compiles and analyzes the courtroom speeches of twelve prisoners who were sentenced for resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine.
— Today in Russia, hundreds of people are serving prison sentences for criticizing the invasion of Ukraine. Twelve of those people are the subjects of your book. How did you select them?
— We wanted to show that opposition to Putin’s war is widespread. What is striking about these people is their diversity. They come from different generations, have different life experiences, and hold different political views. This diversity demonstrates that, despite the absence of public demonstrations and the lack of any real possibility of organizing an open anti-war movement in Russia, an anti-war movement does exist there. It encompasses a very broad spectrum of Russian society as well as people from the occupied territories. For example, the book features the courtroom speech of Bohdan Ziza from Crimea.
We decided not to include some of the most well-known opponents of the war in the book — people who made brave and principled speeches in court, like Ilya Yashin, for example. Their statements had already been widely publicized in the media here. Instead our goal was to draw the attention of English-speaking readers to lesser-known figures.
On the one hand, there are those who simply said something or posted statements on social media. For example, Darya Kozyreva, the youngest person featured in the book, was arrested for laying flowers at the Taras Shevchenko monument in Saint Petersburg. On the other hand, these are those who did something, such as throwing firebombs — not with the intention of hurting anyone, but to draw attention to the injustice of the war. Igor Paskar and Alexei Rozhkov are among them. These are people who live in smaller towns far from Moscow or Saint Petersburg, where young men are much more likely to receive draft notices from the conscription service.
We also included the statement by Ruslan Siddiqi, who sabotaged a railway line to stop munitions from reaching Ukraine.
The texts for the book were put together by a group of friends who, since the February 2022 invasion, had been translating the courtroom statements and some of the posts from the media or social networks. When we were already well into that process, a lot of new material appeared on the website Poslednee Slovo [author’s note: the project’s name translates as “the final statement”]. It’s a terrific project that does an excellent job of collecting and publishing a much broader range of cases than we could cover.
We limited ourselves to people who have made explicit anti-war statements about the war in Ukraine. However, as you know, there are many other political prisoners who have appeared in court since the 2022 invasion, as well as many more from before that, especially among the Crimean Tatar political prisoners. They are all represented on the Poslednee Slovo website. Another remarkable thing about the website is that it goes back all the way to the Soviet period. They’ve included the 1966 speeches by Andrei Sinyavsky and Yulii Daniel, perhaps the first examples since Stalin’s time of people using the right for a final statement in court as a form of propaganda.
Our book includes a chapter that lists seventeen additional cases of people who delivered anti-war speeches, beyond the twelve protagonists whose complete statements we published. We hope that either I or my colleagues will eventually translate all of those speeches as well.
Unfortunately, the final courtroom speech has become something like a literary genre in its own right. This tells us a lot about the difficult and fearful times we are living through.
— How do you envision the audience for this book? Are they people in the West and elsewhere who already have some understanding of the situation in Russia and want to learn more? Or are they readers to whom you want to convey a political message — perhaps even to persuade them of something?
— The book is in English and is therefore intended for English-speaking readers rather than Russian-speaking readers. Only a small percentage of people in the UK, the US, and Europe can read Russian. Since 2022, many of us have been aware of the fate of the anti-war movement in Russia. As you know, it began with large demonstrations, but protesting soon became difficult and then almost impossible. Next came the firebomb attacks on military recruitment centers — actions not meant to harm people, but to draw attention to the anti-war cause. We then started reading, in Russia’s opposition media, the final statements of opposition figures — the courtroom having become, in effect, the last public forum in Russia where protest is still possible.
However, I think that many people in English-speaking countries remain unaware of all this.
So, to answer your question, our aim is to reach a wider audience in Western societies: not only those who have closely followed Russia’s attack on Ukraine and its consequences, but also those whose understanding of it comes only from what they have picked up incidentally through the media.
— One of the central figures in your book is Alexander Skobov. One might say he bridges two eras. He was a dissident in the Soviet Union and is once again among the persecuted today. There is another similar example that is not included in the book: Boris Kagarlitsky. How do people in the West perceive the difference between current repressions and the dissident movement during the Cold War? Also, how do they see the difference between the Russian and Western situations now?
— First, I would like to say a few words about Skobov. As someone who regularly travelled to Russia between 1990 and 2019, I was deeply affected by these courtroom speeches. The first one I came across was by Igor Paskar. I thought, “My God, these are such young people — not the youngest, but still much younger than me — who have entered this fight.” Alexander Skobov’s speech also affected me emotionally, perhaps because he is about my age — a year or two younger — and, as you said, he bridges two eras.
I was particularly touched by the letter that he wrote to his partner, Olga Shcheglova. It was published in Novaya Gazeta Europe, and we also included it in the book. In the letter, Skobov explains that some of his friends and comrades urged him to leave Russia, but he refused. This made it inevitable that he would eventually face trial and imprisonment. In the letter, he explains that he wanted to communicate to the younger generation that the small group of dissidents he once belonged to — the socialist wing of the Soviet dissident movement — stands in solidarity with them in these difficult times. He wanted this message to be recorded in history.
I think that is a very important statement, and we all owe Alexander Skobov gratitude for linking these two historical periods through his sacrifice. I hope that including his statements in our book will help people in the West understand this continuity more clearly.
I will try to answer your question about how these movements are perceived. During the Soviet era, people in the West generally considered the dissident movement to be very small and marginal. Given how communication worked back then, it was very difficult for information to break through. Of course, there were large revolts against Soviet power, beginning with the Novocherkassk uprising in the 1960s and other violent revolts in the 1970s and 1980s. I have a friend in Ukraine who studied the major revolt that took place in Dniprodzerzhynsk. These movements were very short-lived, and we hardly knew about them in the West, even those of us who were interested in what was going on in the Soviet Union.
Today, Russians — and Ukrainians, of course — have a much greater opportunity to have real conversations with people in Western Europe. I think the powers of that time really succeeded in dividing Europe; there really was an iron curtain. But that’s gone now. Millions of Ukrainians and Russians live in Western Europe, the UK, and the US. People are learning to communicate with each other and work together in new ways.
We can already see examples of this in Germany, in the UK, and elsewhere. I think this conversation must continue — and our book, I think, is part of that ongoing dialogue.
Of course, it’s not easy to communicate with someone who is literally in a Russian prison. However, through the friends, comrades, and families of the central figures in our book, I hope this conversation will begin and continue over a long period of time.
— I wanted to ask specifically about the possibility of connecting the Russian-Ukrainian and Israeli-Palestinian agendas. We are, of course, impressed by the huge mobilization in support of Palestine. At the same time, many on the left are frustrated that active support for Ukraine — a country in a situation in some ways similar to that of Palestine — is far less widespread in Europe and the West. Have there been any positive developments in this regard recently?
— Since October 2023, we have all watched with horror as Israel’s assault on Gaza has unfolded. It has been widely recognized as a genocide, and we now see a larger and more enduring anti-war movement in Western countries than we have seen in decades — comparable perhaps only to the protests against the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, or even the movement against the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
One of the reasons I felt it was important to translate these texts into English was to show Western audiences how much the Russian anti-war movement has in common with movements here. Of course, their enemies are different, standing on opposite sides of the geopolitical divide, and there are many other differences as well. Yet the similarities are striking — and deeply significant. The motivations of some of those who gave these courtroom speeches — whose statements we have translated — are very similar to those of activists in the UK who have been arrested for supporting Palestine Action, or of those who joined the flotilla recently stopped by Israeli forces as it attempted to reach Gaza.
I spent much of last year attending the large British demonstrations against Israel’s assault on Gaza and calling for a ceasefire. Together with friends, we carried a banner stating: “From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” Our group wanted to show our fellow demonstrators that Ukraine’s struggle for national self-determination and the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom from Israeli occupation share something essential — the right to decide their futures, free from foreign interference and military threats.
We received a very interesting response from other marchers. Those familiar with the politics of the so-called left and socialist movements will recognize the reaction we encountered from a small minority, mostly older people, who said things like: “Why are you siding with Ukraine? Ukraine is just a plaything of the Western powers, a puppet of NATO. Why even talk about this issue?” Yet the overwhelming majority — more than ninety percent — of those who approached us said, “Ah, yes, we hadn’t thought about it that way before, but there really is something in common between these struggles.”
Another major obstacle to unity comes not only from the “campism” of certain leftists — those who focus exclusively on American and British imperialism while downplaying or excusing Russian imperialism — but also from the state, the mainstream press, and government propaganda. The official narrative is consistently supportive of Ukraine and entirely condemnatory of Palestinian resistance. Ordinary people sense this imbalance — the racism and discrimination directed at the Palestinian cause, alongside the establishment’s favoritism toward Ukraine. There is some truth in that: the propaganda machinery of our ruling class here is largely sympathetic to Ukraine. Working-class people in the UK and across Europe notice this and grow suspicious. However, I believe that is a suspicion we can overcome — and that has been our experience.
All of this is my personal opinion. The purpose of the book, however, is to bring to English-speaking readers the voices of our friends and comrades in Russia — those brave people who have found themselves in court and who, in some cases at the risk of additional years in prison, have chosen to exercise their constitutional right (though not always respected by judges) to deliver a final statement before the court. It is a remarkably courageous and difficult decision.
— I wanted to thank you for the book, and I also wanted to ask you, since you have been interested in this topic for a long time: how did your interest in it arise, and why has Russia become so important to you?
— My connection with Russia began through the labour movement. I first went to Russia in 1990 — to Prokopyevsk, in western Siberia, where the miners’ strikes of 1989 had first broken out. At that time, I was working as a journalist for the mineworkers’ trade union here in the UK. We saw an opportunity to develop links of solidarity between Soviet miners and British miners. And we had some success. Our friends in the British miners’ union established a very close relationship with the Independent Miners’ Union of Western Donbas, based in Pavlograd. This friendship continues even today.
In those days, I was a member of a Trotskyist organisation, and in August 1990, we organised a meeting in Moscow to mark the 40th anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination. This, too, was part of a conversation between Western socialists and people in Russia and Ukraine that had been practically impossible during the “Cold War.”
I continued to follow what’s going on in Russia and Ukraine, and to write about it, and between 2007 and 2021, I worked at a research institute, writing about the energy sectors of those countries.
Since the pandemic, I haven’t been back to Russia. On February 24th, 2022, when the invasion began, I was at home and was shocked. We were all shocked. The invasion has changed everything, both in Ukraine and Russia, for many years to come. Together with friends, we began translating these courtroom speeches and posting them online. Gradually, that work grew into the idea of making a book.
I hope your readers will read it. Later this year, we’re going to make the book freely available as a PDF, so that everyone can access it.
If we do make any money — and I should say it is a very cheap book — all proceeds will go to Memorial and political prisoners. Nobody is making a profit from this project. The whole point is to share these voices with a much wider audience.
VOICES AGAINST PUTIN’S WAR Protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts
Speeches by Alexei Gorinov, Igor Paskar, Bohdan Ziza, Mikhail Kriger, Andrei Trofimov, Sasha Skochilenko, Aleksandr Skobov, Darya Kozyreva, Alexei Rozhkov, Ruslan Siddiqi, Kirill Butylin and Savelii Morozov.
Foreword by John McDonnell, Member of UK Parliament
The E-book can be purchased at the usual online retailers Any profits will be donated to Memorial: Support for Political Prisoners https://memohrc.org/en
Write to Gordey at the following address:
You can also send letters through the online services 
