A Memorial Concert for Pavel Kushnir

A charity concert has been held in Paris in tribute to the pianist Pavel Kushnir, who died in detention in Russia. The funds raised were donated to the Paris-based Atelier des artistes en exil (Agency of Artists in Exile), which aids artists who have fled their countries due to war, persecution, and discrimination.

The concert was held at Salle Cortot in Paris. World-renowned pianists Grigory Sokolov and Sergei Babayan performed a program of pieces by Frederic Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Tickets for the concert were sold out almost instantly.

“As musicians, we want to voice our support for artists around the world who are persecuted and sometimes forced to leave their native country. Pavel Kushnir chose internal emigration and bravely and unreservedly spoke out against the war. He paid for this with his life. We wholeheartedly support Grigory Sokolov and Sergei Babayan’s November 18 concert in Paris and join them in paying tribute to Pavel, as well as in voicing our solidarity with all artists who are suffering from repression today,” reads a letter in support of the concert, which was signed by Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Gidon Kremer, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Semyon Bychkov, Paavo Järvi, and many other famous musicians of our time.

“Music can be used for good as well as for ill. Pavel Kushnir always used it for good. Let us honor his memory and follow his example,” says pianist Evgeny Kissin, who also signed the letter.

“I am honored to pay tribute to the memory of a young artist who gave his life for the truth. Pavel Kushnir clearly understood that there can be no happiness and, in fact, no real art when one country causes another country untold suffering, and the truth about this crime is not heard. The deeply inhuman nature of the regime responsible for his death is underscored by the fact that he, a young artist living far from the capital, posed no danger to the continuation of its criminal rule. He made a beautiful recording of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes, and for that reason I wanted to play Rachmaninoff for him. I would have loved to have met Pavel, who was undoubtedly a beautiful, exceptionally sincere young soul. My thoughts are with Pavel Kushnir, his family, and all the victims of the enemies of freedom and truth,” said Sergei Babayan, explaining his involvement in the concert and the works selected for it.

The proceeds from the concert, as well as the donations raised, will be given to the Paris-based Atelier des artistes en exil, which has aided many hundreds of artists during the seven years of its existence.

“When we left Russia, we had heard nothing about Atelier, and it was not clear where we would put down roots,” says composer Dmitry Kurlyandsky, who turned down Russia’s Golden Mask national theater prize, which he was awarded for the music he wrote for Perm-based Theater-Theater’s production of the play Katerina Izmailova. He called the award “antics on the part of a system which is destroying the theater.”

“But on the second day,” Kurlyandsky says, “I had already found out about Atelier. We called them and they invited us to a meeting. It was the very beginning of the wave of emigration from Russia, and Atelier had more capacity to accommodate refugees. We lucked out. Thanks to Atelier we stayed for eight months for free in a hotel in downtown Paris, and during this time we were able to get our papers sorted and find a place to live.”

Judith Depaule, founder and head of Atelier des artistes en exil, sat down for an interview with Radio Svoboda.

— How did you find out about Pavel Kushnir’s tragic story?

— From Russian acquaintances. I also read about it in the French press. There wasn’t that much coverage of Kushnir’s plight, but there were some articles nevertheless. Many artists at Atelier talked about it.

It’s all quite frightening, of course. I have been studying the history of theater in the Gulag for a long time. I see Kushnir’s tragedy as a repetition of what already happened, of things with which we are all very familiar. I’m always amazed at how much history can repeat itself. I wonder why it repeats itself, despite everything we know about our past. How is it that people are dying again just for freely expressing themselves! I find it scary, because the right to freedom of expression is what matters most.

— You said that you said that you studied theater in the Gulag. Tell us a little more about that.

— It so happened that as part of my studies I researched the work of the Futurist theater director Igor Terentiev, who was arrested and sent to work on the White Sea Canal. We know a lot about his life on the White Sea Canal because he was photographed by the legendary Alexander Rodchenko. It was a shock to me that the theater could exist in the Gulag. I researched the topic. I went to the Memorial Society, and I was able to interview many former prisoners. I even traveled to Magadan and Vorkuta. So I am an expert on the history of the theater in the Gulag.

— Whose idea was Pavel Kushnir memorial concert? Why were Grigory Sokolov and Sergei Babayan involved in it?

— It was the artists at Atelier who took the initiative. To make the event respectable, they decided to invite famous musicians. We approached Sokolov and Babayan, and they immediately agreed.

— Yes, Sokolov and Babayan are certainly musicians of the highest order. Babayan is also a renowned teacher. Was the concert program solely Sokolov’s and Babayan’s choice? Or did they discuss it with you as well?

— No, they decided themselves what to play in memory of Kushnir. It was their own choice; we didn’t discuss it with them. It was important to us that the program included pieces which they loved and were willing to perform.

— I think any classical music lover would dream of going to such a concert. It’s just a pity that the occasion is so tragic. There was also a letter in support of the concert, signed by a plethora of classical music stars. The letter claimed that Pavel Kushnir had chosen internal emigration, internal exile. Do you agree with this? If so, how do you understand this term?

— I would imagine that Pavel did not want to be the center of attention, but simply wanted to feel freer. This did not work out for him, alas. I think that, while living under a dictatorship, Pavel was trying to find a place where he could at least breathe freely and do what he loved doing. Because Russia is so vast, you could say that it really was internal exile. This again takes us back to the past. When people tried to disappear from the Kremlin’s sight, they left the major cities to feel at least a little bit freer.

— Atelier des Artistes en Exile deals with a wide range of creative genres, not just music or theater, for example. How did you decide to take on such a serious challenge?

— I founded Atelier in 2017 as a response to the migration crisis in Europe, which peaked in September 2015. There were so many Syrian migrants in Paris. I was working in a small cultural center at the time. We just decided to shelter migrants; it wasn’t about artists at the time. Gradually we began helping immigrants and put together a festival that was dedicated to Syria. I often talked to exiled artists, and they always said the same thing: “We were professional artists before we left. We had a profession. What are we supposed to do now? We don’t understand how French society works, we don’t understand its cultural traditions.” And so on. I decided that something had to be done to help performers and artists in exile. Gradually, this idea began to develop, and I set up this agency in early 2017. At the time there was no talk at all about Russian artists and performers, back then it was mostly Sudan and Syria. Atelier has grown because it helps everyone who leaves their country, whatever the reason, whether dictatorship or discrimination. The world is now in a state in which there are wars, dictatorships, and illegal imprisonment everywhere. So performers and artists have started arriving in France much more often.

— What kind of assistance do you provide? Do you help with accommodation, visas, and jobs, or do you support cultural projects?

— For those who are still in their home countries but want to come to France, we help them get visas and explain how to get here. When people are already in France, we help them with long-term visas and residence permits, so that they are staying in France legally. We help them with social services — medical insurance and so on. We provide a place to work, because that is super important. If you don’t have a place to work, you are no longer an artist or a performer. We offer French language courses, and we have put together a program for artists to learn French through art. We help them understand how French society is organized and learn the peculiarities of French culture. We explain to them what rights they have, what benefits they can claim, how they should fill out their income tax declarations, and so on. We also organize cultural events.

— Who supports Atelier des artistes en exil itself?

— It is supported by the French Ministry of Culture, which sponsors various programs. Private foundations also help out. We are constantly looking for resources. The Pavel Kushnir memorial concert also includes a fundraising campaign to support the Atelier. This involves the money from ticket sales and donations, which we need very much, as we have a large team helping hundreds of people — 350-400 people a year.

— How can people who decide to come to you for help prove that they are artists?

— You have to show us what you have done up to this point: a portfolio, internet links, an account of your past work. It is not difficult to check whether a person is actually an actor, musician, or artist. It is immediately clear what kind of experience they have, where they studied, with whom they worked. Then we decide whether or not to work with them.

— Given that there is a full-scale war on in Ukraine, do you prioritize Ukrainian artists who have fled the hostilities when you’re choosing whom to help?

— Because there are many ongoing wars in the world, we don’t prioritize anyone. We just assist people who find themselves in a dangerous situation. If we talk about relevance, we are most often contacted by people from Gaza and Lebanon, who can be killed at any moment and who ask us how they can leave and what they need to do to leave. We are always watching what is happening in the world. It was not that everything was fine in the world when we started, but there were not so many conflicts. After the pandemic, there were immediate problems in Myanmar and Afghanistan, there was the war in Ukraine, there was the brutal crackdown against the women’s rights movement in Iran. And so on and so forth. More and more performers and visual artists have been turning to us because they don’t know how to go on living.

— Has the number of Russians who seek your assistance increased recently?

— It has been a constant flow which doesn’t stop. The current wave of émigrés from Russia is even greater than the very first one, whom we call White Russian émigrés.

— Let us return to the fate of Pavel Kushnir. I have read that famous musicians who learned about this tragedy and then listened to Pavel’s recordings and read what he wrote, voiced regret that they had not known about him or his talent earlier. Do you think there are many such unknown talents in the world? If so, how can we help the world learn about them not only after their tragic deaths, as happened with Kushnir?

— Pavel’s fate mirrors the history of art in many ways. Many great talents have been discovered after their death. There are so many musicians, actors, and artists for whom creating and making art is what matters most, not being famous. It doesn’t matter to them that they are not in the public eye. We can’t know about everyone, of course. I can’t suggest any way of remedying ths; it’s just the way the world works. There are people who will always be in the limelight, and there are people who will go on modestly pursuing what they love. Sometimes they are more talented than the artists we know well. When we discover a great talent after their death, sometimes a hundred years later, we ask ourselves how come we hadn’t heard anything about them until now, how we had missed them. But there’s hardly anything we can do about it.

Source: Andrei Sharogradsky, “‘I Wanted to Play Rachmaninoff for Him’: A Pavel Kushnir Tribute Concert in Paris,” Radio Svoboda, 19 November 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

Ildar Dadin, 1982–2024

Ildar Dadin. Photo: social media, via *Ukrainska Pravda*

Russian opposition activist Ildar Dadin has been killed in action in Ukraine, where he was fighting on Kyiv’s side.

Source: Ksenia Larina, a former journalist for radio station Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow); Meduza, a Latvia-based Russian media outlet

Quote from Larina: “Ildar Dadin has just been reported killed in a battle in Kharkiv Oblast.”

Details: She learned about Dadin’s death from Igor Volobuev, another Russian fighting on Kyiv’s side and former vice-president of Gazprombank, one of Russia’s largest banks.

For reference: Ildar Dadin arrived in Ukraine in early 2023 to enlist in Ukraine’s Armed Forces and fight against the Russians. He joined the Siberian Battalion at the front, fighting under the alias Gandhi.

He is the first Russian to be convicted for repeatedly violating rally regulations in Russia, a charge introduced in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in 2014, commonly referred to by journalists as the “Dadin article.”

In December 2015, Dadin was sentenced to three years in prison, which was later reduced to two and a half years.

In 2016, Dadin spoke about torture in the Karelian Penal Colony No. 7, where he had been held. Information about torture and beatings was confirmed by other prisoners and their relatives, but Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service and the Investigative Committee found no violations following their inspections.

Source: Roman Petrenko, “Russian opposition activist Dadin killed in action in Kharkiv Oblast, fighting on Ukrainian side,” Ukrainska Pravda, 6 October 2024

Ildar Dadin, protesting for the release of Ukrainian POW Nadiya Savchenko, circa 2014–20145.
Photo: Russian Avos

News about Ildar Dadin’s plight as a jailed opposition protester, 2016–2017

Ildar Dadin: “When I Get Out, We Will Change the Country for the Better”

The Crime of Speaking Up in Russia: Solidarity with Dadin and Polyudova

Maria Eismont: The Case of Ildar Dadin

Where Is Ildar Dadin?

Policing the Polls

Elections observer who left message on ballot jailed for 5 days

Marina Popova served as an observer during the elections in St. Petersburg. On Sunday, she decided to vote herself. Prior to this, she specially had herself reassigned to Polling Station No. 2213 on Lomonosov Street [where she was working as an elections observer].

Popova told Rotunda that two other people voted after her. A police officer then noticed a ballot in the ballot box on which a pacifist message [“No war!”] had been written. According to Popova, a polling board member wrote out a statement saying that it was Popova who had dropped the ballot with the message into the ballot box.

Consequently, Popova was detained and taken to the police station. There, she was charged with “petty hooliganism” and, later, “discrediting the army.” The first charge sheet says that Popova disturbed the peace because she wrote a pacifist message in large letters in bright blue ink that was seen by people at the polling station.

Popova was taken to the police station on Sunday morning and never returned to the polling station. She was taken to court on Tuesday. When her detention period expired, she went home. She was taken back to court in handcuffs—the police collected her from her home.

At the court hearing, Popova’s lawyer Alyona Skachko told Rotunda, polling board members claimed that the ballot was state property, which the observer had spoiled. As a result, Popova was fined 30,000 rubles [approx. 300 euros] and jailed for five days.

📌 Marina’s husband Dmitry Popov and two people from the United Russia party were the only observers left at the polling station on Lomonosov Street after it closed on the last day of voting. During the vote tally, Popov was forcibly restrained by persons unknown who, as he claimed, tried to strangle him. Eventually, however, the police arrived and detained Popov. At the police station, he was charged with “petty hooliganism.” It is alleged that he used foul language.

Source: Rotunda (Telegram), 10 September 2024. Photo courtesy of Fontanka.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader

Residents of 81 federal subjects of Russia will vote in regional and municipal elections starting Friday.

The elections mark the second time this year that Russians are heading to the polls following the March presidential election. That vote, which saw Vladimir Putin win a fifth term virtually unchallenged, was marred by widespread reports of vote tampering, restrictions on monitors and pressure on voters.

But unlike the presidential campaign, Russian media coverage of this year’s regional elections has been scarce — likely the result of a deliberate government strategy of decreasing voter turnout to a bare minimum of loyal voters, an analysis published by independent election watchdog Golos suggests.

Golos analysts believe that the Kremlin is betting on mobilizing a relatively small number of voters working in the government sector and demotivating all the rest to ensure a smooth victory for its candidates.

To help you understand what else is expected in the upcoming September elections, the Moscow Times has gathered everything known about the vote so far[.]

What will the voting look like?

Multi-day voting, which was first introduced across Russia during the Covid-19 pandemic, will be implemented in most regions for the September 2024 elections. The majority of voters will have two or three days to cast their ballots depending on the region.

Some regional electoral commissions, including in the republics of Chechnya, Tatarstan and Sakha (Yakutia), have chosen to hold voting on one day on Sunday.

Twenty-five regions will allow residents to vote online via the state portal Gosuslugi, while election officials in Moscow have scrapped paper ballots altogether in favor of online voting.

Independent observers have long argued that extended voting periods and online voting make voter fraud more likely, as it becomes harder for independent monitors and poll workers to do their jobs.

Meanwhile, the CEC advised authorities in six southern Russian regions near Ukraine and in occupied Crimea to limit access to online broadcasts from polling stations, citing public safety concerns.

G[ubernatorial] elections

Residents of 21 regions, including the city of St. Petersburg, will vote for their governors.

Among these, the Far East Zabaikalsky region, the Siberian republic of Altai and the southern republic of Kalmykia stand out as some of the most “troublesome” regions for the Kremlin.

The ruling United Russia party has struggled to secure strong wins for its candidates in these regions in the past and incumbents hoping for reelection remain largely unpopular among local populations and elites, according to Golos.

The Urals republic of Bashkortostan will also be under the Kremlin’s close watch as Moscow-backed incumbent Radiy Khabirov stands for reelection in the wake of the January protests in support of jailed activist Fayil Alsynov.

Coupled with high numbers of war casualties in Ukraine and a slew of recent corruption scandals involving Khabirov’s inner circle, those protests forced the incumbent’s approval ratings to plummet.

But as in most other regions, the Kremlin mitigated the possibility of a potential blow in Bashkortostan by not allowing a single independent candidate on the ballot.

Regional parliament elections

Members of regional parliaments will be chosen across 11 regions, including the capital Moscow, the republics of Tatarstan and Tyva and the Khabarovsk region.

This year’s election will see the participation of a record-low number of political parties with an average of 6.2 parties represented on the ballot, according to Golos.

Golos said this worrying statistic is a direct result of an unprecedented scale of repression faced by independent politicians regardless of their political views.

“[A politician] can be declared a foreign agent or convicted of extremism to be removed from the elections,” Golos wrote in an analytical report published last month.

“And if they still [manage to] register and win, there is…the possibility of being declared a foreign agent and deprived of his mandate a couple of weeks after the elections,” the watchdog said.

Municipal elections

Elections for city mayors and city parliaments will take place across 22 regions.

Abakan, the capital of the Siberian republic of Khakassia, and Anadyr, the capital of the Chukotka autonomous district, are two of only four Russian cities where mayors are still chosen through direct election.

Mayoral elections had also been set for Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Siberian republic of Buryatia, but the region’s parliament scrapped the procedure in favor of the council electors system in March.

In St. Petersburg, where 1,560 seats in the city’s [municipal district councils] are up for grabs, candidates running from so-called “systemic opposition” parties — namely the Communist Party (CPRF) and the social-liberal Yabloko party — were barred from registering en masse.

And while CPRF managed to get 25% of its original pool of candidates onto the ballot, Yabloko will not have any representation in this year’s [m]unicipal [c]ouncil[s] race.

Occupied Ukrainian and Russian territories

In annexed Crimea, Kremlin-installed head Sergei Aksyonov will stand for reelection and members of the regional parliament and the legislative assembly of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol — its own federal subject — will be voted in.

The Kremlin refused to cancel voting in the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces have been carrying out a bold incursion for more than a month, and where Putin appointee Alexei Smirnov is seeking to secure his mandate as governor.

The CEC instead extended the voting period to 10 days and is supplying local election officials with bulletproof vests and helmets.

Kursk regional authorities announced Thursday that nearly 27% of eligible voters [had] already cast their ballots in the [gubernatorial] election.

Source: “The Roadmap to Russia’s 2024 Regional Elections,” Moscow Times, 6 September 2024.

[…]

GROSS: So Trump recently spoke to the Fraternal Order of Police, and he urged them to watch out for voter fraud. Let’s hear what he said.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: You’re in serious trouble if you get caught trying to find out what are the real results of an election. It’s an amazing thing. Do you ever see that? They go after the people that are looking at the crime, and they do terrible things to them. But the people that committed the voter fraud and everything, they can do whatever they want to do. It’s so crazy. And I hope you, as the greatest people – just as great as there is anybody in our country – I hope you watch for voter fraud.

So it starts early. You know, it starts in a week, but I hope you can watch, and you’re all over the place. Watch for the voter fraud because we win. Without voter fraud, we win so easily. Hopefully, we’re going to win anyway, but we want to keep it down. You can keep it down just by watching because, believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you people. They’re afraid of that.

GROSS: Nick, is that voter intimidation? He’s telling the police that these fraudulent voters are afraid of police, implying that the police should use that fear to find voter fraud so that Trump can win.

CORASANITI: I think it – certainly, were it to be carried out – would be challenged by voting rights groups, Democrats and probably even some Republicans – that that would amount to voter intimidation. It’s also pretty important to note that a couple states have very specific laws that, you know, outlaw uniformed police officers having a kind of patrolling presence in – at polling places during elections.

And, you know, there’s a very dark history in the Jim Crow South about uniformed police officers and voter suppression within the Black community. So a combination of history and state laws and then the kind of instruction that the former president was giving to these police officers could certainly amount to voter intimidation or possibly even more unlawful behavior.

[…]

Source: Terry Gross, “How Democrats and Republicans are gearing up for a post-election legal fight,” Fresh Air (NPR), 12 September 2024

Basurka

Top: “25 Khromov Street.” Left: “Shaman: Victory!” Right: “We are there where we need to be. Serve as a contract soldier in the Russian Army and get a one-time payment starting at one million rubles.”

Source: Caution, Tver! (Telegram), 1 September 2024. Thanks to Andrey Anissimov for the heads-up. “Basurka” is the faux-Russian nonce word I coined for this distressing post. It was suggested to me by our building’s bilingual garbage bin. ||| TRR

Many acquaintances from Russia condemn me for calling for the bombing of Russian factories and supporting the Ukrainian army’s Kursk offensive. They genuinely don’t get how one could wish defeat on one’s own country. Some have quietly unfriended me, while others continue to read my posts but are perplexed and perhaps even offended by them.

They are often the same people who “love (their) country no matter what.” This is where you all and I part ways. You REFUSE to look at reality—you turn away from it in order to love your country without breaking a sweat, as if love were a chain and you’ve been chained to a radiator since childhood. It works differently for me. I make my own decision about whether I like this scene or not. And, if my country jumps from one bloody shitstorm to another like a maniac running in circles, it’s not worthy of my love and I rescind its right to be my country. People are another matter, especially the unborn. It makes sense to fight for them. But it’s secondary to me what the country they’ll live in will be called and how big it will be. If they’ll have a better chance for a decent and safe life in a small country, then we should choose a decent and safe life for them.

Russia is an anti-human phenomenon. It is a threat to the entire world and to the people within the country. Like any rabid macaque with a grenade, it must be stopped. Look reality in the eye at last. Don’t look away. It’s happening right now, and you, with your unadulterated love, are a part of it.

Image number one. A fourteen-year-old girl dressed in white sneakers and a white tank top, sitting on a bench in the yard of her house on an ordinary summer day. It all looks ordinary, but there is one catch: the girl is dead. A fragment of a cluster bomb, which the Russians dropped on Kharkiv on 30 August, tore off the child’s head. Everything happened instantly; no one had time to hide. The girl’s body remained seated on the bench. Perhaps her last thoughts were of her father, who had gone missing in action in the war with Russia. The family knows he was killed, but they can’t get his body back. The worst part is that he gave his life thinking he was protecting his daughter. Russia got to her, though, and so the family’s story is over. Father and daughter are not alive because they were born near Russia. Other Kharkiv residents who were killed in that senseless attack are also “guilty” in this sense.

Image number two. A girl again, but from another city. She is fifteen years old and has come to Novosibirsk from the Altai to enroll in the Olympic reserve school. She is quite beautiful, gentle, kind, and has great hopes. She doesn’t understand why her fellow students call her a “dirty, slant-eyed pig.” They secretly pour waste into her backpack and mock her appearance in public. After two years of this terror, which was encouraged by coaches and school officials, the formerly cheerful girl will come to realize that this life is not for her. In her seventeenth year, she will kill herself and leave a suicide note on her Telegram channel. She will say in the note that the unbearable racist bullying was her reason for leaving this life.

The school will then post a touching obituary on their Vkontakte page. They won’t specify the cause of death, of course. All comments expressing outrage over the bullying will be assiduously deleted. Only the wishes of “soft clouds” and broken heart emojis will be left untouched.

Incitement to suicide is a criminal offense, actually. But no one will answer for the death of Ksenia Cheponova because it is not the custom in Russia to punish one’s own kind for a crime against outsiders. “You’re not my brother, black-ass louse,” says the immortalized Russian movie hero. These words are much more than a mere insult: this is how millions of people in Russia understand justice. Moral rightness is not based on your deeds, but on whether you are an insider or an outsider. It doesn’t matter what you did. What matters is whether you are stronger than me at the moment.

Image number three. Beslan. September first marked the twentieth anniversary of the mass murder of children by Russian security forces in that ill-fated school. For twenty years, the perpetrators have never been held accountable for lying about “350 hostages.” There were 1,100 hostages, as we know. No one has been held accountable for firing from a tank at the building where the children were. Three hundred and thirty-four people were killed during the assault, including one hundred and eighty children. This terrorist attack might not have happened if Russia hadn’t started a war in Chechnya. The hostages might have lived if the security forces had actually tried to save them. But they were killed and twenty years on their sacrifices are still covered in lies and impunity.

All of those people could have lived if it weren’t for their country, sick with messianism and aggression. And the “it’s like this everywhere” ploy doesn’t work. No country in the world has 60 million lives lost in wars, gulags, and famines under its belt.

The time for saying “no war” has passed. It is clear that where there is a “great Russia,” there will be perpetual war. That’s why we should say no to Russia, and yes to independent Ukraine, Ichkeria, Buryat-Mongolia, and all free nations.

Or is the idea of a united Russia dearer than the lives of your children?

Source: Julia Khazagaeva (Facebook), 3 September 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Two ballistic missiles blasted a military academy and nearby hospital Tuesday in Ukraine, killing more than 50 people and wounding more than 200 others, Ukrainian officials said.

The missiles tore into the heart of the Poltava Military Institute of Communication’s main building, causing several stories to collapse. It didn’t take long for the smell of smoke and word of the deadly strike to spread through the central-eastern town.

The strike appeared to be one of the deadliest carried out by Russian forces since the war began more than 900 days ago, with Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, full-scale invasion.

“People found themselves under the rubble. Many were saved,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video posted on his Telegram channel. He ordered an investigation.

Shattered bricks were visible inside the closed gates of the institution, which was off-limits to the media, and small pools of blood could be seen just outside hours later. Field communications trucks were parked along the perimeter. Roads were covered in glass from shattered apartment windows.

“I heard explosions … I was at home at that time. When I left the house, I realized that it was something evil and something bad,” said Yevheniy Zemskyy, who arrived to volunteer his help. “I was worried about the children, the residents of Poltava. That’s why we are here today to help our city in any way we can.”

By Tuesday evening, the death toll stood at 51, according to the general prosecutor’s office.

“My deepest condolences to the families of those killed and injured in the Russian missile attack on Poltava,” Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, posted on social media Tuesday. “This is a shocking tragedy for the whole Ukraine.”

Filip Pronin, governor of the region that bears Poltava’s name, announced on Telegram that 219 people were wounded. Up to 18 people may be buried under the rubble, he said.

Ten apartment buildings were damaged, and more than 150 people donated blood, Pronin said.

He called it “a great tragedy” for the region and all of Ukraine, and announced three days of mourning starting Wednesday.

[…]

The academy trains officers in communications and electronics, honing some of the most valued skills in a war where both sides are fighting for control of the electronic battlefield.

“The enemy certainly must answer for all (its) crimes against humanity,” Pronin wrote on Telegram.

The Kremlin offered no immediate comment on the strike. It was not clear whether the dead and wounded were limited to Ukrainian military personnel, such as signal corps cadets, or if they included civilians.

Since it embarked on its full-scale invasion in early 2022, the Russian military has repeatedly used missiles to smash civilian targets, sometimes killing scores of people in a single attack.

Some of the deadliest such assaults included a 2022 airstrike on a theater in Mariupol that killed hundreds of civilians sheltering in the basement and a strike that same year on the train station in Kramatorsk that killed 61. Apartment buildings, markets and shopping centers have also been targeted.

Poltava is about 350 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Kyiv, on the main highway and rail route between Kyiv and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is close to the Russian border.

The attack happened as Ukrainian forces sought to carve out their holdings in Russia’s Kursk border region after a surprise incursion that began Aug. 6 and as the Russian army hacks its way deeper into eastern Ukraine.

The missiles hit shortly after an air-raid alert sounded, when many people were on their way to a bomb shelter, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said, describing the strike as “barbaric.”

Rescue crews and medics saved 25 people, including 11 who were dug out of the rubble, a Defense Ministry statement said.

The strike came on the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Mongolia. There was no indication that his hosts would heed demands to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes.

Zelenskyy repeated his appeal for Ukraine’s Western partners to ensure swift delivery of military aid. He has previously chided the U.S. and European countries for being slow to make good on their pledges of help.

He also wants them to ease restrictions on what Ukraine can target on Russian soil with the weapons they provide. Some countries fear that hitting Russia could escalate the war.

“Ukraine needs air defense systems and missiles now, not sitting in storage,” Zelenskyy wrote in English on Telegram.

“Long-range strikes that can protect us from Russian terror are needed now, not later. Every day of delay, unfortunately, means more lost lives,” he said.

Ukraine’s air force said Monday that Russia had launched an overnight barrage of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones at Kyiv as children prepared to return to school. Multiple explosions echoed across the capital early Monday morning as Ukraine’s air defenses shot down many of the weapons, causing damage and fires as the debris fell onto the capital.

Source: CBS News, 3 September 2024

Ufa’s Kirov District Court has remanded 20-year-old university student Makar Nikolayev in custody to a pretrial detention center for a month on charges of “promoting terrorism.” The court issued its ruling on 30 August, but it was made public only on Monday, 2 September, as reported by the Telegram channels of Baza and Idel.Realities, who cited sources. The court confirmed Nikolayev’s arrest to news website Ufa1.ru.

In 2020, Nikolayev, then a prep school student, designed an information retrieval method for creating a Russian national archive on the history of the Great Patriotic War. The boy wanted to recover information about his great-grandfather and in the process designed an entire system. His project, “Methodology for Creating a Family Archive,” won the Russian national contest “My Country — My Russia,” one of the projects of the Russia Is a Land of Opportunities presidential platform.

Later, Nikolayev went to Germany to study. According to Idel.Realities, Nikolayev had been studying at a university in Frankfurt am Main in recent years. In August 2024, he came home on holiday to Ufa, where he was detained.

According to police investigators, during his time abroad, Nikolayev wrote comments on social networks supporting Ukraine and urging people to join the Russian Volunteer Corps. The stipulated punishment for violating Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 205.2.2 (“Public calls to carry out terrorist activities; public justification of terrorism or promotion of terrorism, committed using mass media or electronic or telecommunication networks”) is five to seven years in prison.

Source: Sergei Kuprikov, “Winner of ‘My Country — My Russia’ contest detained in Ufa,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 2 September 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

When Your Child Is a Political Prisoner

Since the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the country’s repressive apparatus has turned so severe that absolutely anyone can face serious prison time. You can evince complete indifference to events or even support the “special military operation,” but one day it could happen that a family member of yours has been captured by the security forces. Often these family members are minors. They are now being given quite “adult” prison sentences, but they have virtually no chance of being released as part of high-profile prisoner exchanges.

The number of Russians imprisoned for political offenses has been growing, and the situation is unlikely to improve in the near future. We decided to tell the stories of several family members of political prisoners in order to try and answer the simplest questions: why relatives of prisoners often need support themselves, how best to help relatives of political prisoners, what mistakes it is better to avoid making if your relative is detained by law enforcement, and the vital role played by letters to political prisoners. Ivan Astashin, a human rights activist with the project Solidarity Zone and a former political prisoner himself, and two mothers whose sons have been convicted of “terrorism” by the Russian authorities helped us to answer those questions.

Cast of characters:

Anna, Nikita Uvarov’s mother. Nikita Uvarov was a defendant in the high-profile case of the Kansk teens. The three teens charged in the case were detained by law enforcement after posting leaflets on an FSB building and organizing an anarchist “terrorist” group. Uvarov was sentenced to five years in prison.

Tatyana, Yegor Balazeikin’s mother. Yegor Balazeikin, a prep school student, was detained for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at the wall of a military enlistment center in the Leningrad Region which failed to ignite. According to investigators, in February 2023, Balazeikin tried to set fire to military enlistment offices in St. Petersburg and the town of Kirovsk by way of protesting against the military mobilization. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

Ivan Astashin was a political prisoner in the high-profile 2010s criminal case against the so-called Autonomous Combat Terrorist Organization (ABTO). He spent almost ten years in prison. Nowadays, he does human rights work as part of the project Solidarity Zone, which we featured in a previous article.

Arrest and Verdict

Tatyana, Yegor Balazeikin’s mother: The telephone rang at 11:40 p.m. on 28 February. It was an unknown number. A woman’s voice said that our son had been detained whilst attempting to torch a military enlistment office in the town of Kirovsk in the Leningrad Region. At the time [of his arrest], Yegor was in the room which we had rented for him [in St. Petersburg]. He stayed there on school days because it was near the prep school he attended. We live in the Leningrad Region, and it was quite complicated to commute there. When I heard what the woman said, I told my husband what happened and that we should get ready to go. We got ready instantly and went there. What were we feeling at that moment? We probably felt that was happening was not real because Yegor had never broken any rules, not at school or kindergarten, not at his sports club, not outside or in public places. We realized that something out of the ordinary must have happened to move him to do what he did.

We were not allowed to see Yegor when we arrived: he was with the police, the FSB, or the Investigative Committee. I don’t know exactly who was in the room with him, as none of those people introduced themselves to us. We talked with the juvenile justice officer, who took our statements. Yegor at that moment was in a separate room with law enforcement officers, and I was let in there to see him only when another juvenile justice officer had taken his statement, which either his father or I was supposed to sign. Only when Yegor had made his statement was I let into the room.

What was the hardest thing for us during the process? There were a lot of hard things, but the hardest thing was understanding that this was an injustice and that we were powerless, that we had no way to fight back and prove that an injustice was taking place. The verdict was one of the hardest stages. And for me it was not the verdict that was the scariest, but the prosecutor’s oral arguments, when he asked the court to sentence Yegor to six years. That was horrible. It was during the trial, and I had a very hard time coping with my emotions. I started crying, taking sedatives, and drinking water, because my oral arguments were next. I had to put myself together and make my speech. These six years requested by the prosecutor were the most terrible thing.

Anna, Nikita Uvarov’s mother: It all began on 6 June 2020. Five teens were detained in Kansk around five o’clock in the evening, and my son Nikita was amongst them. Their telephones were immediately confiscated and they were taken to the Investigative Committee. Among them was the Marxist-leaning grandson of the former mayor of Kansk, Nadezhda Kachan, and a guy who associated himself with antifa and had met the other boys online shortly before their arrests. He was the first to be approached by a police detective and asked to set up a meeting. Those two immediately turned witnesses, while Denis, Bogdan and Nikita were identified as suspects, although only two people had pasted up the leaflets. An FSB detective called me and told me that my son had been detained and that I needed to come to the Investigative Committee. When I arrived there, Nikita and five officers were sitting in an office. There, I learned that Nikita and Denis, who had asked to spend the night at our place, on the night of 5 June, after waiting for me to fall asleep, had pasted a leaflet on the treasury building that read “Their luxury guarantees your poverty!” and next to it, on the FSB building, a leaflet that read “Hands off the anarchists — the state is the main terrorist!” and included four photos of political prisoners.

I was told to sign a form giving consent to a search of our apartment and voluntarily hand over leaflets and other items. At the apartment, Nikita turned the leaflets and the sugar substitute (?) over to them, while a detective went through his notebooks and computer, which was then also confiscated. Then there was another interrogation by a detective from the department for combating extremism and terrorism, in which after examining the contents of the phones he began to ask questions about the Molotov cocktail, and Nikita’s reply that they had just been fooling around didn’t satisfy the detective.

Then there was an interrogation involving investigators and a bunch of FSB guys with a readymade record of the interrogation, which even included the date of the alleged bombing of the FSB, or the Interior Ministry. My son and I refused to sign it, and then they began to write up the arrest. It was horrible, as I realized I could do nothing to help Nikita. I couldn’t get my head around what was happening and what would happen next.

And then there was the arraignment, at which the judge read out terrible character references from the school, while the juvenile justice inspector, who had never been to our apartment and never spoken with our neighbors, nevertheless tried to describe our living conditions. After eleven months, my lawyer Vasin and I managed to get the remand in custody changed, and Nikita was free for nine months. But the lawyer immediately said that the sentence would most likely involve actual prison time, so throughout that whole time it was hard and scary for my son. The verdict was the hardest, because I had hoped for a suspended sentence, even if it was minimal, thinking that due to his age they would take pity on him, because there had been no such instances involving actual prison time, it seems, before Nikita, and these kids had already been punished for their views. The case was an obvious frame-up, and I think the judges saw that too, but they didn’t give the defense much room to make its case, and many of its motions were overruled. Still, I thought to myself that now everything would be over and we would be free at last…. The verdict was meant to make an example of my son, because he hadn’t pleaded guilty or asked for mercy.

Problems and Challenges

Ivan Astashin: Of course, it is better to learn about the problems faced by relatives of political prisoners from them. For my part, as a human rights activist, I can emphasize the fact that after a person is arrested, their relatives often either do not know where to turn, or are afraid to go anywhere for help. This is a big problem, as the initial hours and days are crucial in many respects.

Anna, Nikita Ugarov’s mother: My main difficulties now are emotional fatigue and constant worries about Nikita, his health, and the attitudes of both the prison staff and the people serving time with him. After all, prison is a terrible place, and my son should not be in there. He has a good heart: he is not bitter now, and forgave everyone long ago. We are still coping financially: ordinary, caring people help a little, and I am very grateful to them for this. They write to me and support me, which makes me feel better. Nikita receives a lot of letters, which help him a great deal to hold on and not get discouraged. Thank God, I have not encountered bullying or stigmatization from others. No one cares at all here in Kansk. I get mostly sympathy and understanding from neighbors and the people I know, and many of them ask me to send Nikita their regards.

Tatyana, Yegor Balazeikin’s mother: There are a lot of difficulties we have faced along the way, actually. First of all, getting a decent medical examination, to which Yegor is entitled by law, because he has autoimmune hepatitis, because he has a disability, and he is entitled to certain medical care. It is very difficult to make this happen. We have struggled to get this done while he has been in the pretrial detention center in St. Petersburg. I can’t even imagine what will happen when he goes to the penal colony, because every three months he has to take tests to monitor his health.

Looking at all the political prisoners who have health problems, some of whom are already serving time, I assume that this will be very difficult to achieve. It’s probably even impossible. Psychologically, it is quite difficult, because you go through all the stages. First is the denial stage: “No, it can’t be happening, it can’t be happening to us.” Then there is the hatred stage, in which you hate everybody, just not understanding at all how it could have happened. The acceptance stage, I guess, has come to us a little bit, that is, we have accepted this situation, although we don’t agree with it. And then there is the feeling of powerlessness, the feeling that you are just a speck in this world, that you can’t protect your own child, you can’t defend his rights, you can’t prove in court that his actions were not offenses under Criminal Code Article 205 [“committing a terrorist act”], but offenses under Article 167 [“intentional destruction or damage of property under aggravating circumstances”] at most. They don’t even listen to you, because they already have their marching orders from above. And they have to execute these orders, because they have to maintain the picture they want to create—a picture of universal support for the “ruling party” and universal support for the so-called special military operation. And there is no way to fight it.

As for financial challenges, it is quite difficult financially to support a political prisoner, especially a child, given that Yegor shares a cell with boys who are often from orphanages or dysfunctional families, and they do not get care packages. We have been going to the pretrial detention center for fourteen months, and we bring a very large care package every week, which is meant not only for Yegor but also for the other five boys. Because we know that in order for our child to eat one apple from the care package, we need to pack five more apples, so that each of the boys eats an apple, and the same goes for all the other products. They are children. And we can’t feed only our own child and leave the other five hungry, so we certainly bring very large care packages, once a week. Each care package costs about seventeen to twenty thousand rubles [approx. 200 euros], and financially it is quite difficult. So, I think that financial difficulties are not the least of our difficulties either, actually.

Letters to Inmates

Ivan Astashin: Letters and correspondence are first of all personal interactions. A person in prison often does not have a telephone or internet, and is very limited in terms of personal interactions: they have their cellmates (although sometimes people are in solitary confinement) and the prison staff—that’s it. And their lawyer, if they have one, who visits them. Therefore, correspondence should be used first of all as a tool for personal interaction. In the first letter, it is better to tell them a little about yourself and your interests, so that in the future general topics for personal interaction can take shape. You can write almost anything, but the best option is to tell the inmate about your own interests, and ask them what they would be interested in finding out. Often people are interested in the news, and they have interests in a particular area. This should all be taken into account individually. And of course, you shouldn’t write anything that could harm a person by discrediting them or giving additional information to the prosecution

Anna, Nikita Ugarov’s mother: I would very much like people to not stop writing letters to Nikita: this aid should be the highest priority. I would advise people who would like to help political prisoners and their families to write letters to political prisoners, and if they want to find a connection with their relatives to communicate with them. Information about political prisoners is available on the Telegram channels Memorial: Supporting Political Prisoners and Solidarity Zone.

Support for Relatives

Ivan Astashin: You have to act differently in different cases. In some cases, the families need financial support to pay a lawyer or spend care packages. In other cases, this is not an issue, but emotional support is needed. I think it is always needed, in fact. In my experience, when you telephone the relatives of political prisoners, those conversations often last longer than is strictly necessary for discussing practical matters. People need to speak their mind, to share their feelings with someone. Often, they do not live in an environment in which they can share, as they are often ordinary people who don’t run inb activist circles. Emotional support is thus quite important.

Anna, Nikita Uvarov’s mother: The support of others is actually quite important, because when a person is left alone with this trouble, they can probably go crazy. I don’t know what would have happened to me if the case had not been publicized. I remember those six months of silence and fear, when there was no one I could tell and with whom I could consult, in order to feel that I was not alone…. And then I felt, I recognized how many of us there were, both those who were in such situations ourselves and people who understood everything we were going through and were willing to help and support us!

You can find information about what support Nikita Uvarov and his family need on the Telegram channel Case of the Kansk Teens.

You can send letters, books and articles to Nikita at the following address:

Uvarov Nikita Andreyevich (born 2005)
10 Krazovskaya ul., IK-31
Krasnoyarsk 660111 Russian Federation

You can also send letters to Nikita via the online service ZT and the volunteer-run project RosUznik.

Yegor Balazeikin’s parents, wearing t-shirts that say “Common cause.”

Tatyana, Yegor Balazeikin’s mother: The support of others is the most important thing we have. We have the support of our son. You wouldn’t believe it, but he manages to support us whilst he is in prison! We support him in every way we can, and he supports us. He gives us the energy to go on with our lives. But at the same time, the support of the people around you is quite important, because you realize that you are not alone in this fight, and the people around you, they understand how unjust the court’s decision is, how unjust and unfair the sentence they passed is.

In fact, we have not dealt with any direct harassment in the wake of Yegor’s criminal case from family or friends. There are people whom we don’t know who write all sorts of nasty things about both Yegor and us in the feedback chat of Yegor’s Telegram channel, but there hasn’t been any large-scale bullying. Thank God, we’ve managed to avoid that. For the most part, people support Yegor and us. They write messages of support and comments that support Yegor and us.

What advice can I give to people who would like to help? To write letters, of course: it is safe, it is inexpensive, and it can be done from anywhere in the world. And, probably, to provide financial assistance to the families of political prisoners. Because it is quite dangerous to send packages or parcels without vetting them with the families, since a prisoner may not be given a care package that their family planned if someone suddenly sends one without vetting it first. And financial assistance is quite important, because relatives know what they sent in the last care package, what they need to send in the next one, and how many kilograms they have left to send. For the time being, this does not concern Yegor: he is a minor, so there are no restrictions on care packages to him. But on 6 August he will turn eighteen and the number of care packages he can get will be strictly limited. Generally speaking, letters and financial support are absolutely necessary. But nothing should be sent to political prisoners without the consent of their support groups or their families.

You can find information about what support Yegor Balazeikin and his family need on the Telegram channel The Yegor Balazeikin Case.

You can send letters to Yegor at the following address:

Balazeikin Yegor Danielevich (born 06.08.2006)
Primorsky rayon, pos. Talagi, d. 112, FKU Arkhangelskaya VK UFSIN Rossii po Arkhangelskoi oblasti
Arkhangelsk 163530 Russian Federation

You can also send letters to Yegor via the online service ZT and the volunteer-run project RosUznik.

Mistakes to Avoid

Anna, Nikita Ugarov’s mother: I was shocked when Nikita was detained. You see, when I’d gone to bed, the kids were home and I didn’t even suspect they had done something. I asked the police officers right then and there what would happen to the kids, and they replied that they would get off scot-free since they were minors. This reassured me and so I didn’t bother to do anything, but now I very much regret that I didn’t immediately retain counsel. I was completely stunned, at the arraignment, when they read out the statements by Bogdan and Denis (Ugarov’s “accomplices” in the case — Ed.), in which they requested that Nikita be remanded in custody since they feared for their lives because they were cooperating with the investigation. It was quite hard and hurtful that Nikita was betrayed by people he considered friends. The boys had been pressured by their mothers into signing the statements, and persuaded by the investigators, who had told them that due to their age no one would been punished. They had signed confessions, on which the investigators and FSB officers had worked very hard, running back and forth between interrogation rooms and adjusting the boys’ statements so that they coincided down to the last gramme when one of the boys didn’t know or remember a particular detail. Since Nikita refused to confess, he was made the main villain, and the confessions were the basis of the charges against him. Later, though, the mothers understood the mess they had made. They hired good lawyers and we all started sticking to the same position.

Ivan Astashin: It happens that a family turns down the services of civil rights lawyers, entrusting themselves instead to the court-appointed attorney and the lead case investigator, and naturally this harms the defendant. The case of Ilya Podkamenny is a perfect illustration of this. His mother decided that telling everything straight was the best thing to do. She told the authorities that her son had been storing petrol and was also planning to torch a military recruiting office. Ilya was ultimately charged with two more crimes, including planning to torch the military recruiting office. I don’t know whether Ilya also said anything about this or not, but it’s a fact that you don’t have to say anything, especially since Article 51 of the Constitution gives you the right to refuse to testify not only against yourself but also against your close relatives. You can say nothing at all. As we know, any testimony can be used against you and your relatives.

Or there’s the case of Alexei Rozhkov, who was released on his own recognizance in 2022 and could have left Russia. His relatives were opposed to this and tried to talk him out of it. He ultimately left the country but only a few months later. After he left he had to wait several months in Kyrgyzstan for an entry visa to Europe. Whilst he was waiting he was abducted by the security forces and taken back to Russia. It is hard to talk about what “might have been,” but it is possible that, had he left Russia earlier, he would have been able to leave for Europe more quickly and would not have wound up back in a Russian remand prison. But now he’s facing over twenty years in prison.

Source: Veniamin Volin, “When Your Child Is a Political Prisoner,” Activatica, 25 July 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Simon Pirani for the heads-up.

Alexander Podrabinek: Opposition Politicians Must Live in Russia to Do Their Jobs

The recent prisoner swap has suddenly and quite vividly clarified the emotions and motives of the militant segment of the Russian emigration. Those who did photography in the old days will remember how you would dip a blank sheet of photographic paper into developer and gradually an image would appear on it. At first, the image would be vague, just outlines, but then it would become clearer and clearer, until finally you would pull it out from under the red lamp and hold it up to the white light: wow, you could see everything clearly!

I will avoid beeing politically correct and say everything I think. Emigrants from the so-called liberal crowd went abroad because they were afraid of going to prison in Russia. It’s an understandable fear—a valid reason, one might even say. The issue of personal security, their personal well-being and that of their families, was more important to them than Russian freedom and democracy, about which they spoke with such pathos and fervor at protest rallies, in the independent press, and on the internet. They did not have the guts, and such things happen. There is nothing laudable about it, but nothing catastrophic either. No one obliges them to sacrifice themselves, and they themselves were willing to be heroes on the podiums, but not in a real showdown with the repressive regime. All right, so they left: it’s no great loss. In any case, it is better to leave in time than to spill your guts later during an investigation.

I think most of those who have left Russia feel fine, but a certain segment of the emigration, the most militant and vocal, experiences emotional discomfort. They sense their own political inferiority, especially amidst what has happened in Russia to those who stayed, to those who have been resisting and are now in prison. To prove to themselves and others their insightfulness and to confirm the correctness of their choice to emigrate, they portray those who have remained in Russia as naive fools who don’t understand life. The very existence of political prisoners irritates them. They believe that people have been imprisoned by mistake or because they overestimated themselves. But they themselves didn’t overestimate!

Alexei Navalny’s decision to stay in Russia cut them to the quick. A month before his death, Navalny wrote in a letter from prison camp: “I have my country and my beliefs. I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs. I can betray neither the first nor the second. If your beliefs are worth something, you must be ready to stand up for them. And if necessary, to make sacrifices.”

The bombastic Ekaterina Schulmann just doesn’t get it. “The context of events is such that the first thought that comes to mind upon hearing the news is how he could have failed to leave [Russia] after the first [guilty] verdict, and almost the only emotion is amazement at this fact.” She is amazed: isn’t personal well-being the most important thing?

Dmitry Gudkov, a politician who is quite nimble in all respects, was even more definite at the time. “Almost all public figures, including well-known opposition figures, have been allowed to leave. But in case they didn’t get the signal, they go to jail. So if you don’t want to go to jail, you don’t have to wait for mercy from the Investigative Committee—there are flights to Tbilisi and other beautiful cities. At the slightest hint of danger, save yourself. The decision to take care of your life is always the right one.”

Gudkov and Schulmann are simple people, and they write about the benefits of cowardice in a straightforward, uncomplicated manner. But some others feel uncomfortable in such situations. They don’t like to feel as if they are fugitives saving they own skin—they need decent arguments. They want to remain on top, preferably at the heights they commanded in Russia, where everyone listened to them.

And what arguments are these? The most murderous one is that Russia is a lost country and the whole nation supports the fascist regime. As if there were not hundreds of political prisoners in camps and prisons who have chosen resistance rather than escape. As if there had not been rallies and marches throughout Russia, attended by many thousands of people, when such events could still be organized. As if the authorities didn’t have to falsify election results to avoid revealing Putin’s paltry electoral support.

Anna Rose writes about her Russian acquaintances, but it reads as if she is writing about Russians in general: “My Russian acquaintances didn’t show any sympathy for the real victims of aggression. The fact that in Ukraine, due to Russia’s fault and with their own tacit consent, people were being killed every day, that not only only cities were destroyed but also the basis for civic life in a sovereign country, seemed to them a backdrop, not the essence of what was going on.” What to do with such a worthless people? Clearly, run away from them and denounce them in the crudest possible language. And God forbid anyone should think that you are one of them yourself.

Journalist Victoria Ivleva took it a step further by attacking Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, and Andrei Pivovarov on her Facebook page for talking too little and saying the wrong things about Ukraine at their press conference. “I would very much like to hear a single word of repentance from you, not stories about how Putin is to blame while the nation is wonderful and fresh. Who elected Putin time after time, was it not the nation? The war started by our Motherland has left us all with only one right—to get down on our knees.”

A well-off emigrant, Ivleva expects words of repentance from recent political prisoners who were imprisoned for their anti-war stance! Ivleva herself has nothing to do with it, she has nothing to repent for. It is they, the Russians, who should all fall on their knees as one, while those who left in time are not to blame for anything. But if we are talking about sincere repentance, shouldn’t Ivleva repent for the Soviet Union’s war against Afghanistan? That war was no less bloody than the current one, and Ivleva was then a civic-minded Soviet student and a successful journalist who was published in the Communist Youth Union’s newspaper. She didn’t protest. She didn’t get down on her knees. If we call everyone to repent for the sins of the regime, shouldn’t we turn to ourselves?

No, of course, only the people are to blame, the people who, according to Ivleva, have elected Putin time and time again. That is, the presidential elections, in her opinion, have been fair and transparent time and again: the president was elected by the people, the president is legitimate, and, therefore, the evidence of the people’s worthlessness is clear. And let’s forget about how the ballot rigging has been exposed and pretend that it didn’t happen.

The great thing about collective responsibility is that personal responsibility dissolves into universal responsibility. If everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame. It is a very convenient position. In a debate on Facebook, Konstantin Borovoy denounces the freed political prisoners: “Asking the West to lift sanctions when the regime has gone berserk and the citizens are supporting it is stupid and mean.” To say nothing of playing fast and loose with the facts (they were not talking about lifting sanctions, but about targeting them correctly), claiming that the citizenry supports the brutal regime is a sin against the truth. Some people support it and some don’t. No one knows the exact percentage, but it is certain that millions of people in Russia do not support this regime. Why should we talk about the unity of the party and the people and thus echo Putin’s propaganda? And if we are to blame everyone, shouldn’t we start with ourselves? Borovoy was a member of parliament during the crucial years and had much more sway in politics than the average man on the street. If something has gone wrong in our country, maybe we should think about our place in these processes? Or is everyone else to blame?

The premise of national guilt is not enough for successful self-affirmation. The liberated political prisoners are hysterically pointed to the plight of Ukraine and its prisoners of war in Russia, as if anyone would argue with this. But this generates the illusion that only the political emigrants are concerned about it, while no one in Russia understands any of it and no one in Russia sympathizes with Ukraine. The opinion that there are also Russian problems that require a political solution is jealously disputed: no, today there is only one problem—the war in Ukraine.

Yes, it is true that the war is the most important issue for Ukraine. But for Russia it is not the most important issue. It may be the most painful, but it is not the main one. For Russia, the primary problem is the authoritarian regime, a dictatorship which at a single person’s whim can start a war, murder dissidents, take away all freedoms, and threaten the entire world. The war in Ukraine is a consequence of Russia’s primary problem and this is what the liberated political prisoners were talking about. The fundamental solution to the issues of war and peace depends on the nature of the regime, not on military successes or defeats. Russia’s policy towards other states depends on the kind of regime it has. This is obvious.

Kara-Murza’s and Yashin’s desire to engage primarily in Russian politics and address the interests of Russia’s democratic future is understandable and rational. A democratic Russia will have no need of enemies on its borders or anywhere in Africa. It will return all annexed territories, pay reparations, and atone for and eventually redeem its guilt before Ukraine and the other countries it has attacked.

Opposition politicians must be in Russia to make this all happen. It won’t work otherwise. It’s understandable that this elicits a rabid reaction from political emigrants who label cowardice prudence and prefer glamorously clamoring in emigration to risking resistance in Russia. In my opinion, Kara-Murza explained it all quite clearly to them in an interview which he gave in March of this year while still in prison.

“A politician cannot work remotely. It is not a matter of practical efficacy; for a public figure, it is a question of ethics and responsibility to their fellow citizens. If you are calling on people to oppose an authoritarian regime, you cannot do this from a safe distance—you must share the risks with your community.”

Source: Alexander Podrabinek (Facebook), 6 August 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Mr. Podrabinek is a well-known dissident, journalist, human rights activist, and former political prisoner.

The Pianist (The Death of Pavel Kushnir)

In late July 2024, 39-year-old pianist Pavel Kushnir died in a Birobidzhan pretrial detention center. His musician friends and musicologists have no doubt he was a genius. Many of them had been unaware of his arrest in May 2024 on charges of “publicly calling for terrorist activities.” The grounds for his arrest were his anti-war videos, although his YouTube channel had only five subscribers at the time.

According to close friends, Kushnir himself had wanted to go “far from the capitals,” so he chose Birobidzhan hoping that he would not be forced to perform WWII Victory Day concerts amidst the ongoing war against Ukraine. As soon as the war started, Kushnir wrote social media posts opposing it, posted antiwar leaflets, and staged hunger strikes in protest. Before he was taken to the detention center, he had gone on at least two protest hunger strikes, one of which lasted for over one hundred days.

“He was almost a professional faster, so I don’t think he could have died in the pretrial detention center solely due to that,” his close friend Olga Shkrygunova told Okno.

“We Live in a Fascist Society”

“I am a musician, a pianist, and I graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, where I studied under Victor Merzhanov. I worked as a soloist at the Kursk Regional Philharmonic for seven years, and as a soloist at the Kurgan Philharmonic for three years. I have also tried my hand as a writer, and published an anti-war novel called ‘Russian Mash-Up’” was how Kushnir introduced himself in one of the interviews his friend Olga quoted to Okno.

Kushnir was born in Tambov, where his closest relatives still live. He studied at the music school and the Rachmaninoff Music College in Tambov. After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, he worked in the Kursk and, later, the Kurgan philharmonic orchestras. In 2023, Kushnir was appointed soloist to the Birobidzhan Regional Philharmonic, and he was arrested in Birobidzhan in May 2024.

The person closest to him, his father Mikhail Borisovich Kushnir, a music school teacher in Tambov and a promoter of musical cognition, died several years before the Russia-Ukraine war started. Many of his friends note that had Kushnir senior lived to see this day, he definitely would not have survived his son’s death.

“They had a very close relationship. Mikhail Borisovich had great faith in him and was proud of him. They laughed a lot together, and he was very supportive of him,” Olga recalls. “The loss of his father was hard for [Pavel].”

Kushnir’s friends invariably call him super-talented, and even more often they call him a brilliant pianist.

“Pasha was just an incredible person. Ever since he was a child, everyone has talked about his incredible ear for music. For me, he was always a genius, both as a person and as a musician. A genius is an idealist who brooks no compromise, who battles on behalf of love, creativity, and freedom. His inexhaustible imagination knew no bounds. He once studied the language of Avatar and wrote a poem in it. He loved the cinema and knew it well, and he read a lot. He loved Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. He wrote an anti-war novel, Russian Mash-Up: it is an original dystopia with references to Russian literature, and the main idea is to denounce the state dictatorship. Pavel was able to send me the manuscript of the new novel by mail. I hope that we friends of his can pool our efforts and publish it soon,” says Olga, who left Russia for Germany in 2012.

It was then, twelve years ago, that Kushnir last visited Shkrygunova in Moscow. In May 2012, he went to Bolotnaya Square to take part in the large-scale protests that were sparked by the fraudulent elections to the State Duma.

Kushnir’s description of his anti-war leafletting in Kurgan.

“He still believed back then that things could be fixed,” Olga says, sighing. “I know that Pavel protested the war in 2018 by going to pickets against the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. When in May 2018 he went to Pushkin Square [in Moscow] holding a placard that said ‘Down with war, freedom for Russia,’ his homemade sign was torn apart [by police]. After the military invasion, he bitterly observed that nowadays [the police] would tear him apart at such a picket. So, he replaced pickets with leaflets, and leaflets with hunger strikes. They were his form of protest against fascism. He didn’t argue that we should give up picketing, but he understood that it required great courage, ‘because we live in a fascist society,'” Olga quotes her friend as saying.

As Kushnir admitted in his letters to friends, “the turning point and epiphany” for him had been Bucha.

“I think that the Bucha massacre is a disgrace to our motherland. Fascism is the death of our motherland. Putin is a fascist. Our motherland sacrificed millions of the best lives so that fascism would not exist, and we will not accept it. The criminal, despicable war which Putin’s fascism has been waging in our name is a challenge to my conscience, to all my personal hopes, to all the best things in me. I am sure I am not alone. For many people of my generation, accepting the war, ignoring the war, is unthinkable. Two nations are dying in this war. It must be stopped as soon as possible,” Olga quoted him as saying.

In 2022, Kushnir produced anti-war leaflets and posted them around Kurgan.

“At night, he put up large A4-sized leaflets, and during the day he put up small ones with peace symbols and biblical quotes in public places,” says Olga.

“Hunger Striking Is a Peaceful Form of Protest”

On 9 May 2023, Kushnir declared his first hunger strike, which was to last twenty days.

By his own admission, Kushnir did not expect a positive response from the authorities, but he hoped that other people would embrace his peaceful form of protest.

“I expect people to think hard about their attitude to the war, to end their silence. I expect a miracle,” he wrote.

According to his friends, Kushnir easily tolerated hunger and scheduled his next hunger strike, which was to last one hundred days, in the winter and spring of 2024.

“He went on and off [hunger strikes] absolutely systematically,” says Olga. “In March, when he had finished, he called us to say that everything was fine, that he felt good. He had been drinking water, apple juice, and coffee. As an illustration of his hunger strike, he suggested we imagine a glass of apple juice. So I don’t think he could have died from the hunger strike alone. I don’t believe it. I can’t rule out that they could have beaten him up in the detention center or in some other way they exacerbated his condition.”

In late May 2024, Kushnir was detained by the FSB. A criminal case was launched against him on charges of “publicly calling for terrorist activities” (per Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code). The community Vkontakte page Atypical Birobidzhan was the first to report Kushnir’s arrest, claiming that four videos posted on Kushnir’s YouTube channel had served as grounds for the charges. It also reported that Kushnir was allegedly found in possession of a “homemade FBI agent’s ID.”

The short anti-war video which Pavel Kushnir posted on his “Foreign Agent Mulder” YouTube channel on 5 January 2024

“Pavel had been running the channel ‘Foreign Agent Mulder’ since 2011, and there are only four videos posted there. All of them criticized the war and the policies of the current Russian government. Before Pavel’s death, the channel had exactly five subscribers,” says one of Kushnir’s friends. “Now there are [507] subscribers.”

Many of his friends first learned of Kushnir’s death in late July and only then that he had been behind bars when he died.

“Unfortunately, Pavel’s arrest has come to light only now. I, for example, do a monitoring of court proceedings in the regions quite often, but I missed the news of Pavel’s hearing… I think this was a case when publicity could have saved the prisoner. I learned about Pavel’s death from Arshak Makichan, with whom I was involved in environmental activism; Arshak later left Russia, but he had known Pavel at the conservatory. I think that the intervention of such well-known activists in the case could have prevented Pavel from taking such a desperate step,” says Marina, an activist who corresponds with political prisoners. “Pavel’s cellmates testify that his death resulted from a dry hunger strike, and there is no reason not to trust them. As I understand it, the family is afraid of publicity, as the Moloch of the political crackdowns may strike them as well, so we don’t really know anything yet. But if you watch Pavel’s interviews and listen to his statements, I think it is clear that he was a man of genius, a talented, brilliant, and sensitive man. Unfortunately, such people do not have the ability to stand up to brute, base force, and the only protest that was available in the pretrial detention center was a hunger strike, apparently. Many anti-war activists—Ivan Kudryashov, Maria Ponomarenko, and dozens of others—have gone on hunger strike. When there is no communication with the outside world, no media contacts, alas, this is all that is left to a person. It’s scary to imagine what Pavel went through. The country has yet to realize who we have lost.”

Anna Karetnikova, a human rights activist who for many years aided prisoners as a member of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission and, later, as a lead analyst in the Federal Penitentiary Service’s Moscow office, argues that the official cause of Kushnir’s death will not be listed as hunger strike, even if that was the cause. According to her, concealment of the real cause of death is a common practice in the Russian penitentiary system, so there are no statistics for hunger strikes in pretrial detention centers and penal colonies.

Pavel Kushnir’s messenger service announcement of a hunger strike, dated 9 May 2023 (celebrated in Russia as WWII Victory Day): “I’m going on a hunger strike. I demand the liquidation of the fascist regime, cessation of the war in Ukraine, and release of all political prisoners.”

“Pavel Kushnir’s death in the Birobidzhan pretrial detention center has been attributed to his hunger strike, a dry hunger strike in which the detainee refuses not only food, but also water. In my experience, cases of hunger strikes in places of detention are frequent and fall into two main categories: those triggered by criminal cases, and those protesting conditions of detention. They can be both for serious reasons, such as gross violations of human rights, and for trifling reasons, such as an investigating officer refusing to bring an inmates cigarettes. They can also be individual and collective. But dry hunger strikes are quite rare, because most detainees realize that it can eirquickly lead to th death,” says Karetnikova. “The law provides for a detainee’s refusal to eat, but it also stipulates what actions wardens should take in such cases. After receiving a written application for a hunger strike, the wardens at a pretrial detention center must notify the person in charge of the criminal case, as well as the supervising prosecutor. In addition, the hunger striker is entitled to a daily checkup by a doctor, during which their temperature, blood pressure, and weight are measured and recorded, and, if possible, to be placed in a separate cell from which all food has been removed. Every day, they will be brought food, which is left on a table, or on the feeder tray if it is open. Also a mentor will come and try to persuade them to give up this waste of time. Information about hunger strikers in each institution is entered daily into the penitentiary service’s overall statistical summary.”

“Forced feeding of detainees is provided for by law. Most often, in agreement with the hunger striker, they are given glucose drips, possibly with something else added to the mix to support them. If their lives are threatened, they can be force fed through a tube.”

“I don’t think hunger strike was listed as the cause of Kushnir’s death, however. I think that only his relatives and friends and cellmates knew that he was on a hunger strike. Even after the publicity, for example, a medic could be punished if he forgot to perform certain formalities— for example, doing a physical examination and taking the inmate’s temperature. He could be reprimanded and, at worst, dismissed. In a similar case, the head doctor of the hospital at the Matrosskaya Tishina prison in Moscow was fired. Of course, no one explained the reasons for his dismissal, and a different cause of death was listed . But the [inmate] had been quite emaciated, and it was feared that the truth could come out. If it had come out, [the doctor] could have been jailed for negligence, for example, or endangerment.

“Force feeding is not practiced as a matter of principle in Russia, because, for example, in order to force feed Alexander Shestun [the ex-head of the Moscow Region’s Serpukhov District (2003–2018) and chair of its Council of Deputies, Shestun was sentenced to fifteen years in a penal colony on charges of fraud and money laundering, but Memorial listed him as a political prisoner] they contacted headquarters a hundred times, since they could not understand what to do and how to do it. But they didn’t get any reasonable instructions from headquarters either, except ‘do something or we’ll punish you,'” Karetnikova says.

According to Karetnikov, the hunger striker loses weight, their vitals deteriorate, and sometimes they are unable to walk.

“There are stomach pains, different organs can fail, and in the long term, people can become confused and sometimes go crazy. Some people engage in self-harm. This is not the case with dry hunger strikers: I usually was able to convince them to give up, in exchange for my promises to do something to help, promises which I tried to keep,” says Karetnikova. “Some detainees starved for months. The longest well-known hunger strikers included Nadiya Savchenko, Alexander Shestun (who was subjected to force feeding), Sergei Krivov, and many other people who were released, but whom I don’t want to identify here. One of the hunger strikers was a stoma patient. One can live without food for about two months, on average. However, many hunger strikers took week-long breaks that enabled them to go without food for months at a time, and they were also put on IVs while on hunger strike. If you give up water too, you can die within a week.”

“He Played for God”

After Kushnir’s death, it was revealed that that he had long foreseen his own arrest, as evidenced in correspondence with his friends.

“He often wrote ‘I haven’t been jailed yet,’ and he sent me interviews where he openly spoke of the current system in Russia as fascist. I tried to persuade him, especially when he was looking for a new place to work a year ago, to come to Germany. I said we would take him in and he would find a job. He agreed but then immediately refused to write a bio, which is what you have to do if you want to play concerts. Those are laws of the music market, what can you do. But he was uncompromising: ‘I am a musician, my music speaks for me,'” Olga recalls. “Then there was the hope that he would be hired in a remote city, as he had decided to stay in Russia. Basically, he strove to be far from the capitals, so that the political pressure would be minimal. For example, he did not want to be forced to perform those selfsame Victory Day concerts.”

“Maybe I’ll be able to get a job in Russia. Anyway, I had an audition for the Philharmonic, and it seems to have gone well. Anyway, they treated me well, even though I have a ‘no war’ status on my Facebook page… or maybe they just didn’t notice it,” Pavel wrote to Olga at the start of his tenure with the Birobidzhan Philharmonic. “I traveled across the entire country on the Moscow-Vladivostok train, and I looked out the window at the nature, at the people in the parlor car. We have a tragic country, and miserable, predatory people, but so much beauty. We can’t give it to the fascists. Before the audition I ate, so my hunger strike demanding an end to the war was a waste of time. (I had held out for more than twenty days after all.) Probably, a person is free in everything except their own profession. It holds you and doesn’t let you sink, but it also doesn’t let you soar. It’s an anchor of normality.

Kushnir often gave interviews, and the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company even did a story about him. In one of his conversations with journalists, the pianist said that he planned to stay in Birobidzhan: “I had an audition [with another orchestra] but I canceled it. I decided to take a risk to stay and work here for twelve years. If I am not imprisoned, drafted into the army, or fired, I hope I will be with you for the next twelve years.”

“He just wanted to play. Without ingratiating himself to anyone, without making connections, without bending to anyone. Apparently, the ‘plain old’ cities of Russia, unlike Moscow, seemed to him better suited for this. He spoke fondly of Birobidzhan, sent me a map [of the city], and told me that he goes on walks there a lot,” Olga says. “I think he could have been happy there. He could have been happy in any place where you could just say what you think and do what you think. He had a lot of faith in God. He played for God. Maybe now he’s found that place.”

Pavel Kushnir’s concert recordings, even the most amateurish ones, garnered thousands of views, unlike his YouTube channel.

[…]

Pavel Kushnir performing Rachmaninoff’s 24 Preludes (Op. 3, 23, and 32) at the 29th Rachmaninoff Festival in Tambov in 2020

“Pasha Kushnir was in our class,” writes his Moscow Conservatory classmate Julia Wertman.

“We became friends somewhere in the middle of third year, I don’t remember exactly when,” she continues. “We lived in the dormitory, and there was a time when he would often visit my roommate and me for a glass of tea.

“Pasha would recite Brodsky from memory for hours, for days on end. Pasha had a shabby beige overcoat with a bulging pocket. Under the coat he was always dressed in black, and a half-liter bottle of vodka often stuck out of his pocket. (In most cases, it was just there for image. Pasha cultivated the image of a dissident, as if he were Venedikt Yerofeev.)

“Pasha could avoid sleeping, eating, or living, and yet still play absolutely stunningly. There’s an interview with him, linked to in the comments, in which he talks about some genius contemporaries who could prepare for a solo in half an hour under any conditions. As far as I remember, Pasha himself was like that.

“Once, at five in the morning, I went to the dorm kitchen to make breakfast. An incredible scene unfolded before my eyes. Kushnir, as clear-headed as piece of glass, stood at the open window and gazed at Malaya Gruzinskaya Street with a sad, detached look. Before him, a drunken German student with whom he had been living it up way past midnight was crawling on his knees. The German’s speech was so slurred that not even his accent was audible. He was literally sobbing a river of tears.

“‘Brother! Forgive me! Forgive me if you can, for….. Forgive me!’ [he said]. ‘Forgive my grandfather, forgive my great-grandfather, forgive me!!!’

“One Hanukkah, he brought my roommate and me a menorah and candles. I had very little idea at the time what to do with them. I only remember reading on the label: ‘The light of the Hanukkah candles reminds us of G-d’s constant presence in our lives.’

“That was when we nicknamed him ‘Hasid,’ a nickname that stuck.

“‘That’s good,’ Pasha said. ‘Yes, call me that. I think it suits me…’

“Then Hasid showed up at the prom. My favorite person and I were drinking champagne and eating leftover cake. While all the graduates were eating the cake, we danced a waltz somewhere that only we could hear. And G-d knows where Kushnir had been, but he too came have a last piece of cake.

“‘Guys! Be happy! Cheers, guys! [he said]. ‘The main thing now is not to fuck away your diploma!’

“We were only happy for a little while. Hasid went back home to his dad in Tambov, and we went to graduate school. That is, we didn’t fuck away our diplomas. On the contrary, we got PhDs. You basically know what happened after that.

“I tried several times to find the pianist Pavel Kushnir. I found show bills, all of them for concerts in provincial towns. Two years ago, I found out that he was in Birobidzhan. I thought, Well, he’s getting closer to his roots, so maybe he’ll come [to Israel] soon.

“But he didn’t come. Instead, he wound up on on an Israeli news feed, and from there, just now, he came to my attention.

“Was he a rebel? Was he openly calling for some kind of nightmare? I don’t think so.

“He always said what he wanted to say. He didn’t bite his tongue. He wasn’t swayed by stereotypes. He didn’t fit into any system. He lived his own life, thought his own thoughts, and searched his own search. He tried to get to the heart of the matter, like Pasternak. But in all other respects, he was probably more like Vysotsky.

“Hasid, I don’t know what your mother’s name was. Pavel, son of Mikhail, a great pianist, may your memory be blessed.

“And there will be Hanukkah, and there will be light.”

“We will defeat the ogres, and their descendants will ask our forgiveness again.”

[…]

Source: “‘Life is something which will never happen under fascism’: the pianist Pavel Kushnir, arrested for anti-war social media posts, has perished in a pretrial detention center in Birobidzhan,” Okno, 4 August 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

A Letter from Alexander Chervov (Solidarity Zone)

A letter from Alexander Chervov, sentenced to seventeen and a half years in prison

Alexander Chervov is a pathologist from Kemerovo. On 4 August 2023, the First Eastern District Military Court in Khabarovsk sentenced Chervov to seventeen and a half years in prison after convicting him on charges of damaging a power line and planning to set fire to a military recruitment office.

We share excerpts from Alexander’s letters, which were sent to us by a subscriber.

‘This episode in my life has actually been brief. Until 24 February 2022, I wasn’t involved in politics, partly because I was lazy, and partly because Moscow’s propaganda worked effectively on me. Just consider my age [42 years old], and you will realize that the period when political views are usually formed overlapped in my case with the beginning of a massive misinformation campaign about the hopelessness of all action and the benefits of a rigid power vertical. I had a worldview that was typical for the Russian Federation until 2019, but the covid epidemic kicked off in the summer of 2019 [sic], and that’s when I saw and felt at my workplace that my responsibility is really mine—it’s not the bosses who decide; and the second thing is how the vertical behaves in emergencies. Without going into details, it has come to the point that the very essence of propaganda is unsuitable for structuring behavior based on conscience, professional pride, and plain common sense. To make myself clearer: if you have crossed paths with Russian medicine, you can understand how it will function if it takes on the additional load of an epidemic, for example, and what the stated outcomes are—for example, (almost) the lowest percentage of mortality among the infected. In short, until it hit me personally, I did not notice obvious problems and obvious discrepancies between stated claims and reality. That’s when the reliability of almost all mass media in the Russian Federation became at least partially clear. I experienced shock (though not in the medical sense). It was not yet enough for me, though, as I still did not get involved in politics. But it was impossible to ignore the onset of open hostilities against a peaceful neighboring country: my conscience kicks into gear in extreme circumstances, and these circumstances were extreme. I don’t know what I was alleged to have done, officially, but I didn’t really commit a terrorist act, while the second part of the accusation was mostly a travesty of justice, although there are some real grounds [to it]. The result was a nearly suicidal antiwar protest. Shit happens. I freaked out. I freaked out to the tune of 17 years’ worth of maximum security, to hear the prosecutor tell it.

[…]

‘As for the news, I wonder what’s really going on, behind the scenes so to speak. There are topics that are actively hyped, that generate buzz, and I know how the [official] news spins them, as there is no other news here [in prison[. So the choice is up to you: [you can write to me] about any hyped topic, only [tell me] the real story, the actual what, where, and how of. But before you write something, I advise that you read the Criminal Code, especially Articles 205 and 280 [which criminalize “public calls for terrorism” and “public calls for extremism,” respectively]. For example, Georgia has now adopted a law on foreign agents, seemingly modeled on the Russian one. But what’s the real story? Who got their hands on Prigozhin’s companies is also interesting, as is how they were divvied up.

‘Subscriptions to newspapers and magazines from the outside won’t work—they’ve already checked that here. You don’t need to send anything: I can receive only one parcel per year, they won’t allow more. I guess that’s it.’

‘I had a court-appointed lawyer. She is practically the only one in Kemerovo in all political cases. In retrospect, I understand that she is needed to keep up appearances. For example, before the trial she didn’t even read the case file, only the indictment, and she got it from me; either she didn’t get a copy herself or she couldn’t open the electronic version. I actually came up with the talking points for her [closing?] argument.’

[…]

‘I’m curious now: what is the real situation with gas supplies from Russia to Europe? Has the percentage of these deliveries actually decreased since 2022, or has it remained the same?’

You can support Alexander by writing him a letter or sending money to his personal account in prison so that he can subscribe to newspapers, among other things.

Address for letters:

Chervov Alexander Yevgenyevich (born 27.02.1982)
11 ul. Dekabristov, T-2
Yeniseysk, Krasnoyarsk Territory 663180 Russian Federation

It is possible to send letters via F-Pismo and PrisonMail.Online.

#political prisoners #crackdowns #anti-war #draft board arson #kemerovo #kuzbass #yeniseysk #write letters

Source: Solidarity Zone (Facebook), 13 July 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Translated by the Russian Reader. People living outside of Russia will find it difficult or impossible to send letters to Russian prisons via F-Pismo, PrisonMail.Online, or regular mail. In many cases, however, you can send letters (which must be written in Russian or translated into Russian) via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. Mr. Chervov has not yet appeared on their list of supported addressees, however. You can write to me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending letters and messages to him and other Russian political prisoners.

Report on Solidarity Zone’s Work: First Half of 2024

The first half of 2024 has passed, and we are reviewing the results of work in that time. We present figures that show the amount of support that we have given to political prisoners.

What did we do?

We successfully completed nine fundraisers for individual prisoners, amounting to €28,540. As a result, we could ensure that defendants had legal support during investigations and at court, and support appeals against conviction lodged by seven prisoners who carried out acts of anti-war resistance.

We supported lawyers who could search for prisoners, make prison visits on an emergency basis, and provide help in cases for which we had not yet organised fundraisers. These were often situations in which there was a real threat that prisoners would be tortured. On this work we spent €7930 of your donations.

We sent foodstuffs and other urgently needed supplies, items of clothing, books and newspapers to 17 prisoners who faced persecution, having been accused of carrying out, or preparing, anti-war actions. On this work we spent €6560 of your donations.

We publicised 20 cases of prisoners to whom we give support of one kind or another, and many other cases of those arrested for undertaking anti-war actions. We wrote more than 400 social media posts.

We spent dozens of hours in telephone calls with lawyers, with prisoners’ families, and with each other, to achieve everything mentioned above.

We took care of our own security and well-being, and did a great deal of other unseen work, without which our activity in support of political prisoners in Russia could not have happened.

We produced hoodies and scarves with original designs, all the proceeds from which go to support the Solidarity Zone collective.

Solidarity Zone is a self-organised, horizontal initiative, and we do not have a regular source of financing. None of this would be possible without the powerful support we received from you! We are very grateful for every single donations, repost and like!

Please support this post with a like, a repost, a comment — so that more people see it. Your comments, too, are a form of support for the Solidarity Zone team.

You can donate to support prisoners in several ways:

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To make a donation in USDT via other networks, or in other cryptocurrencies, write to us at solidarity_zone@riseup.net and ask for the necessary details.

You may also subscribe to our Patreon. The money from there goes to support the Solidarity Zone collective.

Independently of whether you are able to give financial support to Solidarity Zone, you can help us by reposting this or circulating information about us in other ways.

Source: Solidarity Zone (Facebook), 6 July 2024

Irina and Anna’s Big Adventure

Pensioners Irina Nippolainen and Anna Trusova, friends and residents of the small Karelian town of Segezha, fled Russia in the spring of 2023 after the FSB came to search their homes. Anna and Irina were forced to make a long trek to Azerbaijan via Belarus before making their way to Germany, where they now have residence permits and social housing, and where they hope to find work. Meanwhile, back in their home country their relatives have been summoned for questioning in the criminal investigation against them. Journalists at the website Okno tell the story of the two women, who chose forced emigration over unfreedom.

ESCAPE

On 20 March 2023, 60-year-old Irina and 58-year-old Anna said goodbye after taken a stroll and went home. A few minutes later, Irina called Anna and told her that the FSB had come to see her. Anna rushed to her house after Irina’s call.

“As soon as I rang Irina’s doorbell, I immediately turned on the video on my phone to put the squeeze on them: Who the hell are you guys? The FSB guys saw that I was filming on my phone and immediately called someone, saying, ‘She’s here, come over.’ Anyway, it transpired that they had come for both of us.”

During the search, the FSB officers confiscated their phones and computers from the two pensioners. The search warrant stated that the searches were part of a criminal investigation into “public calls to engage in activity threatening state security.” Anna and Irina guessed that the case had been triggered by a denunciation. They both had written many posts on their VKontakte pages about their opposition to war, and in response had received a “barrage of hatred” from those who had read the posts.

“It was stressful. I lost eight kilograms during that time: I was so worried, I didn’t eat, and I didn’t know what would happen. I knew that people in Russia are sent to pretrial detention centers at any age even for sneezing at the authorities, and I did not know what exactly the law enforcers would find in the devices they confiscated and how they would interpret what they found. As soon as we were searched, my children immediately got involved in the problem, checking out everything they could: internet sites, their acquaintances, and then their acquaintances who had left the country. They decided how we should proceed—where and how to get asylum or other options. After analyzing everything, they decided that a humanitarian visa was the best option. We had to decide where to go, where to stay, and what to take with us,” says Irina.

They considered fleeing to two countries—Finland and Germany—but decided on the latter because it was easier to get a visa there.

But first Irina and Anna went to St. Petersburg, because they had to get papers for Anna’s dog Ramona. They stayed with an acquaintance of Anna’s, but the woman was very afraid that she would be “prosecuted for her connection” with the fugitive opposition activists, so they had to move out.

“Our children, who were assisting us, gave us the contact information for a man who did not know us at all but who wrote, ‘Come and stay as long as you want’. He helped us out and fed us, and we spent all that time while we were taking care of business at his house,” they explain.

Anna and Irina stayed in St. Petersburg for a week before departing for Azerbaijan.

They did not travel to Baku directly. For security reasons, they got themselves new cell phones, discussed the route, decided not to buy plane tickets in Russia, but to do it in Belarus, and went to Belarus by cab, paying 20,000 rubles [approx. 200 euros] for the fare.

“We took everything into account because we didn’t know how quickly they would come for us. In fact, we were very surprised that they didn’t nab us right away. We also chose Belarus because the dog was with us, and we felt bad about putting her in the luggage hold. Belavia is one of the few airlines that allow passengers to transport small animals in a carrier on a seat in the passenger cabin,” says Irina.

Irina and Anna flying from Minsk to Baku

After taking a cab to Minsk, they immediately went to the airport, bought tickets, and flew to Azerbaijan at night. In Baku, Irina and Anna initially settled in a small hotel.

“I was in such a state that my hair stood on end. For Anna, it was like an adventure, but for me it was like a misfortune, because I had left my home, my husband, and my pets. I didn’t want to leave my home or my country. That’s why I was very anxious. I even reached out to a psychologist from an aid organization, but she didn’t help me much,” Irina says.

Anna’s mood was a little different.

“I’m generally a traveler, but I hadn’t been able to travel lately. First there was the pandemic, then this whole thing happened. Not that I was freaking out about it, of course; I was freaking out for other reasons. But when it happened, I put three bathing suits in my suitcase—Ira makes fun of me—and went to the airport. I assumed I might have difficulties in Russia due to my intemperate tongue: I supposed that I would have to leave. I have a daughter in the Czech Republic, but the Czech Republic has a very bad attitude towards Russians, and they wouldn’t give me a visa. I thought that I would go to India, it’s quiet and peaceful there. My suitcase was initially packed with summer clothes. Of course, I was a bit nervous about the dangers. But basically, I always try to stay positive and hope for the best,” says Anna.

Anna, Ramona and Irina on the beach in Baku

Irina and Anna ultimately stayed in Baku for four months. They submitted the paperwork for humanitarian visas to Germany quite quickly, and had been approved by early June. But due to the local and the German bureaucracies they had to wait a long time for their papers. During this time, the pensioners already had their own circle of contacts—their landlady, their neighbors, and other refugees from Russia.

“And while there was uncertainty as to whether we would be granted a visa or not, we were already considering Azerbaijan as a place to live, because we could have lived there on our pensions. We had already found some channels for cashing money there, because our bank cards didn’t work there anyway. But still, we didn’t consider ourselves safe there,” Irina explains.

“GOD, HOW DID YOU BEAR IT ALL?”

In July, all their papers were in hand, so Irina and Anna began packing for Germany. They decided to make their way to Georgia first, since it was cheaper to fly to Germany from Tbilisi than from Baku. They went to Georgio by bus, stayed in Tbilisi for a couple of days before flying to Germany.

“When we arrived in Germany, I was already on VKontakte recounting all our adventures. And people wrote, “God, how did you bear it all?” Because there were a lot of hard moments. Personally, I was constantly stressed out, but it had become a way of life, you know. Anya is fine, she’s easygoing, but I can’t improvise when it comes to serious matters, I have to prepare and think things over. If I hadn’t followed all those rules, maybe we could have flown to Germany more easily, who knows. I’m a thorough person, I don’t want to lose money and end up stranded at the airport not knowing what to do. That is, I was preparing, I was checking out all the chat rooms and websites, seeing what papers we needed to get and where to go. There was a lot of preparation just for the dog. Without the dog, we would have done it all ten times easier, if not more. Because in different countries there are particular papers and certain vaccinations you have to have, and the airlines have certain requirements for the carrier. Ramona is a basically a ‘homeowner’—she had three portable houses,” Irina says.

“For the first time in her life, probably, when leaving Baku, Irina took sedatives because the dog in its carrier had to be placed in the trunk of the bus. And I was so worked up that even I took them too,” Anna remarks.

Anna and Irina flew to Frankfurt, where they were met by a friend of Irina’s who had lived in Germany for a long time. They had to get to their initial placement site, the town of Suhl in Thuringia, which is a three-hour drive from Frankfurt.

“But when we arrived there, we were told that pets were not permitted. Ukrainians used to bring pets there with them, but since now there are few Ukrainians in this camp and mostly Muslims, who have a bad attitude to dogs and are afraid of them, it is prohibited. So we urgently began looking for help on the chat rooms. A Ukrainian family agreed to take Ramona in for a while. They lived right next to the camp, and so we would go to their house to walk the dog. But then this young woman found out she had allergies, so Ana’s daughter quickly came from the Czech Republic and took Ramona away,” Irina explains.

A room in a German dormitory for refugees

The refugee camp where the pensioners were initially placed was a complex of five buildings, mostly inhabited by people from Arab countries.

“It was a bit scary to live in such an unfamiliar environment, given that the doors to the room in which we were put were unlocked. The police even came once because of a conflict in the building. We also had our passports taken from us and there was a risk that we would be processed in a different status—as refugees, even though we had ‘humanitarian visa’ stamped on our papers. We wrote everywhere, because they said that if we were registered as refugees, we could change this status only through the courts, and the courts could take years. That was scary. I said that we could not even return to Russia without a passport. Basically, it was a massive problem. I’d only recently been released, and I had put on two or three kilograms, because one thing or another was causing stress, but there was no getting around it,” Irina recounts.

Everything worked out well, ultimately. After a week, they were moved to the town of Greiz, a two-hour drive from Suhl. There they were allocated a social apartment, started to receive an allowance, were insured, and were issued social security numbers. By October, Anna and Irina had received residence permits for three years. During all this time, however, the pensioners had to confront the famous German bureaucracy more than once.

“They have an algorithm, as it were. But the human factor often gets in the way. People who work in this system, they do not know all the laws, or often they do things just to check off the boxes. But our case was quite peculiar for them: we are Russian pensioners, we have humanitarian visas, and they probably have a million other refugees here. Things were difficult, but when you look back, you think, What was there to worry about?” said Anna and Irina.

After the paperwork was completed, the friends moved again, but not far—to the city of Gera, thirty kilometers from Greiz. Each of them found rented accommodation there, which is paid for by the municipality. The apartments there are rented empty, with no furniture or appliances.

“When we moved from one place to another, they stopped paying us in the old place, but here they hadn’t started paying us yet, and it took two months to process the registration. So for two months we were without money or furniture,” Irina explains.

Since she had not yet been discharged from social housing, they could still live there together legally for some time and work on furnishing their new homes.

“The Ukrainians who live here have set up a help chat room and chat rooms for selling different things. I bought a bed and a chest of drawers from Ukrainians. I got some things for free. Germans often sell things they don’t need for very cheap. For example, I bought a complete kitchen set for only 100 euros, which is practically nothing. Now I’m looking for a bigger refrigerator,” Irina says.

Irina’s apartment after she furnished it

Anna, on the other hand, found an app similar to the Russian website Avito, where used furniture was sold, and bought almost everything she needed at wholesale prices.

“The only thing I was left without was a kitchen. I didn’t have a stove, but I got a microwave, and I could survive with a microwave. I bought a kettle. And that’s how I lived for the first few months,” she said.

The pensioners were at pains to point out that no one refused to help them. People who had also immigrated to Germany, some twenty years earlier and others two years earlier, offered them bedding, dishes, and household supplies. When Irina and Anna had settled in, they passed some of these things on to a family from Ukraine.

Expiring products are given to immigrants for next to nothing

People who have been granted humanitarian visas in Germany can choose not to work and live on benefits. But they can try to find a job if they want. Before they retired, Anna was involved in marketing cosmetics, while Irina helped animals. After ten years at the official municipal animal shelter, she ran a mini-shelter for five dogs, one of which she ultimately adopted. Finding a job in Germany is still difficult for them.

“We don’t speak German, so the opportunities to find work are few and far between for the time being. I am registered at the job center, while Irina is now registered with the Sozialamt, and she can live on her pension in peace, but I will only go on 31 July to test the level of my German. God willing, I will test out at A1, since I almost got A’s in German back in school. After taking this test, I do not know when I will be able to take German-language classes. Many emigrants take these courses two or three times. Then again, I’m old, so things don’t stick in my head nowadays. Of course, I would like somehow to learn the language faster and integrate faster,” Anna says, laughing.

Irina says that she has not been assigned to an integration course, so for the time being she is also living without knowledge of the German language and therefore jobless. While she was still living in Greiz, she worked a two-hour trial day as a seamstress in a local factory . Irina liked it very much. When she moved to Gera, she also wrote to one of the factories there, but was told that German was required. Getting a job is likewise important to Irina because she wants to invite her husband, who stayed behind Russia, to join her in Germany, which is impossible to do if she is unemployed. Irina’s husband would also need to know German, but how and where he can learn it and pass the test for the simplest level is still unclear. Irina herself attends German language courses, but they are run by volunteers and thus unofficial.

Anna and Irina say that even without jobs they have enough to do—they have traveled all over the area.

“We have been traveling a lot since day one. While we didn’t have papers, we used to walk, and then we got the chance to buy transit passes that enable us to travel by rail, buses, trams, and subways,” says Irina, who has also been to travel to Finland to visit her children, and to Stockholm and Copenhagen to meet friends.

Anna has bought a sewing machine and begun sewing.

“I used to do needlework, but in recent years things had not been coming together. Now I have started knitting curtains, and I will start weaving; I want to do a lot of things. I knitted myself a sweater. I bought brushes and paints and started drawing a bit, but have given it up for the time being. Mostly, I want to walk more. We are from Karelia and have a tradition of walking as the first thing one needs to do. And I had a dog then. Here I bought a bicycle as soon as I got the furniture: I jumped on the bike and went riding. You have to see everything around you. It takes a lot of time to see everything, to photograph it, to edit it, to upload it to the internet. So there is not enough time,” she explains.

By the way, both pensioners are each on their third VKontakte page: their previous pages had been blocked by the Russian authorities.

“DID THEY WRITE ABOUT BUCHA?”

Karelian law enforcement never forgot Irina and Anna.

In April 2024, it transpired that a criminal case had been opened against the two émigrés on charges of disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army. They found out about it because Irina’s husband was summoned to testify, for some reason, in the criminal investigation against Anna. Only when he met with the investigator, it transpired that Irina was also being prosecuted on the same charge. The husband refused to answer the investigator’s questions, invoking Article 51 of the Constitution (which permits an individual not to testify against themself or their spouse). Anna’s sister was then summoned for questioning in the same investigation. A little later, it transpired that both Anna and Irina had been put on the federal wanted list. And shortly before this interview, a person unknoiwn, who introduced himself as a policeman, wrote to Anna via WhatsApp and asked her where she was.

How many criminal “fake news” cases have been launched in Russia

In March 2022, after invading Ukraine, Russia adopted laws that criminalized disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army and “discrediting:” its actions. As of February 2024, 402 such cases had been brought. Dozens of Russians have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for allegedly violating the law. According to human rights activists, this is tantamount to military censorship.

It is still unknown why the criminal case was launched. The relatives were asked during questioning what Irina and Anna had written on their first VKontakte pages. They made a special point of asking, “Did they write about Bucha?”

“It’s no fun feeling like a criminal. Although we all know what it means now in this [sic] country. In short, the crackdown continues: you are on the right side, and they are on the wrong side. They have to do something: there’s probably no one left in Karelia to sink their claws into anymore, but they need fulfill quotas. It’s a crackdown for its own sake. I feared for my relatives, because way back in 1938 there were so-called enemies of the people, and children, wives, and husbands of enemies of the people. I’m afraid lest it come to this,” Irina says.

The human rights activists consulted by Anna and Irina have advised them not to return to Russia before the regime changes, otherwise they will be sentenced to hard time in prison.

“FOR THREE DAYS I BAWLED LIKE A BELUGA”

Both émigrés follow the news from Russia closely. They argue that the country is “hurtling into an abyss.”

“What is happening is simply absurd. It feels like the country exists in a kind of distorted reality in which good is evil, and black is white. They are engaged in such insanity, frankly, and you don’t understand how it is possible to support all of this. And then there are the people who have gone crazy on a nationwide scale and who think everything is fine there, that it’s the way it should be. I worked at a polling place for many years and I used to say all the time that when we socialize only with our own kind, we don’t see what the rest of the people are like, but I saw all kinds of people at the polling station. I know that might sound kind of arrogant, but I saw how massively ignorant people were. I’ve always been skeptical of the claim that the Soviet Union had the best education system. I don’t know how it was the best if it didn’t teach people to think, and if people blindly trust the authorities. The authorities are king and god to them, as this whole situation has shown. Basically, you get the feeling that all people have come down with insanity, and some are immune. The analogy with Hitler’s Germany immediately comes to mind, where the people were fooled in the same way, gulled by propaganda. Maybe there is still hope that if the regime changes and they tell folks on TV how it really was, then…. We are now like spectators looking at Russia from the outside, and it’s scary to watch what is happening there,” Irina says.

When asked how they reacted to the news of politician Alexei Navalny’s death, Anna is unable to reply. She immediately starts crying.

“That’s how we reacted,” Irina explains, crying too.

“It’s good that my daughter was here that day: we went to Munich with her. I spent the whole day with them. But in the evening they went to a concert, and I got on the Munich chat rooms and found out that there would be a rally on Freedom Square and went there,” says Anna.

Alexei Navalny’s Death

The news of Alexei Navalny’s death came on 16 February 2024. He had been serving a nineteen-year sentence for “extremism,” after being convicted on seven criminal charges, including “creating an extremist community.” During his imprisonment, he was sent to a punishment cell twenty-seven times, spending almost 300 days there. After the politician’s death, pickets to mourn his passing were held in Russian cities, and the picketers were detained by the police en masse. The authorities refused to hand over his body to his relatives for a long time, demanding that they bury him in secret. Navalny’s associates argue that he was murdered and blame President Vladimir Putin for his death.

“I bawled like a beluga for three days. I still can’t even look at the photos of him calmly,” Irina adds.

“In the past, Ira, you used to say, ‘Navalny will be released and I’ll go home,'” her friend remarks.

Irina doesn’t make any predictions now that she has emigrated.

“I don’t make any predictions and I don’t listen to them. My motto now is: do what must be done and what will be will be. And I would also add: do what you have to do and what you are able to do. What matters most is saving yourself and your loved ones. We don’t know how long this will last. Analyzing things even as they stand now, I can confidently say that nothing good is going to happen…. Well, how should I put it? Nothing good is going to happen quickly. But I’m not ruling out either possibility: that I’ll stay here, or that I’ll go back there. I’ll go home as soon as I can. If nothing changes there, I’ll stay here.”

Anna, however, says that she has almost no one left in Russia: her daughter emigrated to the Czech Republic back in 2016, and she hardly communicates with her relatives who stayed behind in Russia.

“I will be better off here anyway. As long as they don’t kick me out, I’ll stay here,” she adds.

The pensioners nevertheless try to keep involved in Russian politics. They traveled to Leipzig to sign a petition supporting Boris Nadezhdin’s presidential candidacy and then to Berlin to vote in the presidential election.

Irina signing a petition in support of Boris Nadezhdin’s presidential bid

“There was such a huge queue. Because we were afraid of missing the train, we cut the queue a bit. A lot of people could not vote because, I think, only two polling stations were open in Germany—in Berlin and in Bonn. There were a lot of people who wanted to vote. We stood in line there with Yulia Navalnaya. And I talked to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and we had our pictures taken with Ekaterina Schulmann. There were so many celebrities, and the queue itself was very cool. There were a lot of young people, all chanting “Russia without Putin.” But there were also a few pro-Putin people who have lived in Germany for twenty years and go vote for Putin, and we trolled them a little bit. But this is life, this is reality,” says Irina.

Irina Navalnaya, Kira Yarmysh, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky

What do Anna and Irina dream of?

“Grandchildren!” Anna answers immediately. “And first of all, of course, that the war end!”

“The first thing I wish for is that the war end. And the second is for me to go home,” says Irina.

Source: “‘It’s no fun feeling like a criminal’: female pensioners from Karelia emigrated to remain free,” Okno, 11 June 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

Five Profiles in Courage and Compassion

When Putinism lies in ruins, Russians will remember the fearless moral clarity of this prison letter from Darya Kozyreva, a medical student first expelled from university and then arrested for her antiwar actions.

‘Russia is wrapped in a heavy, impenetrable cocoon, a cocoon of silence. How many crimes the Putin dictatorship has committed, how many foreign cities it has seized and devastated, how many killings and tortures it has meted out, and the response to all these outrages is a deafening silence.

‘Many prefer not to know what is happening, to close their eyes and stop listening. Many deceive themselves, wishing to be deceived — after all it is so easy to believe blindly what the television says, even if it is broadcasting the most monstrous lies.

‘But many know perfectly well what this vile regime is doing. They endure the burden of their dissent, their outrage, their anger. And all the same, they are silent.

‘Just as any crime is committed with somebody’s tacit consent, so any dictatorship is maintained thanks to the people’s silence. A colossus with feet of clay will be worthless if all the dissenters speak out.

‘But they are silent.

‘One person thinks that everything has been decided, and that there is no reason for them, a minor figure, to get mixed up in this. Another hopes that others will say everything — but those others also find excuses to remain silent.

‘The real reason for this silence is human fear, visceral fear. No dictatorship can make everyone believe in it — therefore it constantly resorts to fear, its first and last instrument for subjugating the people.

‘Germans in the era of Hitler obediently shouted ‘Heil,’ understanding the consequences of disobedience; Soviet people in the era of Stalin were afraid to whisper in their own kitchens for fear of being denounced. The steamroller of repression doesn’t need to crush every dissenter, just a few demonstrative examples, and the rest will gag their own mouths.

‘The absurdity of Putinist repression has reached such heights that any trifle can become a pretext for persecution – and no one knows what one can say. The criminal in the Kremlin is satisfied; that’s exactly what he needs. As long as everyone is silent, his own skin will be safe.

‘That is precisely why one cannot stay silent. No, human fear is understandable: it is very difficult to risk one’s position, one’s future, one’s freedom. To say nothing of the fact that many have families — for these people, the fear is doubled. But will it be easier for these families to live under a dictatorship, under tightening screws, behind an iron curtain?

‘A dictatorship can continue to wreak its atrocities, its lawlessness, as long as it feels strength and power. Nothing will change as long as everyone remains submissively silent.

‘So perhaps the time has come to start speaking?

‘Everyone who can speak, must speak. The individuals who dared to speak up are now too few to move anything. Everyone must speak, who does not agree with the Moscow regime. Individuals can easily be put behind bars for their words, because they are individuals. But there are not enough prisons for everyone, for all the dissenters in Russia. Even if the regime builds just as many especially for them.

‘When, having overcome fear, everyone begins to speak out, it will time for Putin’s gang to be afraid.

‘No evil lasts for ever, any dictatorship will inevitably collapse. It can collapse of its own weight, like the USSR, or thanks to the uprising of the people.

‘Don’t let this dictatorship live any longer than it can. Speak out, people!’

Source: Robert Horvath (X), 25 June 2024. Originally published in Russian by Holod on 25 June 2024 with this preface: “Daria Kozyreva is one of the youngest political prisoners in Russia. Until two years ago, she was in medical school at St. Petersburg State University and was politically active. In 2023, she was charged with an administrative offense for an anti-war post on [the Russian social media network] VKontakte and expelled from the university. On 24 February 2024 Kozyreva was detained after she pasted a leaflet containing a poem by the poet on the monument to [Ukrainian poet] Taras Shevchenko. Kozyreva faces five years for “repeatedly discrediting the Russian army.” She is in a pretrial detention center in St. Petersburg, where she is awaiting trial. There, she wrote a column about silence, fear and hope specially for Holod. We have published it as is.” Thanks to Simoni Pirani for the heads-up. Photo of Ms. Kozyreva, above, courtesy of RFE/RL.

Kneeling in the midst of the sedge, Linda Yamane sings faithfully an Ohlone song expressing gratitude to the plants after gathering material for her baskets. Once lost due to the Spanish colonization in the 18th century, the Ohlone basket-weaving skill was restored by Linda, who made her first tribal basket in 1994. Woven from willow sticks and sedge roots, the baskets played an essential role in the daily life of Ohlone people, who strongly connected to nature back to the old days. In the revival of the intricate basketry, Linda is motivated to bring about respect and appreciation of the traditional art, and the Ohlone spirit, living on in the mind of descendants, is thus aroused.

Source: Wood Culture Tour (YouTube), 23 June 2015

“Using archived ethnographic research, Linda Yamane is bringing back the language of the Ohlone, a Northern California tribe.”

Source: “Reviving the Ohlone Language,” Smithsonian Magazine (YouTube), 23 February 2010

Source: Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, 30 June 2024. Photos by the Russian Reader

[…]

Desperate to talk to his wife, he signaled to a tall, skinny orderly who was cleaning his room that he wanted to use his phone. The Russian man quickly understood and when Mr. Shahi said, “Nepali, Nepali,” the cleaner opened a translation app on his phone.

“Get me a cellphone. I pay you later,” was Mr. Shahi’s message.

The Russian man smiled.

The same day, a new phone appeared.

[…]

They began to panic. In Russia, deserters are punished by military courts and can spend years in prison. But then they saw a taxi coming down a road and waved it down. Mr. Khatri said he frantically tapped open Google Translate on his phone and used it to tell the driver they were lost tourists and needed to get to Moscow. The driver took them all the way — 15 hours — and at the end, refused to take a single ruble.

Mr. Khatri worked with middlemen to get a flight to Kathmandu. Now back home in Rolpa, he said: “Some Russians are quite helpful. I could have died if that driver hadn’t helped us.”

Mr. Shahi had similar kind words for the Russian orderly. With the new phone, he spoke to his wife. She borrowed heavily from relatives — $8,000 this time — to pay another group of traffickers who said they could get her husband out.

On the morning of Jan. 23, Mr. Shahi gingerly stepped out of the Rostov hospital. He hobbled to a nearby market where a taxi was waiting for him. The driver communicated through a translation app, telling Mr. Shahi: Don’t talk. I’ll do the talking. If we get stopped, I’ll tell them you’re sick and headed to the hospital.

They drove all day to the one place that could help with the final stage of the escape: The Embassy of Nepal, in Moscow.

[…]

Source: Bhadra Sharma and Jeffrey Gettleman, “How to Escape from the Russian Army,” New York Times, 27 June 2024

With his immersive documentary “Real,” Sentsov takes viewers inside Ukraine’s war trenches, after unknowingly turning on the GoPro camera on his helmet.

Oleg Sentsov was used to fighting Moscow even before he enlisted in the Ukrainian Defense Forces, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It’s just that previously, instead of a gun, he’d used his camera.

When Russian special forces arrived in Crimea in 2014, Sentsov was on the ground documenting the illegal annexation of the region. He was arrested, sent to Russia, and given a 20-year sentence on charges of “plotting terrorism.”

Following a coordinated effort by the European Film Academy, Amnesty International and the European Parliament with the support of directors like Ken Loach, Pedro Almodóvar and Agnieszka Holland — Sentsov was finally released on September 7, 2019, as part of a Ukrainian-Russian prisoner swap.

In November 2019, the Ukrainian film director and human rights activist was able to collect the 2018 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought that was awarded to him by the European Parliament. Named after Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov, the award honors people who have “dedicated their lives to the defense of human rights and freedom of thought.”

Even while behind bars, Sentsov continued to work. Via covert letters smuggled out of prison by his lawyer, he directed “Numbers,” an adaptation of his own stage play about life in a dystopian, authoritarian state. The parallels to Sentsov’s own life were obvious.

But Sentsov is no knee-jerk nationalist. His 2021 feature “Rhino,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, is a look at the chaos that engulfed Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union and how crime and corruption filled the resulting power vacuum.

‘Live’ from the trenches

But “Real,” Oleg Sentsov’s latest film, is unlike anything he’s made before.

It begins without explanation or warning. We are suddenly in a foxhole, hearing the frantic voice of a soldier over the radio in another trench, under attack from Russian forces and in desperate need of reinforcements.

Oleg Sentsov, “Real,” 2024: official international trailer

During the first days of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, film director Oleh Sentsov joined the Ukrainian Defense Forces. In his role as an army lieutenant, he took part in several intensive battles – and during one, his BMP was destroyed by Russian artillery. In the aftermath, he became embedded in nearby trenches and tried to organize via radio the evacuation of part of his unit. All the while, his men were under constant attack, and eventually ran out of ammunition, making their evacuation all the more urgent. This military event on the Ukrainian-Russian front line positions was given the code name Real. This is the name of the film.

Source: Arthouse Traffic (YouTube), 18 June 2024

The voice on our end — that of “Real” director Sentsov, call sign “Grunt” — is trying to organize the evacuation of troops under fire and the resupply of his unit. Ammunition is running out, and the Russian forces — uniformly referred to over the radio as “f**kers” — are closing in.

“This is one of those very long days. It was part of the much-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive of last summer,” says Sentsov, speaking via Zoom on leave from the front.

“We had spent almost 10 days trying to get through the Russian defense line. We lost equipment, we lost weapons. But we were still in the same place. It was really obvious that we were losing many people, losing armaments, vehicles, everything. But even at that moment, we’d kept our belief that we could do something.”

Sentsov’s unit was sent deep into enemy territory but their armored personnel carrier was hit and they were forced to flee on foot. The director-turned-soldier found himself in a trench, with a handful of his squadmates. Other units were pinned down by enemy fire and running out of ammunition.

“They were almost entirely surrounded by enemies, and I was the only one who had a connection with them and could report back up to the higher commanders,” says Sentsov. “I was stationed a bit uphill and could communicate with both headquarters and the people in the trench.”

Camera on by accident

“Real” plays out as a single, unedited take — an hour-and-a-half long — as Sentsov repeatedly calls between the units and headquarters, trying to cut through the fog of war and get help to the soldiers before it’s too late. We see everything through Sentsov’s eyes, or rather, through the lens of the GoPro camera attached to his helmet.

The director hadn’t meant to be recording. He turned the camera on by accident when he was checking his equipment. It was weeks later, after the battle, that he discovered the footage on the camera’s memory card.

“At first, I thought it looked very random, I didn’t think it would be interesting for anyone and I wanted to erase it,” he says. “But then I started to watch it and I recognized that, oh my God, this is part of this very tragic event, with so many people in the trenches, cut off and surrounded by Russians. Our friends, my friends. People who will watch the movie may never see those soldiers and these situations but they can learn how tragic it was. They can see one of the most tragic days of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.”

“Real” has none of the stylistic flourishes that exemplify Sentsov’s narrative films. 2022’s “Rhino,” subtitled “Ukrainian Godfather” in its US release, is a slick gangster thriller that borrows heavily from the movies of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola to tell the story of the rise and fall of a violent delinquent — the Rhino of the title — who finds success in the chaos of 1990s Ukraine.

2020’s “Numbers,” which is set on a single stage, evokes the theatrical mimimalism of Lars von Trier’s “Dogville” or the plays of Bertolt Brecht.

In “Real,” the hand of the director is nowhere to be seen. Sentsov makes not a single edit. He adds no music or sound effects. Nothing is explained beyond what we see and hear on screen in real time.

“This is why I don’t call this a film or even a documentary but rather a pure document,” says Sentsov. “This is the video document that shows a part of the war, a very small glimpse of the war. But this war document captured on camera really shows us how cruel, how stupid, and, I can’t even find the words to describe it, how senseless war is… You get a very different perception of war if you only know it from war movies or from documentaries edited to make war look presentable. There’s always this component of heroism, everyone wants to emphasize this, to show dynamic, heroic action. But real war is very, very different.”

Sentsov calls “Real” an “immersive experience. You are thrown in and you only slowly start to understand what’s going on. It really drags you into the trenches.”

A document of war

Anyone expecting action will be disappointed. Instead we are forced to wait, along with the squad in the foxhole, with no idea what is happening around us and when the enemy will attack. “Real” captures the tension, the tedium, and the terror of war in equal measure.

“When I was young, I remember watching the movie ‘Platoon’ by Oliver Stone, and there’s a scene when one of the soldiers says: ‘Forget the word hero. There’s nothing heroic in war’,” says Sentsov. I couldn’t really understand that at the time because I grew up on very different movies that gave a very different perception of war. Now, after two-and-a-half years in an active war zone, I have to say I completely agree with that young man in the movie.”

Sentsov admits “the truth” he shows in his film may be painful for many, particularly inside Ukraine, to watch. The failure of the summer counter-offensive to break the Russian’s defensive line has shifted the conflict towards a brutal war of attrition.

“There are many things about the situation, about the reality of the war, that we are not discussing here inside Ukraine,” says Sentsov. “If someone would ask me how long it will take to reestablish control over the 1991 borders and to achieve a military defeat of Russia, I would say maybe it could happen in 10 years, but that would be a miracle.”

Instead of pretending that reality doesn’t exist, says Sentsov, it would be better, for Ukraine and the world, to “stare at the eyes of the truth, however painful. Otherwise, we are going to spend all our lives in an illusion that doesn’t relate to reality, to the real situation in front of us.”

Source: Scott Roxborough, “War in Ukraine: Oleg Sentsov’s ‘accidental’ documentary,” Deutsche Welle, 27 June 2024