27 Feb 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Russia
“Dear Alexei, it’s been a year that darkness has fallen upon us – and yet, your ideas and your determination give us strength,” read a letter placed on opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s grave on 16 February 2025, marking the one-year anniversary of his death.
That day, more than 5,300 people attended the Borisovskoye Cemetery in Moscow where he is buried, according to the Beliy Schetchik (White Counter) movement. Despite temperatures reportedly dropping to a frosty -8 degrees Celsius, Navalny supporters waited in line outside the cemetery to pay their respects.
Artist and musician Yaroslav Smolev was one of the attendees. He told Index: “By joining in, not only did we get a chance to feel that we’re among like-minded people, but we also showed the [rest of the] Russian society what matters to us.”
In the days following Navalny’s death last year, Smolev spoke to Index for the first time. He had been arrested for staging a solo protest in support of the opposition leader in the centre of St Petersburg. Around that time, hundreds of mourners were being detained across the country, namely for laying flowers at improvised memorials.
Even so, people have returned to these locations this year to honour Navalny’s memory – and were predictably punished. According to the rights group OVD-Info, on the anniversary of Navalny’s death, at least 26 people were detained. In the city of Volgograd, for example, Alexander Yefimov from the Yabloko opposition party was jailed for 14 days for bringing flowers and a photo of Navalny to a memorial and placing them at a monument dedicated to victims of Soviet-era repression.
Carrying portraits of Putin’s main opponent – and even signs with his name on – became illegal after Navalny and his movement were declared “extremist” in 2021 and 2022.
For Smolev, Navalny is a role model who enabled him to overcome his fears. “He spoke with police officers in a natural and straightforward manner,” Smolev said. “There was not even a hint of fear in his behavior.” Smolev stressed that if it weren’t for Navalny, he would have never joined many peaceful protests, starting in 2017.
He added that if Navalny hadn’t gone as far as sacrificing his life “for his values and his ideals”, “the general public might not have realised that his lifelong battle was, in fact, heartfelt”. He was alluding to Navalny’s return to Russia in 2021 from Germany after recovering from a poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.
For Nadezhda Skochilenko – the mother of former Russian political prisoner and Index award winner Aleksandra Skochilenko – Navalny’s death caused “much pain”. Above all, she told Index, she thinks of him as “the son of his mother”, Lyudmila Navalnaya.
When Navalny died, Aleksandra was in jail. She had been sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for replacing supermarket pricing labels with anti-war messages. She was ultimately released as part of a prisoner exchange last summer.
Asked if the news of Navalny’s death increased her fear for the safety of political prisoners like her daughter, Nadezhda responded: “I’m too well-informed about what’s going on [in Russian] prisons. I’m frightened for everyone [who’s incarcerated] from the moment they’re arrested.”
She said that people die in jails, in pre-trial detention, and even during arrest. In 2024, eight political prisoners perished; one of them was pianist Pavel Kushnir, who spoke out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Over the past year, the pressure on political prisoners has increased, Nadezhda said. They are placed in solitary confinement “more frequently and for longer periods of time”. In these tiny punishment cells, people are not allowed to lie down during the day, among other restrictions.
To make matters worse, in many cases, proper medical treatment is not provided to political prisoners – a fact that “the authorities no longer try to conceal”, Nadezhda said. She is also concerned that minors accused of “terrorism” in politically-motivated cases are placed in pre-trial detention, instead of on house arrest.
She added that “on a regular basis” dissidents are denied access to letters sent by their supporters. Nevertheless, people keep writing to them – “the most useful and safest act [of resistance] within reach of everyone”, according to Smolev.
Despite the pressure of the authorities, supporters and families of jailed dissidents battle with prison administrations over human rights abuses. They also attend court hearings when they can – while some are still open to the public, many political trials are now closed, especially the ones of dissidents charged with treason, Nadezhda explained.
But acts of resistance “cannot be entirely suppressed”, she said – “hence “[Putin’s] regime responds with even more severe crackdown on dissent”.
15 Nov 2024 | News and features, Russia, Volume 53.03 Autumn 2024
There is no bigger crime than the killing of the soul. “Stop punitive psychiatry!” read the sign held by activist Oksana Osadchaya at a solo protest in the centre of Moscow in June.
The activist – who is visually impaired – was making her protest even though the tiniest acts of dissent can lead to severe punishment.
She was taken to a police station where she wasn’t allowed to meet her lawyer at first, and was released without charge only after being held for several hours.
Osadchaya’s desperate act of protest was meant to draw attention to the use of enforced psychiatric treatment in Russia against defendants in politically motivated cases.
According to independent media outlet Agentstvo, at least 33 such cases have been documented since 2023, when people arrested for opposing the war in Ukraine started being sentenced. Between 2013 and 2022 there were just 22.
A new bill, which will become law in 2025, will allow the police to gain access to the medical records of people suffering from certain mental illnesses and who are deemed by psychiatrists to be a threat to public order.
Dmitry Kutovoy, a member of Russia’s Psychiatric Association, told Index he had concerns that amending legislation could contribute to creating a system of oppression using psychiatry. He warned that the authorities might put pressure on medical workers to designate certain people as “activists, political opponents, and so on”.
One recent high-profile case was that of Viktoria Petrova, who was arrested in May 2022. She was accused of “spreading false information” about the Russian military in anti-war social media posts.
Activist Anush Panina went to support Petrova during her trial in St Petersburg.
“All of a sudden, the court announced that the hearings would be closed to the public, and sent her to a psychiatric hospital,” Panina remembered, speaking to Index from exile.
“It was outrageous and frightening.”
Panina suspects Petrova was punished for continuing to speak up while in detention and on trial. In her final statement to the court, Petrova said that Russia’s war in Ukraine was “a crime against humanity”.
Panina felt it was “convenient” for the authorities to put an end to the public trial on grounds of medical confidentiality and said that, at previous hearings, bogus experts who had analysed Petrova’s social media posts had proved to be so incompetent that people were laughing at them.
At the psychiatric unit, Petrova was brutalised by the medical staff, according to her lawyer Anastasia Pilipenko.
She was forced to undress while male nurses were watching, and after she refused to take a shower in front of them, they twisted her arms and threatened to beat her. She was tied to a bed and injected with heavy medications which left her barely able to speak for two days.
Adding that it was unclear whether the abuse had been ordered by the Kremlin, Panina said Petrova’s treatment course could be extended indefinitely, and a medical commission would convene every six months to decide whether to prolong it. In August, soon after Panina spoke with Index, Petrova was released from the psychiatric unit. She will now be observed on an outpatient basis.
Kutovoy said that cases of inhumane treatment such as Petrova’s were, at least for the moment, “isolated incidents”. He added, however, that enforced psychiatric treatment in Russia today was nevertheless “as scary as it sounds”.
“Patients’ rights aren’t really respected,” he explained, adding that heavy medications were given to them at high dosages.
Kutovoy said that, in theory, enforced treatment was ordered by the court instead of punishment. “In practice, however, it’s still punishment – just in a different form,” he said.
But considering the long prison sentences handed out to dissidents under President Vladimir Putin, enforced treatment may be the lesser evil in certain circumstances. This seems to be the case with Viktor Moskalev, another defendant in an anti-war criminal case who was sent to a psychiatric ward.
In March 2023, he was arrested for “spreading false information” about the Russian army after making two comments about war crimes committed in Ukraine on the e-xecutive.ru website.
Moskalev’s lawyer, Mikhail Biryukov, told Index that in 2005, his client had been diagnosed with a mental illness in a private clinic. He was now in remission, and “has a prospect of being set free [from the psychiatric unit] earlier than if he were in prison”.
Abuse of psychiatry to persecute and intimidate state critics was a popular practice in the Soviet Union. Dissident Alexander Skobov was condemned to compulsory psychiatric treatment twice, in the 1970s and the 1980s.
In May this year, he was sent to a psychiatric unit again, for “examination”. He is accused of posting messages justifying terrorism on social media, as well as of taking part in a terrorist organisation, and could face up to 22 years in jail.
“The repressive machine is looking for new methods of persecution,” Kutovoy said. “It’s just the way it works.”
According to Kutovoy, this trend points towards a punitive mechanism of using psychiatry being in demand by the authorities. He said there had been an increase in the number of involuntary hospitalisations of arrested political protesters.
“A person is arrested holding a sign, is taken to a police station, and a psychiatric team is called,” he explained. “Then the psychiatrists have to decide whether there is a need for involuntary hospitalisation.”
If they conclude that’s the case – and, a few days later, decide that this measure must be maintained – the court can order long-term compulsory treatment.
Kutovoy emphasised that in many cases, psychiatrists refused to send dissidents to hospital against their will. Alexey Sokirko, for example, was arrested in July for wearing a T-shirt which read: “I’m against Putin”. Police officers called a psychiatric team after Sokirko asked them whether an “I’m against Stalin” tag would be allowed. In the end, the doctors concluded that there was no need for involuntary hospitalisation.
Kutovoy said he wished he could speak out more openly on the issue of punitive psychiatry. However, he added: “In Russia today, it’s impossible to make a statement which is not in line with the political agenda [of the state]. And there is an obvious connection between cases of abuse of psychiatric care and the political agenda.”
2 Aug 2024 | Europe and Central Asia, Germany, News and features, Newsletters, Russia
There is a tendency to see Russia as a huge monolithic entity with a matching ideology. This is the expansionist, imperial Russia that poisons its enemies and kidnaps their children. It is the Russia of the gulags, of Putin, Stalin and the Tsars. But there is another Russia. It is the Russia of the eight brave students who stood in Red Square in 1968 to demonstrate against the invasion of Czechoslovakia and inspired the founders of this magazine. It the Russia of the dissidents of the 1970s and the reformers of the 1990s. It is the Russia of Pussy Riot, of Alexander Livintenko, Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny.
This is the Russia of Vladmir Kara-Murza, the Russian activist, politician, journalist and historian released this week in a prisoner swap with Russian spies held in the West.
Much has been made of the detention and release of American journalist Evan Gershkovich – and rightly so. The Wall Street Journal reporter has become an important symbol of the fundamental values of a free media. It is to his eternal credit that his final request before release was an interview with Vladimir Putin. We also welcome the release of Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist from the Tatar/Bashkir service.
But it is Vladimir Kara-Murza who most fully represents the dissident spirit of Russia that runs counter to the authoritarian tendency that has dominated the country for so much of its recent history.
He is often described simply as one of the fiercest opponents of Putin, But Kara-Murza is so much more than that. He is above all the keeper of the flame of the Russian dissident tradition. He, more than anyone, understands the power of this alternative version of Russian identity.
Supporters of Index interested in the subject should watch the four-part documentary series, They Chose Freedom, directed and presented by Kara-Murza in 2005. The film is edited by his wife Evgenia, who has led the campaign for his release. Two decades later it is still acts as a powerful reminder of the courage of those who spoke out against the Soviet system. It examines the roots of the dissident movement in the weekly poetry readings held in Mayakovsky Square in the 1950s. It includes interviews with the key players in the movement, including Vladminir Bukovsky, Anatoly Sharnsky and three of the participants of the Red Square demonstration of 1968, Pavel Litvinov, Natalya Gorbanevskaya and and Viktor Fainberg.
In April 2023, shortly before he was sentenced to 25 years for charges linked to his opposition to the war in Ukraine, Kara-Murza said: “I know the that the day will come when the darkness engulfing our country will clear. Our society will open its eyes and shudder when it realises what crimes were committed in its name.”.
The release comes after reports earlier this year that Kara-Murza had been transferred to a harsher prison regime and that his health was deteriorating. An image shared on Telegram (see above) by fellow dissident Ilya Yashin, also released in the prisoner swap, show Kara-Murza this morning in Germany where they will hold a press conference later today. We await news that he and family will finally be able to welcome him back to Britain, which they have made their home.
12 Jul 2024 | Europe and Central Asia, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Russia, United Kingdom
A Russian art collective which was due to open a show in London highlighting the plight of opponents of the Putin regime claim their exhibition was cancelled at the last minute because one of them was Israeli.
The Pomidor group was founded in Moscow in 2018 by the artists Polina Egorushkina and Maria Sarkisyants, but the duo was forced to relocate two years ago after the Kremlin crackdown on opposition activity. Egorushkina now lives in London and Sarkisyants in Ashkelon in southern Israel.
Their latest show, Even Elephants Hold Elections, was part of an ongoing project about free expression designed to challenge people in democratic countries to understand life in an authoritarian regime and reflect on their own experience. Pomidor’s work includes embroidered banners celebrating political prisoners which the artists display in friends’ windows and phone booths on the street.
Among these are tributes to Viktoria Petrova, imprisoned in a psychiatric unit for anti-war social media posts, Mikhail Simonov, a 63-year-old pensioner arrested for comments on other people’s social media and 13-year-old Masha Moskaleva, who was taken away from her father after drawing anti-war pictures at school.
The show was due to open on 3 July at the Metamorphika Gallery in east London. But on the evening before, the two artists were told the gallery had received messages raising concerns about “inappropriate behaviour” on social media.
This referred to two posts pinned on Maria’s Instagram account. One post from 7 October expressed her horror at the “terrible evil” and included the words, in Russian, “Israel my beloved, we are here, we are here to support each other, all my thoughts are with the kidnapped, let only them return home alive. Eternal memory to the fallen.” A second post marked the one-month anniversary and expressed solidarity with the Israeli hostages and their families.
Sarkisyants told Index they were called to an urgent meeting the next day: “They showed me the two posts and said you should clarify your position. I said, I am from Israel and there was nothing in the post but facts: 1200 people were killed and 300 became hostages.”
The gallery asked Pomidor to sign a joint statement with Metamorphika condemning “the Zionist regime”, which they refused to do. “I’m Israeli. I was there,” said Sarkisyants. “What they proposed was impossible for me to do”
After several hours of discussion, Pomidor suggested a compromise of putting the exhibition solely in the name of Polina, but the gallery demanded the collective remove all work connected with Maria. At this point the exhibition was cancelled.
Pomidor posted on Instagram: “The problem came up because Maria is from Israel.”
This is something the gallery strongly denies. Metamorphika founder Simon Ballester told Index: “We were really compassionate with her story. But we asked her to say she had empathy for Palestinians and was against the war crimes.”
Ballester said the problem came when Sarkisyants expressed her support for the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.
“It’s outrageous” the artist told Index. “I told them I do not support Netanyahu or his government. I feel they betrayed us. We expected them to protect us, but they didn’t. But I support my country Israel and its people.”
Since the cancellation of the show, Metamorphika claims it has received over a thousand “hate mails, insults and threats”. According to Ballester, he and his colleagues have been accused of being “Nazis, rapists, antisemites and misogynistic scumbags”.
Asked if he now regretted cancelling the show he said: “I think it was the right thing. I’m sorry it was the day of the show. That was really unfortunate.” He said the gallery operated on humanist principles and was striving for peace and equality.
The Pomidor exhibition will next travel to Montreal in Canada and the artists are in discussion with a gallery in London to host the show later in the year.
