8 -20 May 2025
by Anna Karetnikova
Source: Facebook
8 May 2025
Facebook suddenly reports that 13 years ago, I and some active Muscovites were all walking along some boulevard with white ribbons, apparently chanting something, and bypassed the ranks of helmeted police lined up across the route, climbing over a fence onto the roadway.
It’s difficult to even believe… we walked somewhere, chanted something, believed that those police officers could be bypassed.
I wouldn’t have believed it. But Facebook offers illustrations.
Source: Facebook
9 May 2025
I want to tell you about two women (I don’t know them). When it is said that those who are not silent do not remain in Russia, that everyone expressed themselves in the first months… well, year, maybe, of the war – and then they finally understood and either left or finally fell silent – it turns out this is not so. Well, they couldn’t help but understand, but, apparently, they couldn’t be silent either.
Elena Abramova, about forty years old, from St Petersburg, translator and historian, went out on single-person pickets, one after another. All spring and summer of 2023. “No War,” and “Free Navalny,” and “Free Political Prisoners,” and “No Putin,” and so on. Administrative proceedings were initiated, and then a criminal case also came about, due to ‘repeated discrediting.’ She requested for her sentence to be delayed while her underage daughter grows up, and was given two years in a penal colony this March. She was taken into custody in the courtroom.
And Ekaterina Vorobyova, in her forties, lived in a village in Stavropol region. She also picketed with an antiwar poster, to the village administration, and then wrote only on VK: about Bucha, about the murder of Navalny; she also wrote demands to stop the war. They chose a tougher charge for her: ‘fake news’ about the Russian military. This March, she was also given a longer sentence: six years.
“I am sad that such legal processes as this have become possible at all. It’s as if this new reality has become a familiar backdrop for all our words and actions… I am sure that a time will come in my country when this reality, in which people are judged for their words, will remain only in memories. We, of course, will remember what once was, remember with a shudder of the heart and rejoice that finally, a time of normal peaceful life has come, when we can calmly work, raise children, and look to the future with assurance, because we will live in a peaceful democratic state, in this country,” said Elena Abramova in her final statement.
And Ekaterina Vorobyova wrote in her last post on VK, dated September 2024: “But no matter how much they try to hide behind rhetoric, the fact remains – the crimes against Ukraine and their own citizens can no longer be disguised. The invasion of Ukraine has become one of the most awful tragedies, which will have to be answered for. Maybe it’s time to admit guilt for this and stop destroying the future of both countries?”
And someone will say: you should have been silent, should have endured, should have waited for the dust to settle, for yourself, for your children, don’t stick your neck out… It’s stupid to push against the system when everything is already so clear, so predictable… well shut up already.
And they were not silent.
Source: Facebook
15 May 2025
We visited Paris, wrote letters to political prisoners, watched a movie, went to the zoo and even to a party. Thank you all very much, a wonderful trip! And a big thanks for the photos Nikita Mouraviev
Source: Facebook
19 May 2025
The project ‘Political Prisoners. Memorial’ has recognized as political prisoners three sons of a priest, who were sentenced to up to 17.5 years in prison for attempting to join the Free Russia Legion.
Ioann, Aleksei, and Timofei Ashcheulov are the sons of Lipetsk priest Igor Ashcheulov. Ioann worked as a junior researcher at the Institute of Physics in Minsk, and Aleksei and Timofei lived in St Petersburg and worked as road workers. According to the court, they were detained while attempting to cross the border.
The brothers acknowledged the factual circumstances laid out in the materials of the criminal case, but refused to plead guilty. In court they continued to criticize Russia’s war against Ukraine.
…It is clear that Ukraine’s war is a patriotic one. But the civil war that once took place in Russia – such stories bring back memories anyway. 
Source: Facebook
20 May 2025
A student of the politics department of a university in Germany flew briefly home to Ufa last August to visit relatives. In 2020, Makar Nikolaev, who was studying in high school at the time, became the winner of the contest “My Country – My Russia” in the category “My Country. My Story. My Victory”: he developed a whole methodology for finding evidence of one’s ancestors’ participation in the Great Patriotic War, recreating family history.
Upon his return to Russia, the young man was detained and remanded in custody. A few days ago, for three short comments online, he received a sentence: six years’ imprisonment for justification of the Russian Volunteer Cortps and the Free Russia Legion on the internet.
Interesting how the axle turns… My country, my story… my victory?
Source: Facebook
Translated by Alyssa Rider
