10 June 2025
by Anna Karetnikova
Source: Facebook
I don’t know Lev Shlosberg personally, but in recent years I’ve been watching his interaction (confrontation?) with the repressive state with a strange feeling of melancholy. The repressive state is trying in every possible way to prove to him that he, Shlosberg, is simply not needed in Russia. Not as a rebel, not as someone who is ready, partly, to agree with the authorities, and not as someone who says ‘nothing is straightforward.’ Maybe if Shlosberg had gone to the Donbas on some kind of mission, the authorities would have been satisfied with him. But he won’t go. Shlosberg for his part has also been trying to prove something to the repressive state (to the Russian people?), only I don’t quite know what it is exactly, or at what cost.
A person’s desire to remain and continue living where they were born is perfectly understandable. Whether it commands respect depends on the price to be paid. The attempt to prove that it is possible to remain and at the same time be honest and, most importantly, continue to exist as a public politician, raises doubts.
If it really were possible, then would the state in fact be very repressive? A politician calls on both sides to hold a ceasefire. But the repressive state doesn’t care what Lev Shlosberg wants from Ukraine; it only cares what he says about Russia. That’s the point when the bulb lights up.
After his first criminal charge, Shlosberg said: Everything is fine, everything is within the scope of the law, my lawyer and I are explaining to the investigators that they are wrong…
It was very strange for me to hear this, because the war has been going on for some years now and it is obvious the repressive state is never wrong and wants Lev Shlosberg to either stop commenting about things or, even better, leave the country. Or go on a mission to Donbas (but he won’t go).
When I listened to Lev, I thought maybe I had formed a false impression about the situation in Russia over the two years I’ve been away. Can a person who is on the inside really be so wrong? Maybe, then, I’m wrong? Maybe all the political prisoners, if they behaved a little differently, were a little gentler, a little more flexible, wiser, wouldn’t be languishing in captivity now?
It really was very unpleasant to watch Lev Shlosberg’s struggle. Something about it resonates painfully with me, some kind of injustice. Should I go or should I stay? And what is the price? To what extent is compromise acceptable?
Tomorrow they will decide on pre-trial measures.* I send him all my best wishes for that…I want to hope for the best, as I usually do. Despite all my tortured thoughts, the cruelty of the authorities in Russia today remains a bare fact, and their actions, whether foreign or domestic, are utterly illegitimate. Of course I sincerely hope Lev Shlosberg will remain free.
* On 12 June 2025 a court in Pskov placed Lev Shlosberg under house arrest for two months pending trial on a charge of ‘discrediting’ the Russian army. See: ‘Russian Politician Faces House Arrest After Calling Ukraine War “Bloody Chess”,’ Kyiv Post, 12 June 2025 [trans.]
Translated by Simon Cosgrove
