Anna Karetnikova

27 – 30 November 2025

by Anna Karetnikova

Source: Facebook

27 November 2025

I traveled many kilometers in France in order to reach Alsace in time for the visit of our Memorial colleague Oleg Orlov, who had rushed there from Berlin. The visit was super: meeting with a representative in the European Union and also with all kinds of politicians. Meanwhile, Oleg Petrovich [Orlov] spent time at a lycée and spoke to what seemed to be upperclass students, and that was terrific—watching him find the words with one, then another, and a third audience. If the conversation with politicians was about all kinds of important things, and Orlov delineated our position on political prisoners very precisely, whether Trump was there or not, then with the lycée students he responded wonderfully interestingly to all their questions, and they varied a lot, some even, by the way, seriously believing that Prigozhin’s campaign was a failed revolution. Oleg told funny stories about me as an agent of good in the kingdom of evil, and the students came up to ask questions as if I were some kind of Mata Hari and how did I manage to escape. I was totally tongue-tied. And after completing the program—for which huge thanks to our comrades in Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial, Tatyana Davidis and Slava Feraposhkin—Oleg Petrovich rushed off to pick up his wife from the hospital in Berlin. But we did manage to be there for the first day of the Christmas holiday in Strasbourg and take photos of the cathedral because we need them to… (deleted by the censor). Aren’t people in Russian remand centres and penal colonies interested in whether that Strasbourg cathedral there is okay?

Source: Facebook

28 November 2025

Watch the Mediazona video: ‘…tell the country’s citizens the truth. We are innocent!’

And yes, this is amazing. Not one of the eight has admitted guilt in their nearly three years under arrest. All of them are people with different fates, but the court-FSB-Investigative mechanism is breaking them identically with a life sentence in order to justify their own failure to avert the sabotage attack on the bridge. Once and for all. Here is what we heard today in most commentaries from human rights experts: the trial was closed, and we are not familiar with the case materials, but we are certain of their innocence… Well, our project actually is familiar with some of the case materials. I rarely invite anyone to read a report, but this is that instance when, I hope, we have been able to analyze the indictment in detail and be convinced that there is not the slightest significant evidence that these people knew about the explosives on the truck. The investigation is searching for anything at all, something small, oppositionist, pro-Ukrainian… Could they at least have subscribed to Ukrainian channels? Hurrah! Proof! (while at the same time they completely ignore their subscriptions to lots of Russian propaganda channels). The investigation is attempting to square a very large circle somehow and attempting, while repeating irrelevant circumstances in a constant and continuous monotone, to talk around the absence of intent, objective, or motives, and drag out of experts the meagerest of things: yes, they knew! well, or at least they might have known… It isn’t working. And then the investigation writes this: well, since even the experts don’t confirm it, what does that speak to? A high level of conspiracy! (Sure, all eight even managed to fool the lie detector.) And that’s just a tiny fraction of the truly fabricated evidence. Look at the text. There’s a lot more detail there.

I’m not justifying terrorism. I’m not even justifying blowing up the Crimean Bridge. Civilians died there, and this is all a topic for many philosophical discussions, but I don’t like it when civilians die. In any case, though, responsibility must be borne by those who committed the act, and a terrorist act cannot be committed unintentionally, so says the law.

These eight people are not militants, not heroes, they do not think like us, they are not Internet opponents, they were simply doing their routine jobs, living their own small lives, as the saying goes. Which that Black Maria ran over. And that’s what makes this so painful. For months they thought there had been a monstrous mistake… Yesterday, the scales fell from their eyes. At a high price.

‘…All of us, all eight, we all took lie detector tests. We all proved our innocence. We cooperated fully. We went to law enforcement ourselves and gave statements. Not one person testified against us. All the witnesses say we’re innocent. All the evidence says we’re innocent. All 116 volumes [of the case] say we’re innocent. Show people the truth. We are innocent. We are innocent!’

But to whom are they saying this?

Viktor Shenderovich

28 November 2025

Anna Karetnikova has written in detail today about the outrageous sentence in the Crimean Bridge bombing case. 

It is perfectly obvious that all eight were unwitting targets. 

There is not a single piece of evidence (or anything vaguely resembling evidence) that one of the eight knew about what was happening.

Not one of the accused has admitted their guilt.

They all took lie detector tests. 

And nonetheless, eight LIFE SENTENCES.

The explanation for this most cruel verdict is simple and banal in a very Russian way: the case was on the Kremlin’s radar, and the investigation was simply incapable of admitting that the bombing’s organizers had not been caught. So these eight were ‘found’. Some of them went to the police themselves when they realized that their logistics might have something to do with the bridge bombing. 

These eight life sentences are the result of the desperate cowardice of investigators, prosecutors, and judges. Eight fates have been shattered by obsequious wretches who shat themselves out of fear for Putin. 

Watch the Mediazona video in the first comment: 

‘…tell the country’s citizens the truth. We are innocent!’’

‘…All of us, all eight, we all took lie detector tests. We all proved our innocence. We cooperated fully. We ourselves went to law enforcement and gave statements. Not one person testified against us. All the witnesses say we’re innocent. All the evidence says we’re innocent. All 116 volumes [of the case] say we’re innocent. Show people the truth. We are innocent. We are innocent!’

Source: Facebook

Source: Facebook

30 November 2025

Ivan Astashin is reading my book [I Worked for the Federal Penitentiary Service] and has written a post about it, it’s on my last page, but I suspect that the Facebook algorithms are such that hardly anyone can see it on my feed. I’m putting the link in the comments. Follow it or go directly from my page. It’s interesting: Ivan is a former prisoner, I’m a former prison officer, and in the comments are former members of the ONK [Public Monitoring Commission], and also there, by the way, they propose defenestrating me! 

I’m always grateful for reviews of my book!

Source: Facebook

Ivan Astashkin

30 November 2025

I’m still reading Anna Karetnikova’sbook, ‘I Worked for the Federal Penitentiary Service’. I’m reading it in snatches on weekends, and each time I catch myself thinking that the book is making me stop and think, not just race through the text.

For me, Anna’s view is a third side that doesn’t coincide with the prisoners’ vision or the prison guards’. And this is valuable. After all, prison is not just a standoff between two sides, it’s a problem for society as a whole. And if we don’t understand all the sides of this problem, we won’t be able to formulate a viable alternative to penitentiary logic.

Without a doubt, the book is honest. Anna writes the way she feels and writes what she thinks. Her position is kindred to me in many ways. She looks at the system through the prism of human rights and common sense. And naturally, from that point of view, the Russian penitentiary system withstands no criticism whatsoever.

It’s amazing, but in some places Anna’s opinions are even harsher than the criticism of the prisoners themselves. For example, I was struck by how negatively she speaks about the prosecutor’s office. There’s a popular saying among prisoners: ‘Better the daughter of a prostitute than the son of a prosecutor’. Nonetheless, prisoners resort fairly often to appeals to the prosecutor’s office as a defense against the administration’s impunity. Moreover, those appeals often yield a result—not thanks to the work of the prosecutor’s office but out of the administration’s fear of a possible inspection.

Anna describes the prosecutors’ work as she saw it from her side:

‘To my amazement, the oversight function of the prosecutor’s office in most cases came down to maximally violating the rights and interests of the investigation’s detainees. But when prosecutorial intervention seemed appropriate and necessary and might bring positive results, the oversight department would demonstrate striking indifference. <…>

‘Even more amazing was the prosecutorial zeal to expose and curtail those “violations of the regime” which might improve prisoners” disenfranchised existences even a little. Here the prosecutor’s office would react swiftly. And would even set up a competition in inspections by the central administration and the FSIN [Federal Penitentiary Service] central apparatus: both were guided by the pernicious practice of “reports of deficiencies”. A report of deficiencies is when you have to find, say, 10 deficiencies in the course of one inspection because that’s how many fit on the report form. <…> Prosecutor’s offices met their goals on items that turned up illegally in the cells, such as plastic scrapers, cutting boards, and colored pencils. They might personally remove kettles of more than .6 kilowatts from the cells, ignoring the tears of the women who tried to explain that there were 40 people in the cell and each one needed boiling water’.

I’m quite familiar with prosecutorial indifference to violations of prisoners’ rights. Often during inspections their demonstratively ‘attentive’ or simply roaming gaze would fail to notice blatant violations. As for ‘reports of deficiencies’, I did not encounter that very often, fortunately. But my experience is mostly linked to institutions in Krasnodar Kray, where there hardly ever is anything ‘inappropriate’ anyway.

At the same time, utterly opposite feelings were aroused in me by the section about the minor prisoners in Moscow’s remand centre no. 5. Anna recounts how the children there periodically rebelled, and the bosses would head there to regulate the situation—crudely put, to have disciplinary conversations with minor prisoners.

The thing is that the behavior of the minor prisoners themselves did not arouse my condemnation. They smashed up their cells? I understand. Why is there video surveillance in a space where someone lives? It’s like having video surveillance in your home. Not only that, the ECtHR [European Court of Human Rights] has recognized this as a violation. They didn’t obey staff? That’s understandable, too. Who wants to obey the people who restrict your freedom on a daily basis? They spilled soapy water on the floor and skated around? That’s natural, too. There are very few entertainments in a cell, and adolescents have to pass the time somehow.

On the other hand, I understand that Anna’s participation in settling the situation was probably the least possible evil. In such instances, the prison system offers only punitive measures—from the punishment cell and confiscation of personal effects to beatings and torture. Anna used diplomatic methods. Nonetheless, I can’t shake the feeling of an internal contradiction because at that moment she was acting not as a human rights activist but as a part of the prison system—albeit in the capacity of soft power.

Similar feelings, although to a lesser degree, arose in me when I met the late Andrei Babushkin, who as a human rights activist joined various councils under the security organs, including the Presidential Human Rights Council. I think that before the full-scale war and Russia’s departure from the Council of Europe, many human rights activists who had been allowed to participate in those councils, the ONK, or, like Anna, to work in the FSIN believed that the system could be changed—and indeed positive changes really were achieved. But in order to work with a system you have to bear its interests in mind, too. Now, though, these are theoretical questions. As Karetnikova herself admits, the time of hopes has passed.

I am setting out these and other thoughts on the prison system on Patreon as well (link in the comments). Publications there are now open.

Source: Facebook

Translated by Marian Schwartz