The pink and white spring of France’s Grand Est is being replaced by a lilac-green one. The chestnut trees are in bloom, and the lilacs are beginning to bloom. Instead of going to the gym, we headed to the small Parc de Troyes, a strange park in the lowlands near the train station. While we can’t get out of here, we’ll enjoy the spring… even though, like three years ago, it all seems like a dream. And I’ll wake up to the doorbell ringing.
State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi: ‘Designating the Memorial movement as extremist and banning its activities in Russia is not the final word on the matter, but rather an ellipsis. It’s time this octopus had its tentacles cut off, they having grown nice and fat thanks to Western funding since the 1990s. Painstaking, difficult work lies ahead: uncovering connections, punishing accomplices, and verifying the literature the organization has planted in libraries, educational institutions, and foundations under the guise of an “educational mission”. And, of course, it’s important to impartially evaluate the ‘memorial sites’ erected by extremists. The Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square, whose fate I raised earlier, is one of the first, but far from the only one. In Moscow alone, there are about 210 memorials, monuments, commemorative plaques, and so on, and more than 1,500 across Russia. Why was this done? Are these ‘memorial objects’ a symbol of substitution? A way to justify extremism, separatism, and direct action against Russia?
Mediazona reported that 53-year-old Andrei Akuzin hanged himself in Pretrial Detention Centre No. 2 in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk region. He was arrested on 2 April for a comment he made in 2025.
One Telegram bot, which analyses user public comments, noted that Akuzin was interested in “protest” and the “Artpodgotovka” movement, which is banned in Russia. Akuzin turned 53 on 7 April, and the following day he hanged himself in his pretrial detention cell. He was added to the list of terrorists and extremists posthumously, on 10 April. Akuzin is known in Komsomolsk-on-Amur as an artist; in the 2000s, the city hosted a solo exhibition of his works, inspired, as he described in a local television segment, by Zen Buddhism. He later worked as an artistic director for a theatre.
While the big snake bombs Ukrainian cities, Judge Zmeev [Zmei is snake in Russian – ed.] sentenced a 70-year-old Ukrainian grandfather to 10 years. So, really, why not jail him… the sabre-rattler?
‘All the stories of political prisoners are unfair, sad, and outrageous. But some stay with you more than others, even if the information is scant and you only see the person in a court photo, behind bars. I’m particularly triggered by the Ukrainians who were captured in occupied territories, kept secretly who knows where, who knows how, and then put on trial. I feel sorry for the women who translated for the Ukrainian armed forces, or for their husbands or grandchildren; they’re being sentenced to ten years for treason. Treason against a state they never planned to live in.
‘Under occupation, many people agree to Russian citizenship; it’s hard to survive without it. At first, it was possible, but now, without a Russian passport, you have nothing: no pension, no healthcare, no bank account, no school for your children, and you can only live in your own home for 90 days, having given your fingerprints. And it’s scary, I understand how scary it is there. It’s no wonder that everyone agrees to it.
‘But this is a special case: Nikolai Ivanovich Tinkov lived for 70 years in the village of Azovskoye on the shores of the Sea of Azov. Then Russian troops came to his home. And they began to liberate Nikolai Ivanovich and Russify him. But he’s stubborn, apparently. He didn’t accept a Russian passport. And, according to the prosecution, since March 2025 (the same year Putin signed the decree outlawing Nikolai Ivanovich in his home), he transferred 3,015 hryvnias from his Ukrainian pension to the Ukrainian armed forces. I don’t know whether he transferred it or not. In almost all such cases these days, the only evidence the prosecution offers is an FSB certificate stating that account number such-and-such is, according to intelligence, used by Ukrainian armed forces personnel. That’s all. So, maybe Nikolai Ivanovich transferred the money to his army, or maybe to friends or family. But what else could he do with it, this pension? He couldn’t buy food with it anyway.
‘But since he doesn’t have a Russian passport, he’s not a traitor. The charge is different, a new one, designed specifically for people like Nikolai Ivanovich—Article 276.1 of the Russian Criminal Code—”Providing assistance to the enemy.” But the difference is minor: the sentence is 10 years in a maximum-security penal colony.
Nikolai Tinkov
‘I wonder what Judge Valery Zmeev of the occupation “court” was thinking when he sentenced a 70-year-old pensioner to this sentence… Incidentally, it only took him one hearing. He was probably repeating in his head the formula, ingrained in the sentences: “…the correction of a convicted person is impossible without actual imprisonment…” Is Judge Nikolai Ivanovich Zmeev hoping to correct him, to remake him? I’m watching a video where an elderly man wearing large glasses, an old cap, and a striped vest is led into a cage. He’s very small next to the tall guard. At the beginning of the video, he looks at us from behind the bars, and at the end, he effectively signs his own life sentence.
‘And yet, I think Judge Zmeev will fail; nothing will work out between him and Nikolai Ivanovich. And it’s nonsense. Of course, Zmeev wasn’t thinking about anything like that, he was just doing what he thought was right. Zmeev is probably far more afraid of Nikolai Ivanovich, but on the other hand, he has a good salary, a job, a pension. Zmeev has no other options. Such different people on both sides of the bars.
‘I wish Tinkov strength and good health. He needs to get through all this. I hope he can.
‘By the way, for comparison, Russia spends about 37 billion roubles a day on the war. Nikolai Ivanovich Tinkov received a 10-year prison sentence for approximately 6,000 roubles in support of Ukraine’s defence. Can any mathematician calculate how many years that 37 billion will amount to for each of the 1,147 days of the war?’
What the hell is going on, there are no words… He was such a nice guy! :(( And it wasn’t all that long a jail-term…
SOTA-vision reports:
Vegan Christolyub Bozhiy, sentenced to three years for criticizing Islam and an anti-war video, has died in a Voronezh penal colony.
Today, Vegan Christolyub Bozhiy (his passport name), a well-known Voronezh preacher and YouTube blogger, died in Penal Colony No. 2 in the Voronezh Region. His father announced the death to his friends. The circumstances of his death have not yet been disclosed.
“His father called and told him. They didn’t tell him the circumstances of his death but told him to come back on Monday for more information. He had a strained relationship with the administration of Penal Colony No. 2, and, according to his father, there were also some minor altercations with some of his cellmates. Thus, it’s difficult to say what caused his death,” a person close to Vegan Christolyub Bozhiy told SOTA-vision.
Vegan Christolyub Bozhiy was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of insulting the feelings of believers and rehabilitating Nazism.
On 13 October 2025, Voronezh pacifist blogger Vegan Christolyub was supposed to voluntarily report to a penal colony in the wake of the Nazi rehabilitation case. However, he instead opted to hold an anti-war protest, at which he held up a “No to War” placard. He was detained by police. The court fined him 30,000 roubles for “discrediting” the army for his picketing. For failure to appear, the court jailed Christolyub for 30 days, followed by forced escort to the penal colony. His conditions were later reduced to a general regime prison and he was transferred to Penal Colony No. 2 in the Voronezh Region.
I thought about how the news about Vegan Christolyub Bozhiy’s death stated that, according to his father, they spoke on the phone a few days ago. And last Friday, his father was already offered the chance to claim the body the next day. I remembered that in cases of medical deaths during my tenure, some kind of forensic examination was still conducted: well, at least so that the doctors could protect themselves and confirm that the person died very, very suddenly, or that they were receiving all the necessary treatment in accordance with all the necessary regulations and died against all odds of such due treatment.
I may be wrong, of course, but given the rapid escalation of events that occurred with Vegan, there had to be obvious reasons for his death. Either as suicide or an accident.
Of course, there’s no point speculating. Death is a tragedy however which way you look at it. His father will go to the penal colony and later will tell everyone everything. But firstly, I’m experiencing this death particularly painfully because I worked on this file, so I listened to his sermons, read his words, and yes, I’d like to know why this sweet, albeit rather odd, yet positive and bright, and —most importantly— perfectly healthy man suddenly died in a Russian penal colony.
On the other hand, with this death, I felt like I sort of crossed a line. Until this I could say, “No, it’s no longer 1937 in Russia now, no matter what anyone says.” I remember having such debates with Yulia Galyamina. Now I can’t say that. I think for everyone who has lost loved ones sentenced for nothing, for everyone who has been woken up at six in the morning by security forces, for everyone who has heard their own absolutely absurd sentence, this could just as easily be 1937. Yes, there’s no death penalty yet. But dozens of innocent people have already died as a result of the repressions. We won’t live to see the end of their sentences, and we won’t see them again. And no brothers will ever give them back their swords. The repressive state has given them a one-way ticket. That’s it, they’re dead, and that can’t go unnoticed. As with war, a society that simply asks us not to talk about it and one that can’t remain silent are two different societies.
Previously, when people asked me whether a self-aware and internationally recognized group like political prisoners had formed in the prison world, I said: yes, it is forming. The criterion for this is that some political prisoners meet other politicals and talk about their experiences.
Now, many penal colonies and prisons are full of political prisoners, pretrial detention centres are overflowing with them, and the criterion for the existence of a group for me is that it has its own death statistics. And the classification is the same as it was when I was at the FSIN (Federal Penitentiary Service): medical death (from natural causes, of course, even if it occurred as a result of a hunger strike), suicide (which in some cases I considered murder, but no one investigates it anyway), accident… but there haven’t been any overdoses among political prisoners yet, that’s true. Although, I imagine the FSIN will announce something like that to us too.
Are these mass repressions? They are certainly widespread. Can they be compared to 1937? I think so. We all know and have said that in the internet age (it’s tempting to switch to another topic here) it’s not necessary to repress a thousand doctors, Instagram followers, teenagers, workers, or scientists; it’s enough to repress ten from each of these categories. But these are truly widespread repressions that the Russian authorities are carrying out against their own people.
“Either the Russians tortured me, or killed me, or the Muslims, or all those FSIN officers, or some other prisoners, I don’t know.”
Preacher Vegan Christolyub Bozhy, whose death was reported on 17 April by staff at a Voronezh penal colony, recorded a farewell video in advance, in the summer of 2025. He assumed he would not return from the colony alive. We would like to share excerpts from this video, which can be called a spiritual testament.
In his streams and blogs, he discussed religion and politics, criticizing the war against Ukraine, Putin, and Kadyrov. A Russian court sentenced him to three years in a penal colony on charges of insulting religious feelings and insulting veterans. He received the latter charge for criticizing the actions of the Soviet leadership and the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War.
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