23 March 2026
by OVD-Info
Source: OVD-Info
Good news is extremely rare in our line of work – years of news cycles have brought no pleasant updates at all. But the last few months with our human rights lawyers have seen several items of excellent news come at once. Not one of them would have come to be were it not for your participation, your attention and your support. This letter is about people who have managed to escape to freedom, avoid prison sentences and reduce criminal charges. It is also about the role you played.
We believe that in our difficult times it is important to focus on positives and to remember that change is possible. We sincerely hope that if sadness or apathy ever strike you, you will remember this letter, remember how several innocent people were saved from the claws of the system, and find strength in it. This OVD-Info-approved method works flawlessly.
So, for the good news.
Valerii Ledkov, from penal colony to freedom
On 24 December 2024, the Khanty-Mansiysk folklorist Valery Ledkov was charged with financing an extremist organisation after he donated 300 roubles to the Anti-Corruption Foundation. On 1 April 2025, he was charged again after the prosecution alleged he had made regular payments amounting to a further 1800 roubles.
The prosecution requested a sentence of four years in a penal colony. However, in July 2025 the court of first-instance issued him with a fine of 120,000 roubles.
This was not the end of the matter though. The prosecution appealed the sentence, insisting on incarceration. In September 2025, a court in the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous region sentenced Valery to three years in a penal colony. He was taken into custody while still in court and transported to Correctional Institute No. 29 where he, a 60-year-old man, was immediately placed in solitary confinement.
Despite this, neither Valery nor his lawyer were ready to give up.
In November 2025 we began fundraising for 180,000 roubles to pay for his legal defence for the verdict to be quashed. This money allowed us to use the final legal opportunity to achieve a lesser sentence. You helped us to raise this money, and his defence lawyers continued their work.
In February 2026, the Seventh Cassation Court commuted his sentence: three years imprisonment was exchanged for a suspended sentence.
Valery went free.
He was only one of a number of people to be helped by large-scale crowdfunding campaigns, totalling 932,400 roubles, to pay for the legal defence for those prosecuted for donating money to the Anti-Corruption Foundation. This campaign was concluded after 71 days. Among the other supported by it were Dmitry Marsov, Konstantin Kotov and Dmitrii Dyba – and some of them even managed to secure their freedom.
Dmitry Dyba – from threats of imprisonment to a fine
Krasnodar computer programmer Dmitry Dyba was prosecuted for making seven payments to the Anti-Corruption Foundation totalling 1050 roubles. His case was supported from the very beginning by a lawyer whom you helped to finance thanks to your donations.
On 22 May, he was sentenced to six month’s community service with 10% of the money made to be paid to the state. The hearings lasted one day. The prosecutor appealed for a harsher punishment of three years’ imprisonment. In March 2026, his defence achieved a settlement on a fine of 300,000 roubles.
Dmitry escaped imprisonment.
This too is the result of the general work and donations you have been supporting.
Nikolai Markin: how a lawyer changed the course of a case in its early stages
On 10 March, the authorities came to Nikolai Markin’s home to conduct a search. Markin is an environmental activist and member of the liberal Yabloko Party. After the search, he was supposed to be transferred to the Investigative Committee covering Ramensky district just east of Moscow, from the beginning they wanted to charge him with producing ‘fake news’ about the Russian Army, allegedly motivated by political hatred. Immediately, a lawyer for OVD-Info, Natalia Tikhonova, went to see him.
In the end the original, more serious, charge was dropped and replaced with a lesser one, his punishment of imprisonment was commuted to a curfew.
Why is it so important for the lawyer to become involved immediately? Because it is often only during the home search or during the first police questioning that a person is told what charges they face. This is when witness statements are made, protocols are enacted and physical evidence taken, all of which come to form the basis of investigations and trials. A lawyer’s involvement during this period can help to protect a person from mistakes irreparable in the future.
Moreover, the dropping of the charge of political hatred lessens the risk of being added to the Federal Financial Monitoring Service’s list of terrorists and extremists, so they won’t in future have to deal with harsh restrictions on day-to-day activities, including financial restrictions.
Darya Kozyreva: almost a year in pre-trial detention – then freedom
On 18 March at 7 am, Darya Kozyreva walked free from Correctional Institute No. 3 in the town of Kineshma in Ivanovo region. She was 17 when she was first prosecuted.
Darya was first arrested for having written on an installation, and was charged with an administrative offence, later she fell victim to a criminal prosecution. This was because of her anti-war statements, posts on social media, a sign with a quotation from the Ukrainian poet and writer Taras Shevchenko, and a YouTube video.
The two criminal cases were later combined into one.
In December 2024 a lawyer, whose work you helped pay for, managed to turn the tables against the prosecutor owing to procedural violations: the criminal indictment had not cited concrete actions of which Darya was accused.
In February 2025, almost a year after being remanded in custody, the lawyer managed to change Darya’s pre-trial conditions. Darya was released. She was forbidden to use the internet or telephone, communicate with other using mass media or leave her house at night, but this meant being with her family.
The prosecutor wanted six years’ imprisonment for her. The court gave her two years and eight months.
Darya has already walked free.
Later, she said:
“Right to the last minute I didn’t think I actually would be released… walking free I had come to see was impossible over the previous year”
Gregory Vinter: freedom, care and 22 saved cats
On 30 December 2025, Gregory Vinter left a penal colony. He had been prosecuted for ‘fake news’ about the Russian army on the grounds of publications about events in Mariupol and comments about evidence relating to events in that city given by human rights lawyers. He was first remanded in custody, then placed under house arrest and forbidden from undertaking certain activities, and then in January 2024 he was sentenced to three years in a penal colony.
While he was imprisoned, you helped collect packages for him – insulin, medicines, food and warm things. Even in the colony, Gregory’s acts of kindness continued: he managed to save his 22 cats from being taken to the colony with him. The day after being released, he came to collect them – they were waiting for him at a shelter.
After Gregory’s release we began a campaign to donate so he could adapt to life as a free man, we received many responses from people who were touched by this story.
The Moskalev family: four years of fighting and a new life
The story of Masha and Aleksei Maskalev began in April 2022, when a year-six student in an art lesson drew a picture of the Russian and Ukrainian flags with the words ‘No war’ and ‘Glory to Ukraine’.
They were called to the police station. Aleksei was soon fined for comments he made on the social media site Odnoklassniki, and he was then charged with repeated ‘discreditation’ of the Russian army.
Aleksei was placed under house arrest, Masha was taken to a shelter. They had lived together and Masha was left with no one close to her. She had not talked to her mother for many years. The shelter staff limited her contacts with her parents, did not give her a phone and did not allow visitors.
On 28 March 2023, Aleksei was sentenced to two years in a penal colony. The day before being sentenced, he attempted to escape, but was arrested in Belarus and extradited to Russia. He told his lawyer he had been beaten during arrest. After his return, he was remanded in custody where his contact with the outside world was limited. The court later upheld his sentence and further banned him from having any online presence.
The pressure on him continued in the colony, he was placed in solitary confinement, a move opposed by his defence lawyers. The lawyer we worked with managed to achieve a review of the case and a shorter sentence. On 15 October 2024, Aleksei went free.
All this time, we were running donation campaigns to pay for his legal defence: this allowed him to be visited in pre-trial detention, to find him after he was extradited, to work on his case and to appeal the sentence. You answered our calls for funding time and again, and thanks to this we gathered resources for his defence.
After release, pressure continued to be applied on Aleksei, he says, and the family decided to leave Russia. Their application for a visa on humanitarian grounds took more than a year. Eventually, France gave them asylum. Now they are safe. Masha is getting ready to go to school and says:
‘I think this entire difficult period is coming to an end and a new life is beginning.’
These stories are all different. But one common theme united them all: you gave us the chance to fight to the end.
Paying for legal defence, travel expenses, expertise, appeals – this is what allows us to change sentences, help people go free sooner or avoid imprisonment.
Sometimes these are battles for years. Sometimes, months. Sometimes it is a battle for every day of freedom, and we succeed in winning these days.
You can support our human rights lawyers through the platform Zaodno: Support us through Zaodno
Always with you,
OVD-Info Team
Translated by Oscar Seecharan
