Write to Russia

On 1 June 2026, Aruna Arna was sentenced by a military court to five years’ imprisonment in a general regime penal colony. Aruna Arna is a civil society activist, founder of the Altai Republic Residents’ Council, and mother of three minor children. She had spoken out against restrictions on local self-government and collected signatures calling for the resignation of the region’s head, Andrei Turchak. She has run a Telegram channel called Aruna Arna. People’s Leader of Altai which has around 5,000 subscribers. She was repeatedly prosecuted administrative-law offences, including charges of discrediting the army and organising a public event without prior notification.

Memorial reports that in September 2025, Arna, her mother and other activists were subjected to searches, during which security forces seized electronic devices, cash and bank cards. Despite the fact that Aruna has a very young child, she was taken away for questioning and, in October, remanded in custody. She was charged with making public calls for people to engage in terrorist activity on the internet (Article 205.2, Part 2, of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

‘The basis for the charges was two video clips published on a Telegram channel featuring modern cover versions of the songs ‘The Internationale’ and ‘The Warsaw Girl’. Minor changes had been made to the lyrics, and historical footage was interspersed in the clip with footage of contemporary protests. Experts concluded that lines from the historical songs, such as ‘We shall destroy the whole world of violence to its very foundations’ and ‘All power to the working people’, constituted calls to overthrow the state in modern-day Russia, whilst the investigative authorities classified these words as incitement to terrorism. Arna maintains her innocence of the charges. She insists that these were well-known historical works and demanded that the experts be prosecuted for false testimony, Russophobia and glorification of Nazism. The case was heard in camera on the pretext of state secrecy. On 1 June 2026, a military court sentenced Arna to five years’ imprisonment in a general-regime penal colony. We believe that the videos do not contain any calls for terrorist activity or violence, and that the prosecution of Aruna Arna is linked exclusively to her social and political activities.’

– Memorial, 7 July 2026

Write to Aruna Arna

The Russian penal system does not allow any messages to prisoners that are written in foreign languages, but Write to Russia is here to help you. To show your support for Aruna Arna please send your letter as an email to us at: le******************@********il.com. We’ll translate your letter into Russian and, depending on your request, either mail the translated letters on your behalf to Aruna Arna, or return the letters to you by email for posting in an envelope with addresses written in Russian. If we send the letter on your behalf, we ask that you compensate us for the cost of postage from the UK (currently £3.60 [$4.89; €4.17] for one letter). For suggestions on what to write to a political prisoner, click here. To learn more about our letter writing project, click here: Write to Russia.

You can write to Aruna Arna at the following address:

Russian Federation – 630010, г. Новосибирск, ул. Караваева, д. 1, ФКУ СИЗО-1 ГУФСИН России по Новосибирской области, Арна Аруна Александровна, 1986 г. р.

The persons unjustly imprisoned in Russia whose plight our project Write to Russia has highlighted to date can be found at this link:

Write to Russia – List of Prisoners

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