From the editor: Husband fights for his wife’s release from Putin’s prison
Alexei Navalny was the highest-profile political prisoner in Russia, but dozens more are languishing in remote facilities – some with severe health problems – for their supposed crimes of resisting Vladimir Putin’s regime. Among them are many women who were shown no more leniency than the men. Almaz Gatin is married to Lilia Chanysheva, who is serving a 7 ½-year sentence for “organising an extremist group” after having been the head of Navalny’s office in Ufa, Bashkortostan. He communicated with me via direct message on X, insisting that he wants to tell their story to the world no matter what the potential repercussions.
Lilia Chanysheva and Almaz Gatin at their wedding in 2021
“After the illegal decision [the sentence] was issued on June 14, 2023 in relation to my innocent wife there have been fewer articles about her in the media. Now like never before information should work to protect my wife and other political prisoners,” Gatin wrote. He has moved to the town of Berezniki in Perm Krai where the prison Chanysheva is being held in is located. She was transferred there in December. Prosecutors are currently asking for her sentence to be increased, saying that she incited people to participate in street protests. Chanysheva, 42, had asked not to be given too long a sentence so that she could one day have a child.
In addition to campaigning for Navalny Chanysheva was involved in successful efforts to protect Shikhan Kushtau, a 230 million year-old mountain and area of natural beauty as well as a sacred place for locals, from limestone mining. She also exposed corruption in the region’s government that resulted in a large sum of money being returned to the treasury by the anti-monopoly service in 2019. “If you do good and fight corruption it’s extremism???” Gatin asks.
Gatin and Chanysheva met in 2017 after he had seen her picture in the local paper and read an interview with her while he was in hospital. He wrote to her via Instagram, commenting that she needed to dress more warmly for winter. Gatin invited Chanysheva to a first date at the Dublin restaurant in Ufa, thinking she would like it because she had worked for an international company, Deloitte, in Moscow. It was love at first sight, Gatin later told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. They met at 6 pm and sat in the restaurant until midnight. Chanysheva revealed that she had been offered the job of being Navalny’s coordinator in the city. She said that she wanted justice and freedom and to help people. Later that year Navalny would attempt a run for president, supported by his regional offices. He held rallies all over Russia until in December the electoral commission excluded him from the ballot for the March 2018 election.
Gatin eventually proposed to Chanysheva in February 2021 when she was being held in custody after being detained for some reason. It could have been after the February 14 “Love is stronger than fear” Valentine’s Day flashlight protest in support of Navalny. He regrets not doing it sooner and starting a family with her. They got married in April, and in November armed men woke them at 6 am, searched their home and took Lilia away to charge her with the offence that she is now in prison for.
“In the first days it was very painful, the pain was emotional and I wasn’t ashamed of my tears,” Gatin told me. “The pain is still there but now it’s concentrated on the struggle for the freedom of my angel, my wife, my hero.” After Chanysheva’s arrest on November 9, 2021 Gatin wasn’t allowed to see her until her show trial started in March 2023, when he had a short visit. After that he and Chanysheva’s parents were allowed to visit her once a month until in November 2023 she was sent on the three-week transfer journey to Perm Krai. Gatin launched a hashtag in Russian #YouAreNotAlone to encourage people to write to his wife at the jails she was held in along the route. On arrival at her prison on December 4 Chanysheva had to undergo two weeks of quarantine.
Gatin was finally allowed his first long visit with Chanysheva from February 9 to 12. “For the first time in the long years of her confinement I could hug my wife, this was two years and three months since the day of her arrest,” he wrote. Since December the temperature in Berezniki has been extremely low, getting down to -38 degrees, Gatin said. It snows all the time. At least the room where he stayed with Chanysheva in the prison was warm and he could cook for her. He was allowed to bring in 20 kg of groceries. “It was the best three days in years, every minute I drowned in her eyes as green as the sea,” he told me.
“I told her about the latest news in those years from the outside. What had happened during that time. How I’m doing, what’s going on back home in Bashkiria, we’re both from there. How I lived in Moscow when she was under investigation. And I heard about her life in prison during those days and years. My wife is wonderful, wise, kind, generous and strong, but in those years she became even stronger. Do you understand?
“I told her that in these difficult and dark times for our country and our people I climb to the lighthouse every day and turn on the light of hope that comes from the strong, free heart of Lilia Chanysheva so that the ships will reach the shore of freedom. Those words touched her so much that she hugged and kissed me and started crying. She said Almaz I love you with all my heart and soul. And thanks to you, your support, care and love, I am strong.”
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Three days of voting start in sham election
Voting started this morning in a predetermined presidential election spectacle that will provide Vladimir Putin with a resounding victory and six more years in office. The Kremlin claimed there had already been a record turnout in the far east of the country and made it easy for people to vote for Putin by offering electronic voting. Russian embassies and consulates around the world are encouraging citizens living abroad also to endorse the country’s dictator. Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov were seen voting together.
Russia claims to have registered 4.5 million people to vote in occupied regions of Ukraine, where early voting started a few days ago and armed soldiers have been posted inside polling stations to guarantee the desired outcome.
Russia struck on home soil as it attacks Ukrainian cities
Fighting has been taken place in Belgorod Oblast after incursions from Ukraine by the Legion of Free Russia, which has promised to “liberate” border regions ahead of Sunday’s barely-contested presidential election. Yesterday morning there were explosions in the city of Belgorod and the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov advised people to stay indoors. Throughout the week there have been Ukrainian drone attacks on targets in multiple regions of Russia, including an oil refinery in Ryazan.
Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have also continued this week, with five people killed and 71 injured in missile strikes on residential buildings in Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday night, and another three people killed and at least 12 injured in a drone attack on a residential building in Sumy the following night.
20 Days in Mariupol wins Oscar for Best Documentary
20 Days in Mariupol, directed Mstyslav Chernov, has won the Oscar for Best Documentary. The film depicts the harrowing first days of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 when the port city was shelled continuously and eventually captured by the Russians, with thousands of civilians killed and blocks of flats razed to the ground. It includes footage of one of the most notorious incidents early in the war, the Russian bombing of a maternity hospital, which Russia subsequently claimed was staged. Chernov and his crew were the last journalists to remain in the city and narrowly escaped in a Red Cross convoy.
The Oscar was the first for a Ukrainian film but Chernov said in his acceptance speech that he wished it had never been made. ““I wish to be able to exchange this [Oscar] for Russia never attacking Ukraine, never invading our cities. I wish to be able to exchange this for Russia not killing tens of thousands of my fellow Ukrainians,” he told the star-studded audience at the Academy Awards.
Soldier sentenced for firing rocket launcher at café
A military court has sentenced Ukraine war participant Stanislav Ionkin to 20 years in prison for firing a rocket launcher at the Polygon café in Kostroma in November 2022, causing a huge fire that killed 13 people. Ionkin reportedly won a medal for courage for fighting in Ukraine and was injured there. According to prosecutors he fired the rocket launcher during an argument and it hit the ceiling of the café. Ionkin, a sergeant who was 23 at the time of the incident, said he had been hit by someone and retaliated, and that he didn’t know the ceiling was made of flammable material. The owner of the café and an associated company were also arrested and prosecuted for negligence.
Two get prison sentences for Navalny connections
A court in Moscow has sentenced student at the Higher School of Economics Alina Olekhnovich and graduate of the same institution Ivan Trofimov to three and a half years in prison on a charge of participating in an extremist organisation for allegedly having ties to an “underground network of offices of Alexei Navalny”. The pair were arrested in July last year and held under house arrest for two weeks, then transferred to jail. After Navalny’s organisations were banned and designated as extremist his team said that they would undertake partisan activities.
Navalny aide Volkov assaulted in Vilnius
One of Alexei Navalny’s top aides, Leonid Volkov, has been sprayed in the face with gas and assaulted with a hammer near his home in Vilnius. Volkov blamed Putin for the attack and made a video afterwards with his arm in a sling and leg bandaged, in which he repeated his call for people to participate in the Noon Against Putin action on Sunday, voting against the Russian leader at noon. Moscow prosecutors have announced that this will be considered an unauthorised protest and participants will be subject to criminal prosecution. Opposition activists in Russia have also been arguing over whether it is more strategic to vote for Kremlin-approved candidate Vladislav Davankov from the New People party or to spoil their ballots.
Il-76 military transport plane and Mi-8 helicopter crash with mass casualties
An Il-76 military transport plane crashed near Ivanovo on Tuesday after an engine fire. All 16 people on board were killed. And on Thursday a Mi-8 helicopter carrying 20 mining company employees crashed in Magadan Oblast. It was unclear whether any of them had survived.
DUMMY UP, EVERYONE SHOULD RELIZE A VOTE FOR RTRUMP IS A VOTE FOR A CONVICTED RAPIST. NOW VOTE BLUE FOR PROGRESSIVES.