From the editor: Alsu Kurmasheva is advocating for journalists in prison
Last night Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was presented with an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists at a ceremony in New York. Kurmasheva, 48, was arrested while visiting her 78-year-old mother in Kazan in October last year. She was held in jail until she was released in August as part of the large-scale prisoner exchange between Russia and the West. In a video call she told me about how the brutal treatment she endured has motivated her to advocate for other journalists who are imprisoned in the region.
Alsu Kurmasheva with her picture at the CPJ with the word “RELEASED” on it. Photo courtesy Alsu Kurmasheva
Kurmasheva, who is a dual Russian-US citizen, had been visiting her mother multiple times a year and it didn’t occur to her that she could be targeted, she told me. She needed to help her mother financially and with medicine due to shortages in Russia. Kurmasheva was living in Prague with her husband, journalist Pavel Butorin, and two teenage daughters, working for RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service. In a recent post on X Kurmasheva described the moment of her arrest: “At 11am, I was making lunch - traditional plov with beef, rice, raisins, dried apricots, and spices like turmeric and cumin. My dad always said those spices needed to be added with love and appreciation, a lesson he left me before he passed.
“Suddenly, men in black masks stormed into my mom’s home, threatening to cut through the metal door. I barely had time to put clothes on before they handcuffed me and dragged me out of the apartment. As I left, I asked my mom to finish cooking, because at that moment, somehow, it felt like the most important thing. Maybe it was the sense of love and appreciation for the simple things, even in the chaos of that dark day and later my darkest months in prison.
“Hours of interrogations followed, with fabricated charges that eventually landed me in detention. I couldn’t believe it. I spent years covering activists and politicians being arrested in Russia. And now, here I was. I wanted to believe it was all a mistake. After endless medical checkups, I was thrown into a dark, filthy cell with two other women. One was in for fraud, and the other was accused of killing her husband. Only then did I realize I hadn’t had a sip of water all day.
“The toilet and sink were disgusting, but I rinsed my mouth, washed my face, and climbed onto the top bunk. As I laid down, I felt completely empty - no questions, no thoughts, no fear. Just nothing. The nine months that followed were a nightmare that I was unsure I would escape from. Every day I am reminded of the horrors I endured for the ‘crime’ of being a journalist. The same horrors that others face today. One year later, I am free. I am no longer counting down the days until I see my family again. As I reflect today, my heart is with the imprisoned journalists who face uncertain futures for simply telling the truth. I will tell my story so that one day, you can tell yours.”
Shortly before her release Kurmasheva was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison for “spreading fakes about the armed forces”. The charges supposedly related to a book she had edited called Saying No to War, featuring the stories of Russians who opposed the invasion of Ukraine. During her time in detention she could only communicate with her mother, but not her husband and daughters. “The official explanation was that communication would be allowed after the investigation ended but it ended right before the trial so there was no communication and it was so unjust, it was unfair because all other prisoners were treated much better than I was,” she told me.
“Food packages arrived with a huge delay and the letters were delivered with a delay. I realised after my release that many letters hadn’t been delivered to me and there was no one to ask why. They were using that against me as they clearly could see that receiving letters meant so much to me. I was able to communicate with my mom by regular mail. It would take three to four days for a letter to reach my mom and the reply would get to me the next week, the week after. There were short notes and communication through the lawyers.”
Kurmasheva has been coping with post-traumatic stress and physical health problems caused by her imprisonment, but the experience was also tough on her family. “It was hard on my children, for our teenagers, that that year had been a very hard year for them in terms of personal development, physical, they have grown so much, they have changed so much, they are young women now,” she said. “I left two little girls when I left for Kazan last year and I came back to a family with two young women who are smart, who cherish their life in the free world and who don’t take freedom of expression for granted. They have seen how hard it is to be a journalist and how hard it was to fight for me to be released, they learned all the details of advocacy work. It was very hard for my husband too because my husband and I have been together for more than 20 years.
“The prison experience was very hard, there were no political prisoners in that prison, people didn’t know how to talk to me, both guards and prisoners,” she continued. “They didn’t know if they should treat me badly or even worse, which they did. Every time I was recognised or my husband would do an interview my conditions would get worse. I would be put in an isolated cell in solitary confinement. This is how I knew that something was happening. There was no hot water, no heating in winter. Those things were just unbearable but I knew that advocacy was happening by the reaction of the guards, of the prison administration.
“Eighty percent of the prisoners were drug dealers, I didn’t make any connection with anyone. I didn’t learn anything, it hasn’t changed me, I am who I am. It made me stronger, it made my colleagues at RFE/RL stronger and it made my family stronger but did it change my identity, no. And do I hate Russia and Tatarstan, no. I always distinguish between people and the government. I just realised that journalists are doing very dangerous and very tough work. Even bigger respect to everyone in journalism. I lost my health, my hearing, my eyesight is worse, those are things I will never get back, but I am free.”
Kurmasheva doesn’t know if she will ever be able to go back to Russia. Her mother is happy that she’s free but misses her and can’t speak openly to her for fear of the authorities. Unlike some of the other Russian political prisoners who were exchanged to the West although they had never lived there, she at least has citizenship of a country that will protect her, she said. When she was put on the bus from Moscow’s Lefortovo prison to go to the airport she cried for the first time since her arrest with a mix of emotions. “It wasn’t my plan to leave the country that way, it wasn’t my plan to get in jail, something was clearly wrong with everything. Of course also the joy of coming home,” she said. “My heart is with them,” Kurmasheva said of the other Russians who were released. “They are definitely more dreamers than me, they are dreaming of a different country they want to live in. I don’t have that in my mind at all.” US journalist Evan Gershkovich was released at the same time, having been sentenced on fabricated espionage charges.
Instead of going back to her old job immediately Kurmasheva is now focusing on campaigning for four other RFE/RL journalists who are in prison: Vladyslav Yesypenko, who was sentenced to six years in prison in occupied Crimea in February 2022 for the alleged possession of explosives, Ihar Losyk and Andrey Kuznechyk, who were sentenced to 15 and six years in prison in Belarus in 2021 and 2022 on charges of organising mass riots and extremism, and Farid Mehralizada, who has been in jail awaiting trial on various charges since his arrest in Azerbaijan in May this year. “I will try my best to help their families through this situation, I understand them very well,” she said. “They have one thought, what else can I do for my loved one.”
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Russia “tests” Oreshnik missile on Dnipro, pounds other Ukrainian cities
After more than 1,000 days of full-scale war in Ukraine Vladimir Putin is clearly frustrated that the West’s support is preventing him from declaring the victory that he expected in just three. Joe Biden in the final weeks of his presidency authorised Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with US-supplied ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles, and Putin responded to their first use by launching an IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missile) at the Yuzhmash defence plant in Dnipro yesterday.
In an address to the nation Putin said the missile was called an Oreshnik, but experts have speculated that this could be a new name for the RS-26 Rubezh that was first successfully test-launched in 2012. “One of the newest medium-range missile systems was tested in combat conditions,” Putin said of the strike on Dnipro. “In this case with a ballistic missile and a non-nuclear hypersonic warhead… In the event of an escalation of aggressive actions we will respond decisively and reciprocally. I recommend that the ruling elites of those countries that are hatching plans to use their military contingents against Russia seriously think about this.” Putin claimed that the use of ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia had turned a regional conflict into a global one.
Meanwhile Russia has been pounding Ukraine harder than ever this week with its usual weapons. On Sunday night at least 11 people were killed and dozens of others were injured when Russia fired ballistic missiles at residential buildings and energy infrastructure in Sumy, and two women were killed and several others injured in a Shahed drone strike on Mykolaiv. On Monday a Russian ballistic missile strike on a residential area in Odesa killed 10 people and injured another 44. That night a Russian drone hit the dormitory of an educational institution in Hlukhiv, Sumy Oblast, killing at least 10 people, including a child, and injuring 13 others. In the early hours of this morning Russia killed two more people and injured 12 others in a drone strike on residential buildings in Sumy. Russian troops have also reportedly shot another two Ukrainian POWs dead in Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast, according to Ukrainian prosecutors.
Ukraine war participants add to litany of crimes
An Ural Airlines plane flying from Chita to Yekaterinburg made an emergency landing in Ulan-Ude earlier this week after a man in a military uniform got into a fight on board. The aircraft’s crew were unable to cope with him. In Lyubertsy, Moscow Oblast, a drunk Ukraine war returnee assaulted the driver of a minibus, forced the passengers off the bus and drove it chased by police before crashing into other vehicles.
A court in Bryansk Oblast has sentenced 22-year-old Nikolai Yevseyenko, a Ukraine war returnee, to 15 years in prison for setting fire to a relay cabinet on the railway in February. According to prosecutors a 16-year-old boy made a video of the act and the pair received a payment of 45,000 roubles ($440) for it. The teenager was sentenced to six years in a “rehabilitative facility” for sabotage. Both defendants’ trials were held in secret. Yevseyenko was recruited to fight in the war in May 2023 from prison, where he was serving a sentence for robbery and drug dealing.
Man who caused death of young child by severe abuse released to fight in war
In Ingushetia Bashir Bedzizhev, who was arrested for abusing a four-year-old girl who later died from her injuries, has been released to fight in Ukraine. The girl, Samira Mutsolgova from Malgobek, was taken to hospital unconscious in April last year and died in mid-May. Doctors established that she had been beaten regularly and had pneumonia, and had been sexually assaulted. Bedzizhev lived with Mutsolgova’s grandmother and other children in the family also reportedly had injuries. The girl’s mother is facing criminal charges in relation to her abuse.
Two more convicted for anti-war comments
A military court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced 30-year-old History and Social Studies teacher Alexei Pokazaniev to three years in prison and banned him from teaching for two years after his release for “justifying terrorism”. Prosecutors said Pokazaniev spoke about an attack on the Crimea bridge to a class of 15-year-olds and justified violence against Vladimir Putin for the purpose of removing him from office. Pokazaniev has also been added to Russia’s list of terrorists and extremists.
A court in Yoshkar-Ola in the Republic of Mari El has fined pensioner Yuri Blagodarov 400,000 roubles ($3,920) for “discrediting the army” and “inciting hatred” for posts on VKontakte calling on Russian troops not to kill in a foreign country. Blagodarov receives a pension of 18,000 roubles ($176) a month. The court ordered him to pay 10,000 roubles ($98) per month towards the fine. Blagodarov wrote poetry and comments in an ethnic Mari group on the social media platform, including saying, “When you sign a contract and go to kill in a foreign country you violate the traditions of our ancestors… Respect for language is supported not by war and expansion of our land but by exchanges of cultural events, festivals, folklore and so on.” He believes the case against him was brought to prevent him from entering local elections. Supporters tried to give him donations towards his fine but in response authorities blocked his bank card.
Georgians continue protests against pro-Russian party’s victory
Protests have been continuing in Tbilisi against what participants believe were rigged parliamentary elections that kept the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party in power. Some people have camped out in the city centre overnight and Tbilisi State University is one of the protest hubs. One of the protesters, 21-year-old Mate Devidze, has been charged with assaulting police officers with a stick. On Saturday David Kirtadze, a Central Electoral Commission member from the opposition United National Movement party, threw black paint at the CEC’s chairman Giorgi Kalandarishvili at a session in which the election results were confirmed. Kalandarishvili claimed there was no tangible proof that the election was manipulated.