We Can No Longer Help the Politically Persecuted in Court. But You Can! Support...

We can no longer help the politically persecuted in court. But you can! Support fundraisers on the Zaodno platform

Projects that help political prisoners are coming under attack one after another. In April, Memorial was declared an “extremist organization”; in June, we were added to the register as well. In July, the Crimean Solidarity movement shut down because of its “foreign agent” status, and Mediazona had donations in Russia disabled.

At the same time, the number of people facing political persecution is growing. One of the most striking examples is the cases against people who donated to the FBK. We know of at least 249 such criminal cases. Here is what happened in just the past two weeks:

🟠 in St. Petersburg, security forces detained German citizen Igor Leonovich on suspicion of transferring 900 rubles to the FBK;

🟠 programmer Leonid Stepanov was sentenced to four years of suspended imprisonment over a donation to the FBK in 2021;

🟠 junior researcher from Moscow Alexandra Ozerova was sentenced to a fine of 400,000 rubles over seven donations to the FBK;

🟠 a programmer from Ufa was fined 550,000 rubles for transferring 1,500 rubles to the FBK.

We used to defend defendants in FBK donation cases in court. But after OVD-Info was declared an “extremist organization,” we completely shut down our legal-aid work in Russia.

We can no longer help them. But you can!

🔗 Support any fundraiser for lawyers for defendants in FBK donation cases on the independent Zaodno platform. It hosts fundraisers created by support groups for political prisoners and other human rights organizations that continue to work in Russia. Donations through the platform go directly to the bank cards of political prisoners’ relatives and do not pass through the accounts of any organizations. And the Zaodno project team verifies the fundraisers and strictly makes sure that every last kopeck is spent on the stated purpose.

❗️ Sharing this post publicly may be unsafe, because the Russian authorities have declared OVD-Info an extremist organization. But you can still read us and like our posts!