This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
Turning Point: On Aug. 1, 24 people were released in a multicountry prisoner swap — the largest exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.
I experienced a moment of happiness earlier this year when Evan Gershkovich returned to his parents and Lilia Chanysheva to her husband, when Vladimir Kara-Murza saw daylight after 11 months in solitary confinement and Ilya Yashin and Sasha Skochilenko regained their freedom. But I fear for those political prisoners who remain in Russian jails. If there are no Americans, Germans or Britons among their ranks, will anyone stand up for them?
During World War II, it was necessary to open a second front to defeat fascism. In the present fight against creeping authoritarianism, democratic states so far have put all their efforts into standing up for political principles, but there is an urgent need to open a “second front” to stand up for the value of human life, centered on a call for the rights of political prisoners to be observed.
Thanks to YouTube and social media, we were able to keep track of the fate of the prisoners freed earlier this year. From now on, however, we will know little about the suffering of those still behind bars because the Russian government has blocked these channels. Only the remnants of free speech still being exercised inside the country allow us to be aware of the circumstances facing those who are held in terrible conditions in Russia’s prisons.
Among those who remain incarcerated is the boiler mechanic Vladimir Rumyantsev, who declared war on censorship and opened his own personal radio station in the northern Russian city of Vologda. In Siberia, Mikhail Afanasyev, the editor of the online magazine Novy Fokus, is serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence for his reporting on 11 military servicemen who refused to go to Ukraine. A court in the city of Akaban convicted him for spreading false information about the “special military operation,” as the war in Ukraine is called in Russia. The director Yevgeniya Berkovich and the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk were thrown into jail and accused of condoning terrorism after Berkovich staged Petriychuk’s play “Finist the Brave Falcon,” which tells the story of women who were persuaded to become the wives of militants in Syria.
By March 30, 2022, just a month or so after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state had blocked most independent media outlets from operating in the country. This information should come as no surprise. Media that are independent from state control are often considered a hindrance to the waging of war. They ask questions about the reason for the conflict, the budget for the operation, the losses incurred and the goals of the fighting. As a result of these prohibitions, hundreds of Russian journalists are now in exile. Many of them have been sentenced in absentia to many years in prison. And a number of those who did not leave the country are sitting in jail.
Those with any influence — media, international organizations, mediator states, religious leaders — should not be ashamed to propose deals for these political prisoners in addition to prisoner of war exchanges. Not wanting to fight, these civilians found themselves standing alone against a state that has made bloodshed a doctrine.
Several months ago, the police detained a friend of mine, Sergei Sokolov, the editor in chief of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
The paper had published a report and a video about orphans who had been invited to sign a contract with Russia’s Ministry of Defense to go fight in Ukraine. One of them told the journalists: “I will not shed someone else’s blood. I don’t want blood on my hands.” This phrase is the reason that Sokolov was arrested. The official report on his detention stated: “The fragment mentioned contains signs of discrediting the actions of the Russian government structures, aimed at conducting the special military operation.”
In effect, Sokolov was accused of discrediting the Russian army. Although he remains a free man, the investigation has yet to be concluded, and the case itself is revealing. It shows that in effect, the desire not to shed blood can be a crime against the Russian state. Cruelty has become part of the new Russian patriotism.
War, censorship and repression are three tools Russia is using to build a new state — one in which the rights of the state are valued higher than those of the individual. This is a military state, one where death for the motherland is more important than life. And the state pays well for death. If a serviceman dies in combat, his family receives more than $150,000, an amount that typically would have taken him 20 to 25 years to earn in life. Investing in your own death has become a profitable business. By dying on the battlefield, you take care of your family.
Even the Russian Orthodox Church, turning away from the service of Christ, exalts the cult of death. Mitrofan Badanin, the metropolitan of Murmansk, told his congregation: “If you are given a favorable opportunity to die, do not hesitate to take this step, because there is no way of knowing whether such an opportunity will present itself to you again.”
Will the world be able to save Russia’s remaining political prisoners before they, too, give their lives to the state in death? This is a crucial battle in the war between the union of democracies and the alliance of dictatorships, and the principle at the heart of this battle is the value of human life. For dictatorships, individual lives have little value beyond being a tool for use by the state. For the rest of us, there is no mission more important than preserving life.
Democratic states have long justified their unwillingness to act by taking the moral high ground, sometimes reciting the mantra “we do not negotiate with terrorists,” but that reasoning doesn’t preclude making deals to free civilian prisoners convicted on political grounds in Ukraine and Russia. They have no other chance for freedom.
Making such deals requires the will of states that have influence over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but I believe there are still some of them left.
The world is growing accustomed to violence. People no longer speak of unacceptable losses. Death is becoming normalized.
Calling for the fair treatment and release of political prisoners is a way to remind the world of the value of life.
The post We Cannot Forget the World’s Political Prisoners appeared first on New York Times.
