Defying Putin’s 21st century gulag: How anti-war activists are using court to oppose Russia’s war on Ukraine

Simon Pirani is an historian, activist and energy researcher, who has written extensively on Russia and Ukraine, including on this blog peoplenature.org. Pirani gave the following speech, in which he discusses his forthcoming book, Voices against Putin’s war: Protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts, to the Socialism 2025 conference, held over July 3–6 in Chicago, United States, as part of the session, “Putin’s anti-war political prisoners in Russia”. The video of the full panel can be viewed above. Speech transcript has been edited for clarity.

I had been visiting and writing about Russia and Ukraine for many years when the full-scale war broke out in February 2022. I immediately got involved in efforts to support comrades and friends in Ukraine and Russia. In the summer of 2022, we learned of a new group, Solidarity Zone, which had been formed to support those arrested for taking direct action against the war, mainly by fire-bombing military recruitment centres. A group of us in Britain started translating their fundraising appeals and other material.

The fire-bombings are done when the offices are closed; they are aimed at damaging property, not persons. This became a comparatively common form of protest. There were more than 100 such actions in the first year after the invasion of Ukraine. Solidarity Zone saw that those who were detained, and their families, needed support, and particularly lawyers.

Following this at a distance, I was especially struck by some of the courageous statements made by these young people when they were brought to trial. Similar speeches were also made in court by people who had not engaged in such dramatic protests, but had simply denounced the war out loud — at a political event, online, etc — and then been arrested. These people are victims of a general clampdown on democratic rights in Russia.

Earlier this year, with our friends in the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, we decided to publish a collection of these speeches. I am editing the book, but that is not the story. The story is in the speeches themselves.

Opposition to war on trial

There are nine speeches in total, as well as two statements from people who appeared in court but made their statements elsewhere: from Kirill Butylin, who (as far as we know) was the first person to carry out a fire-bombing protest and put out a social media message; and from Savely Morozov, a young man from southern Russia who was eligible for conscription but who denounced the war at the conscription commission.

The first thing that struck me about these speeches was the deeply moral tone of many of these protesters, who have obviously been prepared to sacrifice an enormous amount just to make these speeches. Igor Paskar, for example, firebombed the office of the Federal Security Services where he lived and then stood there waiting to be arrested. He was detained and badly tortured. When he got to court, he said:

Do I regret what has happened? Yes, perhaps I’d wanted my life to turn out differently – but I acted according to my conscience, and my conscience remains clear.

He is now serving an eight-and-a-half years jail sentence.

The second thing that struck me is that they were addressed to the population, not to the government. Alexei Rozhkov firebombed a military recruitment centre where he lives. He was released from detention after an initial hearing — the unusual result of good work by his lawyers. Rozhkov then fled to Kyrgyzstan but was kidnapped, presumably by security forces, and returned to Russia for trial. He said:

I also have no doubt that millions of my fellow Russians, women and men, young and old, are opposed to the war too, and, like me, are convinced that the war is not a solution, but a dead end. But they have no way – without risking ending up behind bars – to do anything to be heard, to ensure their opinion was listened to.

Ukrainian artist Bohdan Ziza splashed blue and yellow paint — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — on government offices in Crimea, which has been occupied since 2014. He filmed himself doing it and saying: “I address myself above all to Crimeans and to Russians.” In court, he said his action “was a cry from the heart, from my conscience, to those who were and are afraid — just as I was afraid — but who also did not want, and do not want, this war.”

From pacifism to defeatism

The third thing that struck me about these statements was their very different starting points. On the central issue of the war, their views range from pacifist to defeatist. Sasha Skochilenko, an artist jailed in Saint Petersburg for writing anti-war messages on labels in a supermarket, was fortunately freed as a result of a prisoner exchange. When she was in court, she did not know she was going to be freed. She said:

I am a pacifist. Pacifists have always existed. It’s a certain creed of people who place the highest value on life. We believe every conflict can be resolved peacefully. I can’t bear to kill even a spider, frightened by the very thought of taking a life.

Alexei Gorinov, a very prominent political prisoner, also expressed himself in court very much in terms of pacifism, and quoted Lev Tolstoy.

In contrast, we have the attitude of Darya Kozyreva, a Saint Petersburg student jailed for laying flowers at the statue of Taras Shevchenko, a Ukrainian national poet. In court, she made clear that, for her, the central issue is Ukraine’s right to self-determination and clearly justified Ukrainians asserting that right by force of arms. She said the war is a criminal intrusion on Ukraine’s sovereignty, that Ukraine does not need a big brother, and that it will fight anyone who tries to invade.

Another example is Ruslan Siddiqi, an anarchist who tried to inflict tangible damage on the Russian armed forces by detonating bombs that derailed a train taking munitions to the front. He justified this as a military action on Ukraine's side, saying he thinks of himself as a partisan who should be classified as a prisoner of war.

The final example, who also made a very clear statement of hope for Russia's defeat, was 68-year-old Alexander Skobov. He was first detained in 1978, in Soviet times, tried for activity in the dissident movement and subjected to forcible psychiatric treatment. This year, 47 years later, he was again in court on charges related to what he said about the war. 

In court, he spelled out three principles of his political organisation, the Free Russia Forum: the unconditional return to Ukraine of all its internationally recognised territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea; support for all those fighting for this goal, including Russian citizens who joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces; and support for “armed resistance to this aggression on the battlefield and in the aggressor’s rear”, but excluding terrorist attacks on civilians.

Putin’s Russia: The 21st century gulag

Regarding the scale of repression in Russia, I propose we use the phrase “the 21st century gulag”, which I think is fully justified. Memorial: Political Prisoners Support, one of the main non-governmental organisations supporting political prisoners, has a list with more than 3000 names on it. The last time there were comparable numbers of political prisoners was in the mid 1970s under Leonid Brezhnev.

In addition to the people detained in Russia, there are many prisoners from the occupied territories of Ukraine. In their cases, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the numbers. The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, in a submission to the International Criminal Court, identified more than 5000 civilian victims of “enforced disappearances” from the occupied territories. These people may be in detention or dead. In most cases their families do not know.

In 2023, two Ukrainian human rights groups, Zmina and the Center for Civil Liberties, compiled a list of 585 arrested civilians who were in detention or missing due to their political and civic activity in the occupied territories. This list included local government representatives, former military personnel, volunteers, activists and journalists.

The cases of political prisoners from Crimea are more known because of the strength of civil society organisations there. The Crimean Human Rights Group currently has a register of 265 of such prisoners, many from the Crimean Tatar community. Then, there are also thousands of civilian prisoners who have been moved from the so-called people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. They were tried under very local arbitrary legal systems and transferred to the Russian prison system.

Solidarity with anti-war political prisoners

In the world we live in, with militarism and authoritarianism on the rise, the anti-war protests in Russia have international significance.

It is worth making a comparison: in Britain, which is very far from facing the sort of dictatorship that rules Russia, or even the threats to democracy that we see now in the United States, the criminalisation of anti-war protesters follows a very similar Kafkaesque ideological logic to what we see in Russia. Palestine Action, which organises direct action protests against arms deliveries to Israel, is threatened with a ban under anti-terror legislation. Singers who have denounced the genocide in Gaza are investigated by the police. The parallels with some Russian cases are striking.

What can be done in Western countries about these political prisoners? First, we can raise awareness, particularly in left-wing circles, where the influence of campism remains strong. By campism, I mean the idea that Russia is not really an imperialist power and does not deserve the same condemnation as the US or Israel.

Another thing is writing letters. It is very difficult to write letters from Western countries, which is a standard form of support for political prisoners. It is possible for Russian speakers, but in practice not for others. But we can send money to people who organise parcels and letters. Memorial is the biggest and most well-known. There is also OVD-info, which has been doing fantastic work over the past three years. And I have also already mentioned Solidarity Zone, the Crimea Human Rights Group and the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, which has its roots in Memorial. These are all organisations that fully deserve our support.