Rights in Russia

My guest today is Leyla Latypova, a journalist who works as a special correspondent for the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times. An ethnic Tatar from the republic of Bashkortostan, Leyla writes about politics and civil society in Russia’s regions and national republics. In her work, she promotes and defends the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation. She now lives in Amsterdam. In this edition of “Then & Now,” we talk to Leyla about the war, about national movements and about the future of ethnic minorities in Russia – and of Russia in general. My questions include:

Our guest today is Zoia Svetova, renowned journalist and human rights activist. She continues to live and work in Moscow. She is the author of several books, including Priznat’ nevinovnogo vinovnym [To Find the Innocent Guilty]. Her voice is perhaps one of the few authoritative oppositionist voices still heard in Russia today. This podcast was recorded on 26 March 2024. My questions include:

My guest today is Anastasia Burakova, a human rights lawyer and democratic activist from Russia. We are still in shock at the news of the murder of Aleksei Navalny in a high-security penal colony in the settlement of Kharp. Aleksei Navalny’s political star rose as a leader of the opposition to the Putin regime in 2011. That year, 2011, played a significant part in the political coming of age of today’s guest - Anastasia Burakova, a Russian human rights lawyer and activist for democratic change in Russia - and influenced the trajectory of her professional life. However, ten years later, in November 2021, Anastasia was forced to leave Russia. She moved to Georgia after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where she founded the Ark Project (‘Kovcheg’). Initially, set up to offer help to exiled Russians because of their opposition to the war, over time, Ark’s activities have broadened. This podcast was recorded on 22 February 2024. My questions include:

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. My guest today is Anna Karetnikova. Until recently, Anna Karetnikova lived and worked in Moscow. In 2016, she was appointed lead analyst to the Federal Penitentiary Service – FSIN. Prior to that, she served for eight years as a member of the Public Oversight Commission (POC) in Moscow and worked closely with the human rights organisation “Memorial”. Anna Karetnikova exemplified that rare combination in Russia of someone who was both a human rights activist and a government-appointed official working for the FSIN. For several years she pulled this off brilliantly. But just over a year ago, she was forced to leave Russia. The events that led to this decision and how she feels about life in exile are among the topics we will be talking about. This podcast was recorded on 8 February 2024. ou can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and YouTube. My questions include: Unlike many of your colleagues, acquaintances and friends in human rights organizations, you stayed in Russia after the Special Military Operation was launched on February 24th 2022? Was leaving Russia not an issue for you at that time?

My guests today are Mamuka Kuparadze, the founder of Studio Re in Tbilisi, which works to advance ‘people’s diplomacy’ through documentary film, and Aleksandr Pichugin, a Russian journalist, originally from Nizhny Novgorod, who left Russia with his family immediately after the announcement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and started a new life in Tbilisi. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the flow of Russian citizens fleeing the war to Georgia has reached an unprecedented 100,000. That’s the size of two small Georgian cities such as Gori, for example. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between Georgia and Russia have not been easy. There have been wars of secession, first in South Ossetia, then in Abkhazia, and their de facto removal from Georgian government control. And the culmination of these wars, we can say, took place 15 years later, in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia and won a five-day war after which Russia “officially” recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (both are still considered by the international community as legitimate parts of Georgia. Georgia itself calls them Russian-occupied territories). In this edition of ‘Then and Now’, we take a look at how Georgian society and government perceives these immigrants from Russia and how Russian immigrants live there. The recording was made on 4 January 2024. My questions include:

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. My guest today is Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev. Lev Ponomarev trained and worked as a physicist in the USSR before devoting more time and energy to issues of human rights in the Soviet Union and subsequently in the Russian Federation. He was one of the founders of « Memorial » in 1988, and soon became one of the foremost figures in human rights in Russia. In the dying days of perestroika, Lev Ponomarev went into politics and in 1990 co-founded the opposition movement « Democratic Russia ». He was a People’s Deputy at the end of the Soviet era and a deputy of the first convocation of the State Duma in the new Russia after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In 1997 he founded the not-for-profit « For Human Rights » and in 2007 he set up the « Foundation in Defence of Prisoners’ Rights ». He was a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group from 1996 until its closure last year. In 2019 his organisation « For Human Rights » was shut down by the authorities. On December 28, 2020, Lev Ponomarev’s name was in the first list of individuals designated as ‘media foreign agents’ by the Russian Justice Ministry. The recording was made on 22 December 2023. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, or on SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. My questions include:

My guest today is Natalya Zyagina, head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International shut down by the Russian authorities in 2022. Natalya Zvyagina has a long record as a Russian human rights activist. She is originally from the city of Voronezh, where she worked for many years in the Interregional Human Rights Group. Natalya has also worked at the Institute for Law and Public Policy, a non-profit organization based in Moscow, and at the Russian branch of Transparency International. This recording was made on 30 November 2023. In addition to our website, you can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. My questions include:

My guests today are two Parisians, Aleksandra Ilkhovskaya and Svetlana Dokudovskaya: Aleksandra [known to everyone as “Sanya]” has lived in Paris since she was six years old – her mother emigrated from Russia in 1991. She is married with two daughters. She is a primary school teacher with 10 years’ experience. Svetlana has lived with her French husband and their 13-year-old daughter in Paris for the past 17 years. She works as a cell biologist at the Gustave Roussy Institute, Europe’s largest cancer research centre. Both their lives changed after February 24th 2022. This recording was made on 22 September 2023. My questions include:

My guest today is the author Maxim Osipov. Following in the great Russian tradition of Chekhov and Bulgakov, he has pursued a career in medicine in parallel with that of a writer. For his works of fiction – for the most part short stories that are sharp and witty commentaries on modern-day life in the Russian provinces – Maxim Osipov has won a number of literary prizes, and his plays have been staged as well as broadcast on the radio in Russia. Osipov’s works have been translated into 18 languages. His books published in English include the collections of short stories Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories and Kilometer 101 (see my review in Rights in Russia from earlier this year). Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Maxim Osipov signed several letters condemning Putin’s military operation.. He left Russia on 4 March 2023 and now lives in the Netherlands where he has launched a new quarterly literary journal, The Fifth Wave. This recording was made on 11 August 2023. My questions: The Fifth Wave

Welcome to the ninth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. My guest today is Tetyana Sokolova, a professional midwife of 40 years at Mariupol Maternity Hospital No. 2, on the left bank of Mariupol near Azovstal, the industrial plant that became a centre of resistance against the Russian invaders. On 9 March, the city’s Maternity Hospital No. 3 was bombed by Russian aircraft and the whole world watched with horror pictures of the destroyed building and Ukrainian soldiers’ desperate attempts to save the life of a pregnant woman, as she lay on a stretcher among the ruins. Three pregnant women from the rubble of Maternity Hospital No. 3 were brought to Tetyana and her team of midwives, For her work, her resilience and her bravery under the most difficult of conditions, Tetyana was awarded the international Anna Politkovskaya prize, named in honour of the murdered journalist. My questions 1. Where were you when you realised that Russia had invaded Ukraine? What was your reaction and what were your first thoughts? 2. You went to work on 2 March. Did you waver at all in your decision? After all, it was less than a week since the war had started. What made you to go to work that day? 3. Tell us about the events of 9 March and how they impacted you personally. 4. You have worked in Mariupol all your professional life - what made you become a midwife? 5. Could you ever have imagined that you would be an eyewitness to alleged war crimes? 6. How did you escape from Mariupol? 7. Where do you live now? 8. Do you cherish hopes of returning to Mariupol one day? 10. Were you surprised to be awarded the Anna Politkovskaya prize? Did you know about her before?

Welcome to the eighth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. As a rule, guests on our podcast are individuals for whom 24th February 2022 was a turning-point in their life; today we are talking about an organisation that came into being as a result of that fateful date. The Reckoning Project was created in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the aim of gathering evidence of war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. To this end, The Reckoning Project has brought together a team of international advisers – human rights experts, historians, lawyers and politicians. And on the front line, so to speak, is a team of journalists led by our guest today, Nataliya Gumenyuk. They are the foot soldiers on the ground who gather testimony about Russia’s war crimes from Ukrainian eyewitnesses. This recording was made on 22 June 2023 My questions include: See also this story on the deportation of children from Mariuopol: Iryna Lopatina [via thereckoningproject.com], ‘“Dad, You Have to Come—Or We Will Be Adopted!”: One Ukrainian Family’s Harrowing Wartime Saga,’ Vanity Fair, 6 October 2022

Welcome to the seventh episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. In recent weeks, politically motivated trials and lengthy prison terms in Putin’s Russia reached a new peak. Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for treason and Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk have been remanded in custody awaiting trial for “justifying terrorism” in connection with the staging of a play. Some say these developments signify a return to the USSR of the 1970s, others that it is reminiscent of Stalinist purges. Our guest today, Boris Kuznetsov, is a lawyer who played a key role in the first high profile trial of Putin’s presidency – he defended the interests of relatives of the sailors who died on the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank in 2000. We invited him to share with us his experiences of the Kursk case in particular, and more widely his observations and reflections on the legal system and practice of jurisprudence in Putin’s Russia. The recording was made on 1 June 2023.

Welcome to the sixth episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. Whilst our podcast is mostly about people for whom February 24th 2022 was a turning-point in their lives, the subject of today’s conversation is the country, whose leadership caused that date to be so significant in all our lives. We are talking, of course, about Russia. To lead us to an understanding of just how fateful a date 24th February 2022 may be for Russia itself, we talked to Dmitry Oreshkin, someone who has devoted many years to detailed observation of the political, economic, and social life of the country. Let him be our guide as we discuss present-day Russia and the likely future of the Russian Federation. This recording took place on May 11th 2023 You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. My questions include:

Welcome to the fifth episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. With me today is Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist who shocked the world with her anti-war protest on 14 March 2022, which went live on Russian State TV’s prime time news programme “Vremya”. Since that moment, she has been through such a rollercoaster of adventures – fleeing Russia with her daughter, work as a journalist in Germany, and now her recent relocation to Paris. Her book Between Good and Evil recently came out in three languages and will soon be published in four more. No doubt other languages will follow. This recording took place on 19 April 2023. Marina Ovsyannikova’s autobiographical Between Good and Evil describing her life in Moscow as a journalist and the media ‘propaganda factory’ that works on behalf of the Kremlin is published by Post Hill Press, March 2023, pp190, ISBN: 979-8888450505. You can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. My questions include:

Our latest guest is the Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov. Andrei Kurkov became widely known to readers around the world in 2001 when his novel Smert’ postoronnego [Смерть Постороннего] was published in English translation as Death and the Penguin. Other novels followed and, in their wake, worldwide recognition and success at prominent international literary awards. His latest novel, Grey Bees, tells the story of an elderly beekeeper in the occupied territory of Donbas. The novel touches on the war in Donbas and on the violation of Crimean Tatar rights in Russian annexed Crimea. In 2015 his Ukraine Diaries was published in English and, recently, his Diary of an Invasion. This recording took place on 14 April 2023. Diary of an Invasion is published by Mountain Leopard Press, ISBN: 9781914495847, pp 304, London, 2022. It is a collection of Andrei Kurkov’s writings and broadcasts from Ukraine in the lead up to and during the war. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. My questions include: 1. You started your Diary of an Invasion just before New Year at the very end of 2021. Do you always keep a diary? 2. What emotions did you feel when you learnt what had happened on February 24th? 3. How do you see the role of the writer during the war? 4. Before the invasion, your remarks in the Diary about Ukraine and your Ukrainian compatriots are quite multifaceted. But after you tend to write about them as if they were figures from Ukrainian historical myths (‘bylinas’) – how brave, freedom-loving they are, and how different they are from the Russians. It is as if those human traits that make your novels so memorable and touching aren’t relevant here. What explains that change? 5. You write about the traditions of the Ukrainian people and the creation of myths in times of crisis. What is the role of traditions and myths in the identity of a people? 6. Your native language, in which you became a famous writer, is Russian. Have you ever had any problems in your relations with Ukrainian writers or the public because of it? 7. What is your attitude to the Russian language in Ukraine now? 8. How do Russians around the world react to your advocacy for Ukraine – do you get hate mail from Russians? 9. Do you see the possibility for Russian-speaking Ukrainians to write in Russian again in the future? 10. You write in your Diary that you have an unfinished novel… will you be able to finish it or is it doomed to remain in the unfinished after the Russian invasion? 11. Do you believe in the concept of ‘good Russians’? Who is a ‘good Russian’ for you? 12. Has Russian culture played a major role in your own development as a writer? 13. Are there any commonalities between Russian and Ukrainian culture and traditions? (You write in the Diary about the feat of Russian PR in promoting Russian culture around the world, as if Russian culture would not be so highly regarded without it.) 14. How do you see the future of Ukraine? And of Russia?

Welcome to the third episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war. Today’s guest is Lev Gudkov, a sociologist and director of the analytical Levada Centre, Russia’s leading independent polling organisation. He is also editor-in-chief of the journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald. Lev Dmitrievich has worked at the Levada Centre since its founding, initiated by Yury Levada in 2003. After the death of Yury Levada in 2006, Lev Dmitrievich becamse the director of the Centre. In September 2016 the Levada Centre was designated as a ‘foreign agent’ organisation, a move which at the time Lev Gudkov said amounted to ‘political censorship.’ This recording took place on 16 March 2023

Welcome to the second episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war. Today’s guest is Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina: human rights activist, social activist and chair of the Committee for Civic Assistance – the first human rights organisation in Russia helping refugees and displaced persons. In 1991, she was one of the founding members of the Memorial Centre for Human Rights and in 2010 – together with Memorial – she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. On December 23, 2022, her name was added to the register of ‘foreign agents.’ Her organisation, the Committee for Civic Assistance, was registered as a 'foreign agent' in April 2015. The recording took place on 16 February 2023 My questions include:

Welcome to our new Russian-language podcast, Then & Now, with me, Teresa Cherfas. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war. My first guest is Marina Litvinenko, widow of Aleksandr Litvinenko, who perished in London in November 2006. Aleksandr Litvinenko was poisoned with a lethal dose of Polonium-210. This was to all intents and purposes a nuclear crime perpetrated by Putin’s Russia on British soil. But immediately after Litvinenko's murder, the British government kept its silence. Not wanting to spoil relations with Russia, it went no further than accusing two ‘suspects’ back in Moscow of the crime. When the British authorities asked for their extradition, they got the usual response – ‘nyet.’ After her husband’s tragic death, Marina Litvinenko fought long and hard to have her husband’s case treated as an act of State terror. In January 2016, the High Court in London judged that the two 'suspects' in Litvinenko’s murder had ‘probably’ acted under the direction of the FSB and with the approval of President Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev, Director of the FSB. It was only in 2021 that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia was responsible for the death of Aleksandr Litvinenko. This is largely down to the efforts of today's guest. The recording took place on 12 January 2023. Questions include:

Our guest on the podcast this week is Varvara Pakhomenko. Varvara Pakhomenko has been a human rights activist for a very long time. Back in her native Tomsk she was actively involved in human rights activities. Having moved to Moscow, Varvara began working with many human rights activists in the capital, but the geography of her travels remained very wide. Since 2006, Varvara Pakhomenko has worked in conflict zones in the North and South Caucasus: in 2006-2009 at the human rights organization Demos, in 2009-2011 at the Dutch organization Russian Justice Initiative, and since 2011 she has worked as a programme analyst for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group. When the Russian authorities effectively closed the ICG’s Moscow office, Varvara left to work in Ukraine. There she worked first for the UN Development Programme and after that for Geneva Call. A move to Canada seemed to put some distance between her and Europe, but now Varvara Pakhomenko is back again on the old continent. The recording took place on 24 June 2022. This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. You can also listen to the podcast in full here (see also below): The questions we ask Varvara Pakhomenko include: · How did human rights activism come into your life? · One of Tomsk’s leading human rights activists was Boris Maksovich Kreindel. He was involved in many projects, including defending the rights of Roma in Tomsk region. How did it happen that he had to leave his native land? · Tell us about your work in the conflict zones in the Caucasus – where did you work? To what extent was it dangerous? · Which Moscow human rights activists and which organizations have you worked with in Russia? · When and why did you decide to move to Ukraine? · How does the human rights movement in Ukraine differ from that in Russia? · At least since 2012 the Russian authorities have pursued policies of increasing restrictions on human rights work in the country, attacks on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and a general moved towards isolationism. Do you think they have been preparing for the war against Ukraine for a long time? · What has been your role at the UNDP and Geneva Call? · How has the Ukrainian army changed since 2014. How do you assess the Ukrainian military’s compliance with international humanitarian law and with the rules and customs of warfare? · How do you see the future of human rights in Russia and the future of human rights organizations? Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “I remember when I was working on South Ossetia in 2010,” Varya Pakhomenko told Simon Cosgrove and I. “I had to make a difficult decision at the time: I did not know what to do. I called Sasha Cherkasov and asked him what to do in this situation. Sasha replied: ‘You know, no one can make this decision better than you right now. Because you know all that’s going on there better than anyone.’ And at that moment I realized that these fine people had begun to see me as an equal colleague.” In this podcast, Varya Pakhomenko talks about her native Tomsk, about Tomsk human rights activist Boris Kreindel, and about how a student from Siberia became a human rights activist. Varya and I were in South Ossetia together two weeks after the end of the war in 2008, so I had a chance to work with her myself then. After Russia, Varvara Pakhomenko has worked in Ukraine: in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and, after that, with the Geneva Call organization. It was then that she participated in training the Ukrainian Armed Forces, teaching the Ukrainian military how to comply with international humanitarian norms and protect civilians in armed conflict.

Our guest on the podcast this week is Nikolai Kavkazsky. Nikolai Yurievich Kavkazsy is a Russian civil society activist, human rights defender and opposition politician. He is one of the leading Yabloko activists in Moscow. Nikolai Kavkazsky was a defendant in the Bolotnoe case. Politically, he defines himself as a left-wing social democrat, an internationalist, a supporter of LGBT rights and of feminism. He is an advocate of juvenile justice and a humane drug policy. This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. The recording was made on 18 June 2022. The questions we ask Nikolai Kavkazsky include: · Which word best describes you – civil society activist, human rights activist or politician? · You studied law at the Institute of World Economy and Informatization. At what point did you realize you wanted to be a civil society activist and a politician? · You became a member of the Yabloko party in 2007 and are one of the party’s leading activists in Moscow. Why did you choose Yabloko as your party? · Why are political parties weak in Russia? · You took part in the Bolotnaya Square protest in 2012, after which you were charged with ‘participation in mass riots’ (under Article 212(2) of the Russian Criminal Code) and held on remand for almost a year and a half. Amnesty International recognized you as a prisoner of conscience, along with several other individuals involved in the Bolotnaya case. In December 2013, you were amnestied and the criminal case was dropped. How did all this happen? · What were the conditions in pre-trial detention centre? · You were an associate of the late Andrei Babushkin, who headed the Committee for Civil Rights. What is the work of this organization? And what kind of person was Andrei Babushkin? · You support LGBT rights in Russia. Why is the country so intolerant of LGBT people? · On 24 February 2022 you were detained for taking part in an anti-war protest. The next day you were jaled for six days. What is the situation regarding anti-war protests in Russia? · How do you see the future of the country and, in particular, the future of human rights? Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “Everything, absolutely everything, must be politicized. Including the question of installing benches at the entrance to an apartment building and protesting against plans to build in housing courtyards.” That’s what Simon Cosgrove and I were told by Nikolai Kavkazsky in a conversation we had with him last week. I’ve known Nikolai since the infamous Bolotnaya trial in Moscow. He is first and foremost a politician, a political activist. We also remember his active participation in human rights organizations, including Andrei Babushkin’s Committee for Civil Rights. It was an interesting conversation in which Nikolay Kavkazsky bravely states that he wants to change politics as they now are in Russia; he wants to change society so that it is more just, more free, and integrates all oppressed social groups.