A letter from Australia can reach a Russian political prisoner

Boris is one of Russia's best-known sociologists and the author of many books on history and politics. He was also jailed as a young man in Soviet times for his writing. In 2023 he made a wry comment on his YouTube channel about the explosion on the Crimean Bridge. A court first fined him, but an appeal court changed that to five years in prison. He chose to stay in Russia rather than go into exile, and keeps writing essays from his colony. His health has worsened in prison and he was moved to a prison hospital in late 2025.

Nadezhda is a paediatrician who spent decades looking after children at a Moscow clinic. In 2024 the mother of one of her young patients claimed she had made an anti-war remark during an appointment, and that one accusation was enough for a criminal case over "fakes" about the army. Nadezhda denies saying it. At 68 she was sentenced to five and a half years in a penal colony, and she turned 70 behind bars.

Azat is a 33-year-old mathematician who was doing a PhD at Moscow State University, Russia's top university, when he was arrested in 2019. He was accused of being one of a group who broke a window at an office of Putin's United Russia party in 2018 and threw a smoke bomb inside; the main evidence came from a secret witness, and he was sentenced to six years for 'hooliganism'. On the day he walked out of the colony in September 2023, security officers arrested him again, saying he had spoken approvingly to cellmates about a 2018 bombing while watching the TV news, and a military court gave him four more years for 'justifying terrorism'. In April 2026 he was moved to a colony above the Arctic Circle, where he says guards beat and tortured him; a court has since ordered investigators to look into his complaint. Mathematicians around the world have campaigned for him, and he keeps working on maths problems in his cell.

Arseny was a 14-year-old school student in the small town of Livny when, prosecutors say, he put leaflets criticising Putin into letterboxes. At 15 he was sentenced to five years in a juvenile colony, accused of joining an anti-Kremlin volunteer group, which he denies. His mother gave up her job and moved to Perm to be near him. He turned 18 in custody in August 2026.

Lyubov was a 16-year-old school student in Chita, in Russia's far east, when she and friends painted "Death to the regime" on garages and ran small anti-war channels on the messaging app Telegram. She was sentenced at 17 to three and a half years. She served the first part in a juvenile colony and was moved to an adult women's colony when she turned 18. She is now 20.

Artyom is a 36-year-old Moscow poet. In September 2022, days after Putin announced the call-up of reservists for the war in Ukraine, he read his poems against the war at an open-air poetry evening beside the Mayakovsky monument in central Moscow. Police raided his flat the next day, and he was beaten and sexually assaulted by police during his arrest. A Moscow court found him guilty of 'calls against state security' and 'inciting hatred' and sentenced him to seven years in a prison colony. He now works long shifts in a colony east of Moscow, most recently taking apart old gas masks, and his health has suffered. His wife Alexandra campaigns for him and says that in five birthdays behind bars he has never been allowed to phone her.

Zhenya is a theatre director and poet who also cared for two foster daughters. Her play "Finist the Brave Falcon", about Russian women lured into marrying Islamist fighters, won Russia's top theatre prize, the Golden Mask. Prosecutors then claimed the play "justified terrorism", and she was sentenced to about five and a half years. In the colony she has been banned from staging plays and has been sent to punishment cells three times.

Mikhail used to manage a restaurant car on long-distance trains. In 2022, already in his sixties, he left two comments on the Russian social network VKontakte grieving the deaths of Ukrainian civilians, including children. For that he was given seven years, later cut by six months. He is hard of hearing, finds speaking difficult and lives with several chronic illnesses.

Olga is an architect and artist from St Petersburg who loves knitting, sewing and drawing. She is a widow. She was sentenced to six years over seven posts in an online pacifist group describing the shelling of Ukrainian cities. In the colony she was put on a watch list as "prone to extremism", and she has coeliac disease, which makes prison food a daily struggle.

Alexei was an elected member of a Moscow district council. In March 2022, at a council meeting, he objected to holding a children's drawing contest while children were dying in Ukraine. He was the first person jailed under the new wartime censorship law, given seven years, and three more were later added over a conversation with cellmates. Part of one lung was removed years ago, and he has spent much of his sentence in punishment cells.

Antonina is a reporter for the independent outlet SOTAvision. She covered the trials of Alexei Navalny and was one of the last journalists to film him alive. She was convicted of taking part in an "extremist community" for her reporting and sentenced to five and a half years. In the colony she refused forced sewing work and has spent months in punishment cells.

Vadim is a criminal defence lawyer, a husband and father of three, who loves music. From 2011 he represented the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In 2023 he and two colleagues were arrested and accused of passing Navalny's messages to his team, which is a normal part of a lawyer's job. He was sentenced to five and a half years and barred from practising law for three years after release.

Olga is an anaesthetic nurse who worked at the Pirogov surgical centre, a large Moscow hospital that also treats wounded soldiers. She posted about the killing of civilians in Bucha and Vinnytsia on a social-media page that, she said, was read by just 14 people, all of them relatives. She believes a quarrel with a doctor at work is what started the case. She was under house arrest in 2024 and was sent to jail after visiting an emergency dentist. A Christian, she told the court: "Take up your cross and carry it."

Alexei is a defence lawyer who has represented protesters and the Khachatryan sisters, three young women prosecuted for killing their abusive father. He is married with a young daughter he has not seen outside prison since 2023, and as a young man he loved the Harry Potter books. He was jailed for five years for his work as one of Navalny's lawyers. In winter 2025–26 he was moved through six prisons across Siberia despite dangerously high blood pressure.

Olga is a reporter from Ufa in the southern Urals who covered protests and local news for the small independent outlet RusNews. She once volunteered for Alexei Navalny's local office, and that, together with her posts about the war, brought her a 12-year sentence. She has type 2 diabetes and has lost her voice more than once under stress in custody. In October 2026 she was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Prize for brave journalism. She is married with children and loves cycling, drawing and animals.