ABC Moscow

Because Kirill Brik, a defendant of the Tyumen case, signed a pre-trial agreement, Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow is no longer supporting him anymore. In some cases we do support prisoners who give testimonies against themselves, but we do not support prisoners that are testifying against others.

On 4 September 2023, former Moscow State University graduate student and political prisoner Azat Miftakhov was released from penal colony. On the same day Federal Security Service (FSB) has charged Miftakhov in a criminal case for «justifying terrorism». According to FSB, Azat discussed with other prisoners the war in Ukraine and the actions of the anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who caused an explosion in the FSB…

This is long overdue. As usual, we start with (relatively) good news. Krasnoyarsk anarchists Danil Ivanov and Ilya Vinogradov were given 5 and 3.5 years probational sentences respectively. They were accused of ”robbery”, for paying a visit to a former comrade who had been seen hanging out with Nazis. Congratulations to Danil and Ilya for dodging prison!

This update was provided by ABC-Moscow for German Das Antifaschistische Infoblatt issue 138. This version has some minor updates with numbers mentioned.

Dear friends, welcome to our latest update! But first, we need to ask for your help. When Russia invaded Ukraine, in February of 2022, we decided to widen our focus by supporting anti-war prisoners – up till that point, we had supported only anarchist and anti-fascist prisoners. However, as of October 2022 we have run out of almost all funds to support anti-war prisoners and we decided to launch a fundraising effort…

Solidarity Zone is a new initiative, established by anti-authoritarian activists. Anarchist Black Cross Moscow is cooperating with the new initiative, and we encourage everyone to support it.

Vladimir Sergeev and Anton Zhuchkov were arrested in an anti-war action on the 6th of March 2022. Before his arrest Vladimir worked in a factory. Vladimir did not go to demonstrations before the war began. After the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army on February 24, 2022, Vladimir's attitude toward the Russian state became even worse.

Possibilities to protest in Russia were already significantly limited before the pandemic, and during the last two years, from March 2020 to Russian attack to Ukraine, street demonstrations have been banned with the pretext of the Covid Pandemic. People were demonstrating persecutions against opposition leader Alexey Navalnyi, and in few other cases, but these ended in massive arrests. But still, there was freedom…

This time around there's both good news and bad news, so lets start with the good ones. For pictures, check the original post at https://avtonom.org/en/news/moscow-anarchist-black-cross-updates-september-2021

Maksim Smolnikov, a street artist known as Hadad, from Khabarovsk has been remanded for two months due to his 2018 VKontakte post about the explosion at an FSB office in the Arkhangelsk region. Smolnikov is accused of "justifying terrorism." During these two years, the security officials had no complaints against him. .

Ilya Romanov needs support for rehabilitation Ilya Romanov has been an activist in the anarchist movement since 1987. He was sentenced to prison twice, for 10 years in Ukraine in 00’s and 7 years in Russia in the last decade. In 2019 he almost died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. Due to the delay in the medical intervention, he lost the capacity to move the right side of his body.

On Saturday 11th of April, relatives took Ilya Romanov, anarchist prisoner from LPU-21. Prosecutor did not appeal decision of the court of Zubovo-Polyanski of Republic of Mordovia, which has ordered to release Romanov for basis of his health. We congratulate Ilya, and everyone who was fighting for his release from prison!