Julia, an activist who asked that her real name not be used, was incarcerated for several years as political prisoner in Russia. Because she had no family, she received nothing from the outside world at all for the first few months.
“Think of all the things you need each day to brush your teeth, get dressed, eat,” Julia said. “In prison, life goes on, but you don’t get any money.”
“In the beginning, I even had to cut my fingernails with a piece of old razor blade,”Julia said. “After a while, people outside somehow became aware of my situation and I started to receive packages.”
Julia still lives in Russia. These days, she collects basics and food for currently incarcerated dissidents. “There are prisoners everyone has heard of, and they receive aid,” she said. “But I write to the ones people haven’t heard of.”
In her letters, Julia offers a list of items and asks what people need. “Soap, toilet paper, towels, underwear,” she said. “Sometimes they reply and say everything’s fine and I should help people who really need it.” But other letters say things like: “It’s a disaster. I have nothing at all. Please send me something.”
Though the number of political prisoners has grown in Russia, Julia said the donations had decreased. “It’s because everything in Russia is getting more expensive,” she said.
Covering legal costs
Relatives of political prisoners often organize fundraisers on social media. Legal costs make up the biggest expense. Activists say a good lawyer can make the difference.
The case of Yevgeny Bestuzhev, a political scientist from St. Petersburg, is an example. He criticized Russia’s war in Ukraine online and was accused of “disseminating false information” about the army. But he was ultimately given a suspended sentence instead of being sent to prison; Bestuzhev said this was because of his lawyer’s tactics.
Repression in Russia doesn’t just hurt political prisoners. Children grow up without parents; old people have no one to support them.
These families receive assistance from initiatives such as the You Are Not Alone project, an annual fundraiser for political prisoners in Russia led by former political prisoner Ksenia Fadeyeva, who had been a coordinator for the campaign office of Alexei Navalny in central Siberia before his death while incarcerated.
You Are Not Alone, which is often denounced by the authorities as an “undesirable organization,” only accepts donations from within Russia.
“Families of political prisoners sometimes have to choose between sending a package to the prison, paying for their children’s sport or buying medicine for their elderly parents,” Fadeyeva said.
In 2024, the project managed to raise 45 million Russian rubles. “Around 80% of all the requests we receive are for packages, or for money transfers to the prison authority,” Fadeyeva said. “Then, prisoners can use those funds to buy important daily essentials and food.”
The project was able to provide 14.5 million rubles to send packages to prisoners, 7.7 million rubles to support their families and 5.5 million rubles for other purposes, such as evacuation from Russia, support for people under house arrest or who have been released, and paying off prisoners’ debts.
In 2025, the amount donated per prisoner on average has gone down, from 30,000 rubles (€325/$375) to just 10,000 rubles each. “There just isn’t any more available,” the project organizers said. They believe that the drop in donations is likely because the public is tired of hearing about political prisoners.
‘The closed nature’
Most fundraisers run for several months, Elena Skvortsova, who works with an organization called the First Department, told DW. A community of lawyers and journalists who say they are “fighting against the closed nature of the state,” First Department also collects donations. Skvortsova said the success of a fundraiser often depended on the prisoner’s story.
She gave the example of Polina Yevtushenko, who is facing 22 1/2 years in prison because she condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine, both online and in a conversation with an acquaintance. The man reported her to the authorities. The fundraiser managed to raise sufficient funds for Yevtushenko in just a few hours.
“She’s a young mother, and her 6-year-old daughter only gets to see her through a pane of glass when she visits her in prison,” Skvortsova said. “The possibility of a long prison sentence, being arrested because someone has denounced you — these are the sorts of stories that inspire people to donate.”
Male political prisoners are only allowed to receive six packages a year, but such rules don’t apply to women. “Yesterday, for example, I put together a package in the prison authority’s online shop for a young woman in prison in the Vologda region. When she was brought there, she didn’t have even basic hygiene products,” Skvortsova reports. “The first packages cost around 5,000 rubles each.”
Donations should only be made from within Russia, say people who work at the project Zaodno, which was formed specifically to collect money for political prisoners. Money from abroad could trigger banks to freeze recipients’ accounts for monitoring and prevent the accounts from receiving further donations.
Founded in 2011 and now one of Russia’s largest rights organizations, OVD-Info also collects donations in cryptocurrency. Only a few aid organizations do this, including OVD-Info and another called Golden Key.
OVD-Info sets these donations aside for emergencies. “Should something happen to the project — this has happened before — and we suddenly can no longer accept donations or lose all our regular donors, then the crypto donations will support us and those we are helping,” the project states.
Publicizing the case
The public generally becomes aware of political prisoners through their family, friends, human rights activists and journalists.
Denis Shedov, who works with OVD-Info, said getting the word out was not easy. “The problem is that people often don’t know who to contact,” Shedov said. “Word of mouth, internet research, our own observations and our network of contacts are often more helpful.” He said some prisoners preferred to resolve their problems themselves and would rather the public not know about them.
Collecting donations for political prisoners is made even more difficult by the fact that many relatives and lawyers wish to remain anonymous, even when they’re getting in touch with activists, Skvortsova said.
“Many prisoners fear publicity and don’t want any attention,” she says. “But they still need help. Of course, we try to support them, but it’s a slow process. It has taken us over six months to collect 100,000 rubles in such cases.”
Fadeyeva, of You Are Not Alone, said there were about 1,500 political prisoners in Russia at the moment — and they urgently need help.
“Their prison conditions are deteriorating,” Fadeyeva said. “People are constantly being put in punishment cells and are not receiving medical care.”
This article was originally written in Russian.
