Sunday, May 17, 2026 - Try Me for Treason: Russia's Anti-War Political Prisoners

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6. briefing here on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and worldwide at kpfk.org.
7. KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles.
8. Welcome to Beneath the Surface. I'm Susie Wiseman. On today's program, Simon Perani and
9. Alexandra Zabolskaya join us in conversation about Putin's systematic repression of anti-war critics
10. sentenced to years in prison on absurd charges, discrediting the military, justifying terrorism.
11. We've covered this a lot on the show, but the situation is getting worse as the war grinds on,
12. not just in the scale of repression, but in the state's increasing use of extremist and
13. terrorist charges to arbitrarily lengthen prison sentences, hearkening back to something
14. Stalin did. We speak with Simon and Sasha about Putin's political prisoners and the film based
15. on the book Voices Against Putin's War, Protesters' Defiant Speeches in Russian Courts, compiled and
16. edited by Simon, who's a fellow Russian specialist. He's been traveling to Russia and Ukraine since
17. Soviet times, and we're offering the book as a thank you gift today for pledging your support
18. to KPFK and this program.
19. You can watch the film Try Me for Treason.
20. It's a 50-minute documentary made by actors in Britain
21. who volunteered their time to bring into English
22. the final words spoken in Russian courtrooms
23. by people sentenced to years in prison for opposing Putin's war.
24. It premieres at noon Pacific today.
25. That's one hour after we finish our broadcast.
26. It's free.
27. Go to trymefortreason.org for more information and links.
28. We're also joined by Alexandra Sapolskaya, or Sasha, a sociologist and Russian anti-war activist now in exile in Paris.
29. Sasha is coordinator and editor of Postly, the Russian-language left journal, and a member of Solidarity Free Assad, the campaign for imprisoned mathematician Assad Miftakov.
30. We're going to hear about the people behind the speeches, who they are, what drove them to speak, and what they've suffered since.
31. We'll talk about political repression in Russia.
32. There are more political prisoners now than at any point since the post-Stalin thaw of the 1950s.
33. And we'll hear about Assad, who's now being tortured in an Arctic penal colony just down the road from where Alexei Navalny was killed.
34. At the end of the hour, I'll give the links again to watch the film.
35. Stay with us.
36. and welcome back to the show i'm suzy wiseman we're very fortunate to have simon peroni and
37. sasha zapolskaya with us to discuss the nature and scope of political repression in russia
38. and the individual cases highlighted in the book let me properly introduce them simon peroni is the
39. author and editor of Voices Against Putin's War, Protesters Defiant Speeches in Russian Courts.
40. That just came out at the end of the year by Resistance Books He an honorary professor at the University of Durham a longtime Russia specialist He been on the show many times And he writes at People in Nature a sub and I forgot the
41. entire link, but Simon can give it. And Sasha Zapolskaya is the coordinator and the editor of
42. Postly, a Russian-language left journal in exile that we've featured here before. She's a member
43. of Solidarity Free Assad. That's the campaign for the political prisoner, Assad Miftikov,
44. and of radical democracy. She's a sociologist by training and a Russia anti-war activist,
45. now living in exile in France, working to build the Russian emigre left and international solidarity
46. with political prisoners. I welcome you both to the show. So, Simon, let's start at the beginning.
47. The final word, or the poslednye slovo, is one of the few constitutional rights still available to defendants in Russian courts, a chance to speak on the record before sentencing.
48. You've spent a long time collecting these speeches, translating them, and now turning them into this book and the film.
49. Can you tell us how this project came together and why, after doing that, you decided to make a film of it?
50. Yeah, thank you, Susie.
51. I suppose this story starts pretty soon after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
52. In the first few weeks, I was here in London.
53. I hadn't visited Russia for a while because of the pandemic and all the problems associated with that and my own changing circumstances.
54. And I was sitting at home and like everybody, I was shocked by the invasion.
55. Not completely surprised, but still shocked when it happened.
56. In those first few weeks, there were big demonstrations in Russia. That very rapidly became impossible. And dissent was driven off the streets by mass arrests. A lot of people left the country. They felt they had no choice. And the forms of protest became limited.
57. And what we then saw was a spate of young people throwing firebombs at military recruitment centers when they were closed, not with the aim of hurting anybody, but as a demonstration against the war.
58. The very first person who did this, Kirill Butilin, is one of those who's featured in our book.
59. We've got 12 people that we've featured in the text.
60. He was one of the first who did this.
61. He then tried to leave the country and nearly got away, but was then brought to trial.
62. We don't have a speech that he made in court in the book because this was right at the start.
63. And I don't think there were any reporters from any of the dissident Russian media in court to record his speech.
64. And that only started to get organized as the weeks and months went past.
65. I remember very clearly the first of these speeches, apart from Butylian's, that I knew about, which was by Igor Paskar.
66. He was a young man who had not been involved in, not a political activist.
67. He'd been on a few demonstrations, like a lot of young people.
68. He went out on one of these big, I think it may have been Victory Day or I think it was Russian National Day, and made a protest against these Zed banners, these militarist symbols, and nobody's going to notice.
69. And so he decided he had to try harder. And he went and threw, again, a firebomb again at an office which was closed, which was actually the office of the security services in the town where he lives. And he stood there and waited to get arrested.
70. I mean I sitting in my comfortable home here in London and reading about this And I mean this is in some ways you think is this crazy And the answer is no it not crazy
71. This guy has thought very, very, very hard about what he wanted to do.
72. He knew what was going to happen.
73. He explained all this in views he gave subsequently with opposition media.
74. He was taken into this FSB office that he'd just thrown this firebomb at and he was really badly tortured.
75. and he's given a detailed account of that. When he came to trial, he spoke about his conscience
76. and he said, my conscience would not allow me to stay quiet. And he said, we need to think about
77. what will we tell our children and grandchildren many years from now about these troubled times.
78. This is somebody who thought long and hard about this statement. That was the other thing that
79. struck me. What then followed was a number of these other statements and with friends who
80. were translating this material for one reason or another. We had a group of us who were working
81. with Solidarity Zone. That was a small group that was set up specifically to support these
82. cases that were coming up very fast, which were supported by the larger and more established
83. organizations like Memorial, but hadn't gone through the various legal processes which
84. Memorial applies, which are rightly very, they're very cautious and very careful.
85. And Solidarity Zone was something a bit more flexible and a bit more grassroots,
86. which could very rapidly provide support in terms of lawyers and parcels being delivered to
87. pretrial detention centers and so on. So there was a group of us working with them. And then
88. there was my friend who now lives in the States who writes the Russian Reader blog, which I
89. recommend to everybody. He had translated some of these speeches and we got together and we thought,
90. But unfortunately, this is a new or not a new literary genre, but it's a literary genre which has existed in Russia since the 19th century.
91. And unfortunately, because of the world we're living in, it's reappearing and taking shape again.
92. And a lot of people are doing this. They're thinking about what they're doing.
93. I mean, one of the things that's striking is that certainly all the speeches we've got in the book and actually a lot more.
94. these are not people who just think on the spur of the moment and say talk to the core i'm giving
95. a long answer your question suzy but getting to the end of it when we organized an event in london
96. to launch the book and let everybody know it was there and we decided we would ask some active
97. friends to come and read parts of these speeches because you know why have people like me talking
98. when you can hear the words of these people who've thought so hard
99. and suffered so much for these words.
100. And that worked.
101. We got a group of actors to do it.
102. And we then, from there, a couple of steps more down the road,
103. we found Tony Aldiss, a videographer,
104. who's just active here in actually the movement supporting Palestinians.
105. Like you, I hope everybody will watch it
106. when it goes on YouTube in an hour's time.
107. Perfect.
108. I do want to ask you just a little bit more about that. One thing, though, that was striking, these people, you said they thought long and hard, but were they for the most part newly activated because of the war, or had they been active before?
109. because as we see, you know, in the beginning, the repression against anybody who inadvertently,
110. you know, would say wear a yellow shirt and blue jeans or a scarf of the colors of the flag,
111. people who may not have done it deliberately but were arrested others who just carried a little placard saying against no war were being arrested But then we see as well that a lot of people like Boris Kagarlitsky
112. or others who were longtime critics were then picked up,
113. not for necessarily specific things against the war,
114. but in Kagarlitsky's case for making a bad joke that didn't land.
115. Of course, it was an anti-war broadcast on his popular channel.
116. But just sort of asking about, like, is there any rhyme or reason into who gets picked up and who gets put in jail, who gets tortured?
117. There's a whole swathe of people is the answer.
118. And I think we've reflected that in the book.
119. If anybody wants to research it in even more detail, there's a remarkable website, which is called Paslidnyslovo, which means last word, which has been set up by Russians who are outside of Russia.
120. And that actually it's a bigger subject.
121. It includes all the speeches that these people have been able to find starting from the 1950s and including, for example, a lot of Crimean Tatars who were jailed in the years previous to the Russian invasion of the rest of Ukraine.
122. Crimea was already occupied.
123. 2017, 2018, 2019, there was a real racist clampdown and Islamophobic clampdown on the Crimean Tatar organizations.
124. All those people are in that book.
125. But in terms of the anti-war people, so from 2022 onwards, there's a complete range.
126. So on the one hand, there's a guy who, Susie, we were talking about before we came on air, who's not in the book because he's just made a speech three weeks ago, who is a biker who was in a small telegram group in Stavropol where he lived.
127. The FSB had their eyes, the security services had their eyes on these people and broke into the group by arresting members of it and basically torturing the password out of them.
128. And they ended up rounding up the members of the group.
129. I mean, on one hand, it's a horribly tragic story about what's happened to these young people.
130. But what this guy who ends up in court says is is incredible.
131. And he says in the court that he shortly after the invasion, he decided to make a solo protest.
132. So he's not part of any political organization. He made a solo protest by driving his motorbike along with the Ukrainian flag on the back.
133. And he said, it's worth quoting, quote, this is what he said in court.
134. When I sped along with the banner of the oppressed streaming behind me past an astonished crowd of militarists, I felt the human in me come into bloom.
135. And that's an incredible thing to say in a courtroom.
136. He said that Russia's political prisoners have become outcasts in their own land.
137. He said that life had been split by the invasion of 24th February 2022 into before and after.
138. And the other thing he which I think is remarkable. I mean, this guy was born in 1987, which is for somebody like me, sounds pretty recent.
139. He said there will always be people like us who will keep emerging to pick up the fallen banner of good and reason.
140. And then he talked about the seven protesters who went out onto Red Square in 1968.
141. So nearly 20 years before he was even born to protest at the invasion of the Soviet Union, as it was then, of Czechoslovakia, as it was then.
142. And what brave people they were. And I mean, what a tragic story in many ways.
143. I remember reading interviews with them in the 1990s when they came out of prison and so on.
144. But he he referred back to that. So that's on the one end of the scale. On the other end of the scale,
145. You have people who are involved in the democratic movements of the 1980s.
146. So Alexei Garinov, who's the municipal councillor, and basically they had this municipal council meeting and he turned up in May, I think it was 2022, and they were going to have a festival for children.
147. And he said, I'm sorry, I don't feel like organising a festival for children while we're bombing children in Ukraine.
148. And he's now serving like 10 years.
149. and then but and right at the other end of the scale is someone who's actually quite pretty
150. much the same age as me which is alexander skorboff he made very clear statements against
151. the war he said i support ukraine's right to defend itself arms in hand he said i i support
152. the military actions uh death to the murderer tyrants and scoundrel putin death to the russian
153. fascist invaders glory to ukraine all pretty specific stuff he said in court and he also he
154. wrote a letter to his wife which he asked her to publish where he said that he was doing this
155. because i think his friends were pleading with him to leave the country which he had the resources
156. and the wherewithal to do which some people stuck out in the sticks somewhere did not have this guy
157. I was in St. Petersburg. He was a well-known and respected activist.
158. And he explained why he decided to stay. And he said in this letter, he said, I belong to the Soviet generation of dissident political prisoners.
159. Although its numbers were small, it became a significant historical phenomenon.
160. He said most of them have gone. They passed away. He was, in fact, a dissident among dissidents in the sense that he was a socialist,
161. whereas the dissidents were predominantly liberals
162. and he said I want the young people to know
163. that the last guy standing stood with them
164. and he was a very experienced politician
165. he was somebody who lived his life in the dissident movement
166. who opposed the war in Chechnya in the 1990s
167. and who kept that flag flying
168. so that's the answer
169. there's a full spectrum
170. and we tried to reflect that in the book and I think what's really important is to I'll just
171. make one last point if I may that it from the point of view of the west and I mean we we wanted
172. to translate this into English I think a lot of Russians are very well aware of this because the
173. media which is based abroad is fantastic the standard of reporting and of the systematic
174. infrastructure for getting this stuff out there is very very good there are groups of Russians
175. all over the place, writing letters to political prisoners. I'm sure Sasha will tell us about that.
176. I want to thank you for bringing in all of that, especially those incredibly powerful
177. words by the biker, Sergei Dudchenko. And also, when you were talking about him,
178. it reminded me of things that Victor Serge said, because you've drawn a line in your introduction,
179. Simon, that traces this history of opposition and protest from the 1870s in the Nerodniki
180. all the way to the Szyniowski-Daniel trial in 1965,
181. the Red Square protesters in 68, you mentioned,
182. and then, of course, what we've seen since then.
183. And Serge, you know, writing in the 30s in the heart of,
184. well, he was in internal deportation,
185. but he said, lamenting that they were dying
186. and that Stalin was killing them,
187. he says, but our remains will be the human harvest of revolution
188. that future generations will pick up.
189. and that reminds me very much of what Duchenko said it a horrible situation but it heartening to know that that spirit lives on Let turn to Sasha Zapolskaya for a second Can you actually address some of these you know the people that are being talked about
190. and in particular, the case of Assad?
191. My first remark would be a bit more abstract, just to make sure everyone actually understands
192. why it is important to talk about like political prisoners in some authoritarian regime in a
193. country that a lot of people have never been to and probably would never go to. So the situation,
194. the way I see it and the way a lot of analytics philosophers see it is that unfortunately,
195. what my state, what my homeland is doing, has been doing for a long time, is showing the world
196. a very possible future. It's important to know how these machine of state violence works,
197. which mechanisms are being used, you know, to be alert,
198. to see what might be coming to your countries
199. that are a bit freer from this type of state violence,
200. although we see how fast it's changing.
201. My first remark would be, like, guys, you should be very alert
202. because it changes very slowly and then it happens very fast.
203. After four years of invasion, we've been talking that the prisons became worse
204. and that the censorship became worse and that there is no independent media
205. and no one is able to say anything against the regime.
206. But if you look at discussions of the same people that took place like 10 years ago,
207. they were saying exactly the same things, that prisoners are awful,
208. that people are being tortured.
209. You can remember the notorious case of the so-called network,
210. the 2018 trial of anarchists who were accused of creating a society to make kudeta,
211. to change the regime allegedly, and that the people were put into prison for 18 years, 20 years, 16 years,
212. and they were being tortured.
213. And the whole case was built on the words that were extracted from them under electric shocks.
214. so 2018 we were talking that things have never been worse and yet here we are in 2026 saying
215. again that things have never been that bad and what have we lost that is the question and maybe
216. in 2018 there were actually some important islands of freedom that we didn't quite cherish
217. today in 2026 we should pay attention to these islands of possibilities to be more attentive so
218. not to become somebody who in 2030 will say things were so so nice in 2026 you know we were able
219. to do so much things so many things and like последnia slova the last word that is uh this
220. arena this tribune to to tell their beliefs this is an important thing so this is something that
221. we have for now another possibility is writing letters to political prisoners or to any prisoners
222. whatsoever so we have these digital tools that allow to send letters to to all the prisoners
223. and yes there is censorship but if you still can can give them at least a hope just writing
224. something like describing i don't know nature forest that that is that is also important for
225. for a prisoner to get a little bit of support in this form in Belarus a country that again shows another possible future I very sorry to say that Political prisoners do not get letters They do not get letters
226. And so until we can,
227. so we need to use all the ways,
228. the last words, the letters,
229. the lawyers that still can be sent to prison.
230. For example, in the case of Azad,
231. that is crucial.
232. The fact that we can send lawyer to Azad
233. allows us to support
234. and to physically protect him.
235. And unfortunately, it has come to a situation
236. where political prisoners are not just suffering
237. from the impossibility of seeing the blue sky
238. and enjoying their families.
239. It's not that kind of suffering of freedom as it is.
240. It's a very concrete threat of being murdered,
241. of being killed.
242. in 2026, at least seven political prisoners are dead in Russia. And that is crucial. And
243. the four cases happened in April. So this was a very dark April and pretty dark May as well.
244. So people are now dying. We should use every possibility to gather as much attention as
245. possible because we're still in a situation where attention helps. I'm sorry, that is the only good
246. news I can give you, but it's at least something. We are in a situation where publicity helps,
247. where attention helps, where all the articles, they actually can help. All the international
248. organizations, even if Russia says that these organizations are terrorist or unwanted organizations
249. or foreign agents or anything, but their attention, their declarations still work. So in our quest to
250. defend people, people who say these precious words, who do these acts of radical protest,
251. of radical resilience, of showing that they are still human beings, despite of everything.
252. To protect these people, we can still use these tools. So that is what the case of Azad actually
253. shows us. Let me just ask you, I know that talking to Simon, you know, before the interview and
254. talking about how amazing the prison mail system is in Russia
255. and how letter writing has become an activity of organizations
256. all across the world, in fact,
257. from, I think Simon says, California to the Caucasus.
258. Freedom Zone, that's organized by Ksenia Kagelitskaya, has events.
259. And people get into rooms and they write letters to prisoners.
260. And as you say, this is incredibly important.
261. And it's very efficient.
262. You simply, you have to have it translated into Russia,
263. But if you use prison mail, you can get an easy translation and you pay a very minimal amount.
264. And that allows the prisoner to write back to you.
265. And that's something that was unthinkable in periods past.
266. And as you say, not allowed in Belarus.
267. Maybe you could also just say a little bit, either one of you, about the other organizations that are highlighting the cases of the prisoners.
268. so that listeners can actually go to these places and you can click on the name
269. and you get an entire background of what happened or you get an overview.
270. What are some of these organizations that are now doing their best to publicize the cases of the repressed?
271. Simon, why don't you start with that and then we'll go to the particular case of Assad.
272. Okay.
273. Perhaps in some ways the most important group of people who we haven't spoken about
274. are the very large number of Ukrainian civilian prisoners who are in the Russian prison system.
275. So we have one of them represented in our book Bohdan Ziza who is from Crimea and who threw blue and yellow paint at the municipal administration building the town hall and again one of these firebombs and actually filmed himself doing this
276. And you see that the guy coming out, the caretaker coming out, and there's a rather amusing exchange between the two of them.
277. The Russian speakers can hear on the film and then the caretaker puts the this firebomb out very quickly.
278. know he's hurt. Anyway, he's now serving a 15-year sentence. And there are two absolutely heroic
279. Ukrainian human rights organizations. First, there's the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group,
280. who are based in Kharkiv, therefore very near to the eastern part of Ukraine, where a lot of this
281. is happening. And the other one is ZMINA, Z-M-I-N-A. They're based in Kiev. Both of these
282. organizations keep a close eye on human rights violations within the territory controlled by the
283. Ukrainian government but the vast majority of their caseload the vast majority of their work
284. and the vast majority of human rights violations are concerned with the occupied territories and
285. the activities of the Russian army the Russian security services and so on and it's quite
286. complicated. There's prisoners who've been transferred from Donetsk and Lugansk to prisons
287. in Russia. That's the case with Ziza. Also, he's from Crimea. He was transferred to a prison in
288. Russia. There are prisons in those places over which there's just no way that any even of the
289. international human rights organizations can get anywhere near. So that's really important. And
290. those are two very important organizations which are working together in Soviet times. And I mean,
291. they've continued to work together until today and then so the organizations that i know of which
292. especially for non-russian speakers you know are the best sources of information are memorial
293. which maintains a register both of those who they've gone through all the legal process and
294. and defined as political prisoners but also there are many many cases in a sort of gray area for
295. example there are groups of people who will have a chat in social media which is a it's an absolute
296. hunting ground for the security services. So, you know, if you're listening to this,
297. you know, anywhere where there's a dictatorship, for Christ's sake, don't talk about this stuff
298. on social media, because they comb through people's chats, they find a chat. And then if
299. they need a bit more evidence to make sure the court convicts, they make it up. And so there's
300. a lot of cases like this, where it's not even clear that the people really had a strong political
301. motivation, they might be complaining about lack of goods, or the, you know, the danger of drones,
302. or they might be complaining about the government, as people do, anything.
303. And, yeah, the security services will then just build a case on top of that.
304. So that's Memorial.
305. I mean, the other organizations I rely on very much to follow what's going on is OVD Info,
306. spelt as it sounds, OVD-Info in English or Russian.
307. They need money, too.
308. They need money.
309. They've been appealing for money.
310. They do excellent reports where they try to draw an overview of all the problems and the way that the system of repression is changing and developing.
311. And the third source of information, I think, which again has a lot of stuff in English, is Mediazona, again, media and then zona, Z-O-N-A.
312. and they have a brilliant team of reporters and very courageous people, including many still inside the country, who report endlessly on this stuff.
313. And, for example, when I was telling you about this guy, Sergei Dudchenko, I mean, that's all come from Medeozona.
314. I wouldn't know.
315. about his case at all if their reporting wasn't as good as it is.
316. Thank you for that. So, Sasha, let's turn to you. One thing that Simon has written about in the,
317. I think it's in the introduction to the book, is that there's more political prisoners in Russia
318. now than at any time since the post-Stalin-Thaw or certainly since the Brezhnev period. And he's
319. also just mentioned the repression of Ukrainians, which is pretty staggering. I think it's 90,000
320. officially missing, at least 16,000 of them civilians, and hundreds of thousands held at
321. unknown locations in this new, what should we call it, 21st century gulag. But Asad Miftakov is a
322. case that is now being publicized because of an article that appeared in Insider and because of
323. his brutal transfer and treatment. He's an anarchist, a mathematician, and he's been a political prisoner
324. and one whose sentence was lengthened.
325. As we're seeing, this was a tactic that Stalin often used,
326. doubling sentences, tripling sentences.
327. And now we're seeing this happen today as well.
328. So, Sasha, you're in this campaign to free Azat.
329. Tell us about him and tell us about the case.
330. Yeah, so first of all, to support what Simon said,
331. OVD info is, I would say, a very reliable source.
332. And just very briefly, coming back to my remark,
333. that were just showing one of the possible futures.
334. Being here in France, I found out they have nothing like that.
335. And over the info started as a hotline that you call
336. when you are being arrested and something like that.
337. Let me just jump in that we're starting to see that now
338. when ICE detains people at Home Depot, lots and elsewhere,
339. there are lines where people can text in a number and report it.
340. And also to call out neighbors to protect people
341. where they live and where they work.
342. But anyway, yes, it's always the case that a tool of solidarity is rapidly appropriated elsewhere and added to this arsenal that people can have to organize against this kind of repression.
343. It's high time for self-organization. It's now or never.
344. So going back to Azad, again, this is one of the many political prisoners.
345. It's, again, very difficult to say how many political prisoners we have.
346. You would hear the number 1,000.
347. You would also hear the number 11,000.
348. So again, depending how you count them.
349. But these are only the Russian citizens.
350. Now there is another situation with the Ukrainians, with the civilian Ukrainians.
351. And just to make it absolutely clear, we're not talking here about the people who were taken on the battlefield.
352. So when you hear, for example, today we heard wonderful news about 205 people being exchanged.
353. 205 Ukrainians were exchanged on 205 Russians. But these are combatants. The category that Simon has
354. so eloquently mentioned and described is the category of people who did not hold any arm.
355. Those are really civilians who were captured on the occupied territories in a quite very often
356. random way because they were considered somehow a part of opposition or they were considered
357. people who were like able to gather others to consolidate others because they were considered
358. uh you know opinion makers or the leaders of their communities and or or just they were
359. randomly captured because of the tattoos because of the of the chat anything and the lowest number
360. that is voiced is 16 and the highest goes up to 40 people held in prisons sometimes very concrete prisons like that estate prisons sometimes
361. prisons that are not even registered,
362. some sort of buildings that are organized
363. on the occupied territories.
364. And it's really hard to count these people.
365. They are not allowed to have lawyers.
366. Very often, they're not allowed to have letters.
367. They are holding what is called incommunicado.
368. So they do not have any communication.
369. So that's why it can be 16,000, it can be 20,000, it can be 30,000, and it goes up to 40.
370. Now, that is the highest number that I've heard.
371. But just think about the fact that giving up territories, it's not just giving up square kilometers.
372. It's literally giving up thousands of people who are being held and who are being tortured
373. and who, frankly speaking, in nowadays situation,
374. have very little hope of being exchanged
375. because who is being exchanged is the combatants.
376. Very rarely you hear that civilians were changed,
377. but it's just there are people on these territories held and tortured.
378. And the system of torture, the system of fear,
379. the system of how they are being held and how they are being tortured
380. was elaborated and was constructed before the invasion.
381. And I would say that it was exactly the anarchists who were targeted as a test group to build the system of terror in prisons.
382. The only evidence they had was some sort of witness who said that he saw this guy breaking the window in the middle of the night and that he recognizes him because he had very interesting eyebrows.
383. That is so absurd.
384. I cannot.
385. So because of the interesting and very expressive eyebrows, Azad was sentenced to seven years of prison.
386. When he served his time, he stepped out of his colony, and two minutes later he was arrested and the second case started.
387. And this is the second technique that was first used on anarchists, and now we see that it's being used for other categories of people.
388. when your first term is over they give you the second term and how to imagine a second term i
389. mean what what he could have possibly done when he was you know in prison this time they accused him
390. of the fact that while watching the television in the colony he somehow saw the news about
391. terrorism and said that that was good thing so he justified terrorism and that's how he got
392. four years more. And that's why we should say that that is, of course, one of the charges that is
393. being leveled against people for all kinds of comments justifying terrorism. We should also
394. say that very often people are put in a cell, especially where they're in so-called solitary,
395. that with, say, a businessman or some other criminal who is not political, who gets them
396. to talk, and then it comes to a sentence with words or sentences that can be used against
397. the person. They tried to do this with Kogorlitsky, but he didn't take the bait. But go ahead,
398. explain. Yeah, exactly. So justifying terrorism is a very popular accusation nowadays. And so
399. Azad has been accused of that. The only evidence against is a witness, so a person who was in the
400. colony with him and who got freedom because of his words against Azad. And so because Azad was
401. accused of something for the second time, that allowed the system to treat him as a
402. very dangerous person and he was put in the same prison in Karp a settlement known because that is where Alexei Navalny was assassinated murdered with a poison
403. This is the colony, the prison,
404. where the maniacs, the rapists,
405. the people who have life sentences are held.
406. And he is treated like one of them.
407. And the day he arrived there,
408. torture started very severe.
409. I would not enumerate all the things that were done, but, you know, electricity and hammer were involved.
410. And he managed to transmit the information.
411. And immediately there was a huge campaign to alert the situation.
412. And our organization that we have in France, Solidarité et Asat, that was created by French and Russians in exile.
413. we used all our instruments to alert everyone
414. and we made a communique that was signed by trade unions in Brazil,
415. in Spain, in Africa, which may be very useful
416. since Putin might be very attentive to what's being said from Brazil or Africa.
417. So we did a press release signed by a lot of organizations.
418. and next thing Azad was being called to the office of the prison you know operatives who very kindly
419. and very politely asked him to cover the whole situation and to stop talking and to ask his
420. friends to stop talking to the media to stop talking to international organizations and in
421. exchange they promised to treat him respectively to to not to not torture him anymore that is
422. exactly what's which shows that you know being loud helps it's really important yeah let me ask
423. both of you given how war weary both populations are in ukraine and russia the level of casualties
424. the news that we've had that uh putin is hunkering in you know and exhausted or i just want to hear
425. from both of you what you think about how long this can go on and what you see i was also going
426. to ask you like what people all around the world can do to join in. We'll do that afterwards. But
427. how do you see the, let's say, longevity of the war in this regime?
428. I don't know. And I don't think anybody knows. So in April, Russia lost more territory than it
429. gained on the front for the first time in some years. Another military problem Russia has is that
430. the technical development of drones on the Ukrainian side is such that they're hitting
431. targets, oil refineries and other airfields and so on, very, very far inside Russia,
432. much further than they could a year or two ago. What I'm reading by people who understand the
433. way that war works, this is not good news for the Russian army, but we can't assume from that that
434. their war effort is about to collapse. That's essentially a political problem. Putin,
435. in some respects, has obviously put himself in an unwinnable situation. I mean, I think when Trump
436. came, Putin decided that this would allow him more room for maneuver. And indeed, that has happened.
437. So he may be waiting to see what happens in the US. I think it's, you do hear a lot of nonsense
438. in the Western media about the prospect for peace talks, I think essentially that's Putin's
439. decision Ukrainian people are sick of the war Russian people are sick of the war but I don see a serious wish by the Kremlin to negotiate at this stage Sasha what are your thoughts on that And
440. especially because you're working in a broad Russian exile community, but also a European
441. community. What is the nature of the discussions there and how do people see or relate to what's
442. happening inside Russia?
443. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've been joking that if you go to any place in Russia
444. with a placard with only one word written on it, and that the word would be when, with
445. a question mark, everybody would immediately understand what you're asking about.
446. Because, you know, we've been asking this question ourselves for a very long time, which
447. means that it can go on for a very long time as well.
448. There is definitely tension.
449. Everybody is being very alert on what's happening.
450. So the oil prices going up helped the regime, but everything else is being pretty tough.
451. We're making a statement, an analysis, a political comment in Porsely.
452. You already did it in two days, I guess, maybe earlier.
453. We're preparing our own analysis.
454. Of course, no one will give you the date.
455. I would say these are two different questions for me, when the war will end and when the regime will end.
456. And the way I look at that, unless the regime changes drastically, there is no conversation about the ending of the war.
457. There is just the question of putting the war on pause.
458. Because if the regime stays the way it is now, the war will not end.
459. It will be put on pause that that can be done because they're running out of the resources. They're running out of money
460. They're running out of people, but it's a big country
461. you know you can still find some money and some people and
462. Then there is oil and then there's gas and there is all this right wing people
463. Won the election in other countries and who are not going to say we're not going to buy your guess
464. Who are on the contrary would like very much to buy this gas. So yes
465. Yes, the war can be put on pause by this regime.
466. This can be done and probably in the very near future.
467. But unless the regime changes drastically, dramatically, you know, the war will come again, maybe even worse.
468. So that's something that I'm very much sure about.
469. Since you're working, both of you, and we're having this discussion today about political prisoners in Russia.
470. Do you see them being freed if the war ends?
471. Or how do you see what's going to happen to the people who are already in prison and in penal colonies across Russia and who are being used in terms of the danger to their lives by geography?
472. So, for example, Asa Mitikoff is sent north of the Arctic Circle into a freezing, torturous prison.
473. I would say that would be a very interesting indicator in what's going on.
474. When we see that political prisoners are being freed, that means something changed indeed.
475. It would be more of an indicator than the ceasefire, if you ask me.
476. Ceasefire is temporary, but freeing political prisoners, that's something that would show that indeed something changes.
477. That's fantastic. We've really run out of time, but I want to kind of go back to the film and to the book, because that's where we began, Simon, and that's the book Voices Against Putin's War, which in a minute when we say goodbye, I'm going to be.
478. pitching so that you can have it as a thank you gift, but also the film, because when we end,
479. listeners can go to Try Me for Treason and see this film. Do you have any final words on the
480. film and the book, Simon? Well, yeah, trymefortreason.org is the place they want to go,
481. and that'll take them through to YouTube. It was put together, as I said, on a zero budget by a
482. group of volunteers. We hope people will use it. Get out there, show it to your friends,
483. organize something. If you have an anti-war group which is fighting in support of Palestinian rights,
484. if you have a group where you discuss things, as many people do, if you have a book club,
485. whatever it is, get together, watch the film, talk about it, and make these cases, which are
486. somehow on the other side of this geopolitical divide, make them as well known as our support
487. for people who are being victimized by ICE or Palestine action activists who are being victimized
488. for their opposition to Israeli genocide or whatever. These ultimately are causes which run
489. alongside each other against similar or even the same enemies. I can't thank both of you enough
490. for joining me today on the show, Simon Perani and Sasha Sapolskaya. This issue of political
491. prisoners is one that we're highlighting in Russia, but it is all around the world. And of
492. course, for those of us here at home in the United States, we see Trump saying that he's going to be
493. charging more people who belong to Antifa, which is not really an organization. But it reminded me
494. when you talked about how Putin went after the anarchists first, that this is something that
495. everybody has to get active on to prevent from going further. And I should also say that, you
496. know, the fact that they're doing that kind of repression just shows the inherent instability
497. and weakness of the regimes that perpetrate it. So, maybe we can let end on that sort of
498. slightly hopeful note. And thank you for your work, both of you. And please, listeners,
499. go watch the film today, one hour after we end. I'm Susie Wiseman.
500. And welcome back.
501. We're here now to ask for your support and your money.
502. KPFK is in a fun drive, and I'm joined by Alan Minsky,
503. former program director, and he's now executive director of PDA.
504. KPFK is in a fun drive, and we're going to ask you to support this
505. program and this station. And we're also going to have a great thank you gift for pledging your
506. support to KPFK at 985-5735, 818-985-5735 for $125. You can get a copy of the book that we've
507. been talking about with Simon Perani and Aleksandr Sapolskaya. And that book is called
508. Voices Against Putin's War, Protesters' Defiant Speeches in Russian Courts. And as we said during
509. the show, an hour after this broadcast ends, you can go to trymefortreason.org and watch for free
510. the premiere of the film based on the book. It's actors reading out these speeches,
511. and you can watch it for free. And let's call that a thank you as well.
512. We really need your support. Alan, tell us why we need their support.
513. Well we need their support because right now in the United States we going through another wave of media consolidation And this is very explicitly motivated by forces that are politically aligned with the Trump administration and the far right the proto right wing
514. in the United States of America. They do not want the free flow of information. We've always had a
515. critique of mainstream media here at Pacifica. The information here is going to be much cleaner
516. than you can get it elsewhere because we are supported entirely by you, the listeners.
517. Now we're in a situation where every other media institution in the country is vulnerable because the pressure that the Trump administration is placing upon corporations to be in line with them ideologically is real. It's forceful. The companies are negatively impacted.
518. So companies have been put up for sale.
519. They've been bought by people who are allied with the Trump administration.
520. And even CBS News, which had the reputation over the decades of being really the most
521. responsible and maybe the most liberal of the three networks that we're on, yeah, is
522. now gone.
523. It is now Fox News, essentially.
524. CNN will very soon be Fox News once that is controlled and known by the Ellison family
525. as well.
526. And other companies are put under constant pressure by the Trump administration in a
527. way that we've never seen before.
528. Now, NPR is also being very, very weakened.
529. So here we are, Pacifica Radio, supported by you, the listener.
530. Overwhelmingly, our funds come from you, the average listener out there,
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532. So we rely on you to keep us going, and you need us right now.
533. You really do.
534. You need shows like Susie Weissman's Beneath the Surface or like the other shows on KPFK.
535. Over the Airwaves, free in Southern California.
536. You know where to find us on the dial and is free and is an essential source of information.
537. And it's an essential instrument in trying to preserve democracy in our society.
538. So now's the time to call 818-985-5735, 818-985-KPFK.
539. Give whatever you can.
540. And of course, these thank you gifts that Susie is featuring this hour, the book for
541. $125 pledge of support and the movie, which is free.
542. But if you're going to go over and see that movie in its premiere, just at noon Los Angeles
543. this time, why don't you just as an honor system, give us a $20 donation by calling
544. 818-985-5735.
545. I like that.
546. 818-985-KPFK.
547. And yes, indeed, because that's so important because Putin's Russia is what Trump wants
548. America to be in terms of the free flow of information.
549. And for all of the foibles of the United States of America throughout our history, one thing
550. that really has been a through line that's generally been as good or better than any
551. society in the world has been the free flow of information.
552. It gets dominated by the corporate media.
553. yes, but the idea that the free exchange of information that exists here and has largely
554. been defended by the liberal institutions of American society is unlike anything you have,
555. yes, even in China, but certainly in Putin's Russia and all of these authoritarian countries
556. around the world, which Trump is trying to turn America into and Pacifica Radio. I mean,
557. I can tell you, Susie, if you call yourself an American patriot, you should be picking up the
558. phone right now and call 818-985-5735. If that's sort of a turnoff to you because you have a
559. critique of America over its history, then you just want a just society. And that's the way you
560. see living here in Southern California. You also need to pick up the phone and call 818-985-5735.
561. Alan, that's absolutely right. And I just want to, you know, quote Sasha Sapolskaya in the program
562. who came from Russia and said, I'm very attuned to these moves towards authoritarianism.
563. And what I see, she said, is not like in America, you can still go on demonstrations that it's very
564. Democratic and you can put posters and signs up, but let's look at what the checkpoints are. What
565. happens at the border? And as she said, you know, people are coming in, their phones are being
566. seized their laptops And of course we know what else is happening at the border And that she said is a very good thing to watch And then she also said it changes very slowly and then it happens very fast
567. And that's a warning to everyone in the U.S. and elsewhere about how authoritarian repression escalates.
568. And I'm not doing this to make you scared, but the book that we're offering today, Voices Against Putin's War and its Protesters' Defiant Speeches, you can have.
569. And it's really inspirational.
570. In fact, when Simon was talking about it, he teared up and we had to kind of pause for a moment.
571. And you can have that for $125.
572. For $125, you become a listener sponsor to this listener-sponsored radio station that is only dependent on you, the listener, not to the corporations or to anyone else.
573. For $125, call us at 818-985-5735.
574. you can have a copy of this book
575. and of course as Alan said
576. and I'm saying in an hour from now
577. you can watch the film based on the book
578. for free just go to trymefortreason.org
579. and follow the links at Noon Pacific
580. and that if you want to give us a $20
581. whatever you'd pay to go to the film
582. we would love that
583. and that would just help KPFK
584. and that's the idea
585. let's keep this network on the air
586. let's keep this program on the air
587. and let's continue to bring you
588. the kind of voices that ask you to practice democracy, to, you know, to be armed with
589. information and go out and do everything you can to protect this democracy. 818-985-5735.
590. I actually got a question for you, Susie. Maybe this will be much longer than about a minute or
591. two left that we have. But how did you first initially attract to KPFK and Pacifica? Because
592. your background is definitely something that we can all say your radical bona fides are off the
593. charts and that was true in the 70s and then you got here what 81 or something so 79 i came to the
594. uh yeah to los angeles i had heard i had uh listened to kpfa when i was a student but it
595. was very i really only remember alan watts you know that was been playing a lot and then you
596. know when i came to la there i was a new mother with babies waking up in the night and i'd put
597. the radio on it and it was Alan Watts again. But then, not that I liked that, but that I started
598. listening more and I heard the news. And of course, it's a long story, but it was the politics
599. in the news and Mark Cooper came to KPFK and we were doing stuff on the Irish hunger strikes.
600. And Claire Spark invited me to come speak about Poland and Solidarność. And that was that.
601. And I think Ian Masters came shortly thereafter. We came more or less at the same time. And that was thanks to Claire Spark as program director. And, you know, my husband, Roberto Noduras at the time started the Spanish block of programming. It was very different back then, but it's still, you know, the legacy of that period is still with us. And we'd really like you guys to make sure that we live another, what, 50 years? 818-985-5735.
602. yeah look there's nothing wrong with alan watts alan watts you know you listen to it if you listen
603. to it here and there is a lot of earthly wisdom that's really quite uh quite uh interesting it's
604. it's just i think i think it's sort of unfortunate to the manner in which some of the way he's
605. become culturally yeah you know the milieu can include a lot of people who would reject science
606. in ways that i don't think he would have not at all not at all no it was more about peace
607. inner peace there you go but that's funny that's a great great story glad i asked but again as you
608. can see folks and again even with alan watts and by the way the great article in new york review of books recently about fire sign theater the most celebrated comedic troupe among the baby boomers through until about the mid early 70s and that a KPFK show
609. It was comparable in America to Monty Python
610. in England. Exactly.
611. By the way, the New York Review of Books article
612. sort of explains why they faded away.
613. They became so enamored
614. of their own arcane humor
615. making each other laugh, and they sort of
616. lost the audience with becoming too
617. sophisticated in their
618. linguistic jokes. And there you go,
619. Alan, because that's that connection that we're talking about. You're not speaking into a void,
620. you're speaking into a microphone that goes right to people's ears. And we want you right now,
621. those of you who are listening, to get connected to us and to get connected to what we're trying
622. to say and to pledge your support to keep us on the air. 818-985-5735. We have beautiful thank
623. you gifts for you today. We have this book that is very inspirational speeches for the dock of
624. people who were sent to prison in Russia for doing incredibly like, you know, daily activities.
625. But they're opposed to the war and they're opposed to the regime. And they're very, very brave
626. in doing so. One guy rode on his bike, you know, through the streets and he had the Ukrainian flag
627. and he said it just brought him a moment of peace that would blossom to finally be able to defy
628. the government. And of course, he's put in a horrific penal colony for six years and we
629. have no idea what will happen and so 818-985-5735 for 125 you can take away this book and please
630. go see the film as well try me for treason is the name of the film it starts an hour from now
631. and again you can uh suzy's provided a link earlier in the hour you can find it on i believe
632. via youtube right it's youtube it's try me for treason.org try me for treason.org and the name
633. of the book again suzy one last time for 125 pledges support voices against putin's war
634. protesters' defiant speeches in Russian courts.
635. Oh, those are amazing.
636. Thank you so much, Susie Weissman.
637. That's $125, pledge of support.
638. Give what you can before you go off and see that film.
639. Just, you know, honor system, $20 donation to Beneath the Surface with Susie Weissman.
640. Call 818-985-5735.
641. Always great to be with you, Susie Weissman.
642. Thank you so much, Alan Minsky.
643. Please, thanks for listening to everyone.
644. And please call in 818-985-5735.
645. We really appreciate your support.
646. Say the number one more time clearly for Julian.
647. 818-985-5735.
648. 818-985-KPFK.
649. And that's our show for today.
650. I'd like to thank my guests, Simon Perani and Aleksandra Sapolskaya.
651. Thanks also to executive producer Robert Brenner, producer-director Melissa Figueroa, editor-engineer Juliana Gota, and Irene Kim in Master Control.
652. You can listen to this and other archive shows at KPFK, click audio archives and scroll down to Beneath the Surface with Susie Wiseman.
653. More information on our programs and guests is also on our Facebook page.
654. And you can listen to an extended version of this program on Jacobin Radio, available wherever you get your podcasts.
655. And you've been listening to Beneath the Surface on KPFK, Pacifica Radio for all of Southern California and beyond, streaming live and archived at KPFK.
656. Thanks for listening. Please pledge your support at 818-985-5735 and tune in at the film premiere.
657. That's at trymefortreason.org. And now stay tuned for Ian Masters and background briefing.
658. I'm Susie Weissman.
659. My name is Leon. I've come up listening to KPFK. It's just, it's wonderful.
660. I really got into it with Roy's show, Midnight to Six,
661. Roy of Hollywood.
662. Learned so much.
663. It's an education, just wonderful.
664. It's one of the dangers of KPFK.