Persons of No Interest

Despite its equestrian-themed title, misfit-spies motif and occasional reference to “Moscow rules,” Peacock’s new espionage thriller “Ponies” has little in common with Apple TV+‘s “Slow Horses.” Set in Cold War Moscow, “Ponies” falls, intriguingly and occasionally uneasily, somewhere between FX’s “The Americans” and underappreciated female-empowerment comedy film “The Spy Who Dumped Me.”

Which is not surprising since it was created by Susanna Fogel and David Iserson, co-writers of “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” which the former directed and the latter executive produced.

Opening with an attempt to extract a CIA asset from the clutches of the KGB, the series centers on Moscow’s American Embassy circa 1977 (with a soundtrack and brief glimpses of a young George H.W. Bush and, later, Elton John, to prove it).

As the American operatives engage in the obligatory shoot-‘em-up car chase, two women meet in a market. Though they are each less than thrilled with their almost nonexistent lives as wives of envoys to the associate of the U.S. ambassador (i.e. the spies from the opening sequence), their contrasting attitudes and sparky, odd-couple chemistry is immediately, and a bit ham-handedly, established.

Polite, rule-following and Russian-fluent Bea (Emilia Clarke) believes her husband, Chris (Louis Boyer), when he lovingly assures her that this posting will be over in a few years and soon she will be putting her unidentified Wellesley degree to better use. (Note to whoever wrote the Peacock press notes: A Wellesley degree does not make a woman “overeducated.”)

Tough-talking, streetwise Twila (Haley Lu Richardson) is not so deferential or deluded; she pushes Bea to face down an unscrupulous Russian egg merchant with profanity-laden elan. Unsurprisingly, her marriage to Tom (John Macmillan) is more than a little rocky.

Still, when their husbands die, ostensibly in a plane crash, Bea and Twila are grief-stricken — they have lost not only their husbands but their careers as foreign service wives.

Back in the U.S., Bea is bucked up by her Russian, Holocaust-surviving grandmother (the always welcome Harriet Walter), while Twila realizes she fled her hardscrabble Indiana background for good reason.

Determined to find out what really happened to their husbands, the two return to Moscow and confront station head Dane Walter (Adrian Lester), convincing him that their status as wives — the ultimate Persons of No Interest, or “PONI” in spy parlance — offers the perfect cover.

Ignoring the historical fact that both countries have long had female undercover operatives, Dane decides (and convinces then-outgoing CIA head Bush, played by Patrick Fabian) that Russia would never consider two women (including, you know, one fluent in Russian) a threat and, by the middle of the first episode, we’re off.

Reinstalled as secretaries, Bea’s mission is to get close to new asset Ray (Nicholas Podany), Twila’s to … be a secretary. She, of course, decides to become more involved, enlisting the aid of Ivanna (Lili Walters), an equally tough market merchant.

Everything gets immediately more complicated, and dangerous, when Bea catches the eye of Andrei (Artjom Gilz), a murderous KGB leader who may be able to lead the CIA to the surveillance facility that Chris and Tom were trying to find when they died.

Clarke, returning to TV for her biggest role since her career-making turn as Daenerys Targaryen in “Game of Thrones,” is the obvious headliner. And in early episodes she does, in fact, carry the series, evoking, with as much realism as the relatively light tone of the writing will allow, a woman whose self-knowledge and self-confidence have eroded after she was sidelined into the role of wife.

Richardson, who many will remember as Portia, long-suffering assistant to Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) in Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” is given the opposite task. Twila is, in Hollywood parlance, a “firecracker” — you know, the tough-talking dame who inevitably nurses a wounded heart. While drafting Bea as a spy makes a certain amount of sense, Twila’s skill set, as she is told, is being “fearless.” Her real talent, however, turns out to be standing up for “ordinary women,” including a string of prostitutes, murdered and forgotten.

Since neither woman receives the kind of training even most fictionally drafted civilian spies get in these kinds of stories, Bea and Twila are forced to rely on their wits, and the yin-yang balance of their good girl/tough girl relationship.

This makes for some great banter and fish-out-of-water moments, but it muddies the tone — are they being taken seriously as spies or not? — and requires significant suspension of belief (as does the Moscow setting created by Budapest; everyone keeps talking about how cold it is, but it never seems that cold). Fortunately, compared with their professional counterparts in most espionage dramas, the career agents on both sides appear, at least initially, to be quite limited in their spy craft as well.

An emerging plotline involving sex tapes and blackmail adds all sorts of tensions, as well as historical accuracy, and, as things get rolling, the spies become sharper and the notion of surveillance grows increasingly complicated and tantalizing.

Still, “Ponies” is obviously less interested in the granular ins and outs of gadgets, codes and dead drops than it is in the personal motivations of those involved and the moral morass that is the Cold War. “You came to Moscow to find truth?” an asset scoffs.

The cast is uniformly strong, the performances solid and engaging (Walter’s Russian grandma reappears midway through to show everyone how it’s done). If “Ponies” takes almost half of its eight-episode season to equal the sum of its parts, Fogel, who also co-wrote “Booksmart,” is a master spinner of female friendship, and Clarke and Richardson make it impossible not to instantly recognize, and connect with, Bea and Twila.

Their chemistry, and the absurdity of their situation, propels the story over any early “wait, what?” bumps and confusing tonal shifts into an increasingly propulsive and cohesive spy drama, with plenty of “trust no one” twists and turns, and the kind of period detail that would make “Mad Men” proud. (OK, yes, I am old enough to have tried the shampoo “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific.”)

Fortunately, even as it moves with increasing assurance into “Tinker, Tailor” territory, “Ponies” remains a story of love. Which, as spies know only too well, can exist only when you accept, and share, the real truth about yourself. With a cliff-hanging ending, “Ponies” is betting that Bea and Twila will get another season to find their truths, even in Moscow.

Source: Mary McNamara, “‘Ponies’ elevates a Cold War spy story with emotional depth and female friendship,” Los Angeles Times, 15 January 2026

“The Shot Glass Beer Bar.” And what’s wrong with this picture? Another still from S1E1 of “Ponies”

The ryumochnaya is a purely Soviet phenomenon. It is a special snack bar in a Spartan format. It specialized in strong alcoholic drinks, with sandwiches served as appetizers or snacks. At some point, these “snack bars” turned out to be a form of “cultural recreation” available to most Soviet people.

“Men who usually drank port by their building entrances, like revolutionaries who gathered for a meeting in the basement or under a painted wooden mushroom figure on a children’s playground, could now go to a proper establishment, knock back a shot and intelligently [sic] have a bite of sandwich as a snack. Such a thing was not even dreamt of at that time,” journalist Leonid Repin wrote in ‘Stories about Moscow & Muscovites throughout time’.

The first USSR shot bars opened in Moscow in 1954. According to Moscow historian Alexander Vaskin, this was a political move by the new head of state, first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev. He had to quickly win the people’s love and authority.

“The idea to open shot bars in Moscow was not just good — it was fantastic! By creating a network of shot stores, the Party and the government showed great care for the health of the people and their cultural leisure,” Leonid Repin wrote.

They were designed to make lovers of liquor and vodka products more “cultured”, so that they did not drink in public places. But, some places became a refuge for citizens who could not find a place for themselves in the post-war USSR.

“At the corner of Mayakovskaya and Nekrasova streets [in Leningrad – ed.], there was a terrible drinking parlor full of legless invalids. It smelled of damp sheepskin, misery, shouting, fighting… it was a terrible post-war shot bar. There was a feeling that the people were deliberately made drunk there – all those ‘stumps’, ‘crutches’, former officers, soldiers, sergeants. They couldn’t find a way to keep these people warm and busy and this was one of the ways out,” writer Valery Popov speculated.

Cheap and cheerful

They poured vodka, port wine, liqueurs, wine and cognac in shot bars. Each shot was served with a modest snack – a sandwich with sausage, cheese, eggs, herring or sprat. There were four sprats on a sandwich, which was supposed to go with a 100 ml shot.

“There was only one inconvenience: after one drink, I wanted to drink some more and I had already had more than enough sandwiches. In general, it all happened like this: men stood there, knocking over shot after shot while making the ‘Leaning Tower of Pisa’ out of piles of sandwiches,” recalled Repin.

There were no tables or waiters in shot bars. Visitors lined up, received simple orders from the barmaid and then went to the bar tables.

Soviet writer and publicist Daniil Granin described a shot bar: “This is a glorious place – the smell of vodka, cigarettes, only men and without the forced drunkenness of bars, without molestation, sticky lingering conversations. Drank a shot, ate a sandwich, quickly and delicately.”

Simplicity implied low prices, so almost any citizen could afford to go to a shot bar. Prices and sandwich varieties were the same throughout the Soviet Union, recalls Alexander Vaskin.

“Prices were just kopecks. Everything happened in silence, with a sense of dignity. You drink up and then move on home or to see somebody or to the Philharmonic,” St. Petersburg historian Lev Lurie describes the advantages of a shot bar.

Overheard over a shot of vodka

In general, the visitors of such places were mostly decent.

“A factory worker and a journalist, an engineer and a plumber could all get together in a shot bar. It was not only a men’s club of interest, but also a place that attracted different people. It was possible to conduct sociological surveys and study the structure of society in them,” says Alexander Vaskin.

And the state did study it. As Lev Lurie notes, in the 1950s, almost half of political cases were initiated because of freethinking at shot bars.

“The ryumochnaya remained a haven for skilled, intelligent workers, who determined the social appearance of the city: serious, hardworking men who go fishing, watch soccer, take vacations in their factory’s preventorium or at the dacha. These establishments for visitors who had finished their work shift played the same role as pubs did in England,” he writes.

Shot bars today

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, initiated an anti-alcohol campaign. Its active phase lasted for two years, with the country reducing the production and sale of strong alcohol.

The measures also affected the shot bars.

The next blow to them was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The formation of the restaurant market in the country and the emergence of new formats of catering reduced the shot bars to the role of “nostalgic” establishments, frequented by an aging, but loyal audience.

“Rumochnayas were never rebuilt nor did they disappear anywhere. They remained, like the Rostral Columns, Zenith and ‘White Nights’, without changing their function. <…> The average age of visitors now is close to the retirement age: almost all of these people were brought up, knowing the simple and raw nature of a shot shop from childhood. All those who drank a lot, died, having failed to survive the 1990s. Only tough veterans now remain, who know their limit and are used to ‘cultured’ drinking,” Lev Lurie characterizes the situation in St. Petersburg.

A newfangled, post-Soviet ryumochnaya. Photo: Alexey Kudenko/Sputnik via Gateway to Russia

He emphasizes that it is in the Northern Capital that the shot bars have retained their popularity: according to Lurie, there are more of them than in Moscow, yet it is difficult for old places to attract a new audience.

“Shot shops don’t lend themselves to stylization. There have been several attempts to create something in this genre for a younger and better-off audience. They’ve all failed. Young people drink much less than their fathers and grandfathers and they are not hooked on vodka. Local hipsters prefer to have a ‘shot’ in a trendy bar somewhere on Dumskaya or Fontanka. But, real connoisseurs of the genre have not rushed to the new establishments – it is expensive. The shot bars are still alive, but they are slowly dying out along with their customers, like thick table magazines or a game of dominoes in the yard,” concludes Lurie, a St. Petersburg resident.

In Moscow, St. Petersburg or any other city in Russia, it is not a problem to find a shot bar: establishments in this format continue to open. Nevertheless, not all owners adhere to the principles of “old-school” shot bars; namely, simple, cheap and democratic. And any Soviet-styled “neryumochnaya” (non-shot bars) will still correspond to modern restaurant realities in terms of its interior and menu.

In the meantime, the genuine Soviet “ryumochnaya heritage” is hidden under inconspicuous signboards, in basements, visited by “their own” kind. It is cheap and cheerful, not fashionable at all, but authentic. The only difference is they have normal tables and chairs now.

Source: Yulia Khakimova, “The ‘ryumochnaya’: A bar of purely Soviet invention,” Gateway to Russia, 11 August 2023. Some of the claims and “factual” assertions, made above, should be taken with a grain of salt, although the overall picture painted is true to life. ||||| TRR

(Anti)Fascism Tuesday

Federal immigration agents detained three people and deployed chemical agents at multiple locations around E. 34th Street and Park Avenue in Minneapolis’ Powderhorn neighborhood Tuesday morning. At least two were observers and not the target of immigration enforcement operations.

Around 9:40 a.m., community response networks began sending alerts about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) door-knocking at E. 34th Street and Park Avenue. By 10 a.m., a crowd of over 100 observers had gathered, confronting agents at multiple intersections.

Among the detainees was a woman who was forcibly removed from her vehicle after agents smashed her passenger-side window.

In a video taken by Sahan Journal, the woman can be seen arguing with agents prior to being grabbed by multiple agents and carried to agents’ vehicle. The woman can be heard shouting that she is disabled and on her way to a doctor’s appointment that ICE was obstructing. Prior to the detention agents had instructed her to drive away.

After being pulled out of a car, a women screams as she’s being arrested by immigrations agents at 34th and Park in Minneapolis on Jan 13, 2026. Credit: Chris Juhn for Sahan Journal

Shortly after, another observer on site was tackled and forcibly put in agents’ vehicle as well. According to state Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, who was present at the scene, agents pushed the man’s head into the concrete prior to carrying him away. Gomez also said that agents were physical with her as well.

“These officers have obviously not had the basic law enforcement training,” Gomez said. “I was shoved with no verbal communication whatsoever.”

Andy Larson, a south Minneapolis resident who was out observing ICE activity Tuesday, told Sahan Journal that one protester kicked out the taillight of an ICE vehicle and was tackled to the ground up the road on Park Avenue and E. 36th Street.

“It was a really good kick,” Larson said.

The protester managed to escape ICE agents, Larson said. ICE deployed chemical irritants and shot pepper balls into the crowd and fled the scene.

According to Sahan Journal photojournalist Chris Juhn, a Hispanic man was also visible in the back of one vehicle. It is unclear whether the man was an observer or target of federal operations. ICE did not respond to Sahan’s request for comment on the operations.

At multiple points during the operation, agents deployed chemical agents at observers. Agents fired pepper balls at observers’ feet and threw canisters of tear gas at the corner of 34th Street and both Park and Oakland avenues prior to leaving the scene. Eyewitness Moses Wolf said there was no singular precipitating event that led to tear gas being deployed on Park Avenue.

“There was a crowd confronting each other telling ICE to get out,” Wolf said. “I didn’t really see any physical altercation happening.” He said it appeared to be a tactic by ICE agents to exit the scene.

Wolf said the confrontation prior to the deployment of tear gas had not escalated beyond what had already been happening.

“It wasn’t anything crazy,” Wolf said. “I turned around for one second and there was this whole entire cloud of it, and pepper spray came with that.”

Eyewitness Neph Sudduth said at Oakland Avenue agents used tear gas as they were leaving.

“They were finally leaving, it was the last car of the convoy,” Sudduth said. “They just threw two or three canisters out at us as they left.”

Both Sudduth and Wolf said they witnessed agents using pepper spray out of the windows of their vehicles as they drove off.

“They just wanted to hurt us cause we told them how we felt, and they didn’t like it,” Sudduth said.

The operation in Powderhorn is part of a flood of federal immigration activity in Minnesota. As many as 2,000 federal agents are present in the state according to reporting from the New York Times, with an additional 1,000 set to be deployed.

For Gomez, the clash with ICE is the new reality of life in the Twin Cities with federal agents present.

“This is what our streets are like,” Gomez said. “We have these masked, unaccountable unknown to us federal agents, and it’s like they’re the secret police.”

Despite the difficulties, Gomez believes observers should and will continue to show up to meet federal agents in the streets.

“Our community is undeterred,” she said. “We’re not going to just lay down. You can gas us and mace us all you want, we’re not going to just lay down.”

Sahan Journal reporter Andrew Hazzard contributed to this story.

Source: Nicolas Scibelli, “Crowd of 100 confronts immigration agents door-knocking in south Minneapolis,” Sahan Journal, 13 January 2024

1. Numbers

During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised to deport every illegal immigrant who was a rapist, murderer, or thief. He also promised to deport 20 million immigrants. Some voters believed the first promise; other voters believed the second.

Because people are stupid, that first group of voters believed that there were 20 million undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies. This is not possible. The total number of people in jail in America today—this includes federal, state, local, and tribal land prisons—is just under 2 million. The number of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes cannot be 10x the entire prison population of the United States. If it were, then daily life in America would look like Escape from New York.

So some Trump voters were duped owing to their general ignorance and/or innumeracy.

But others were not. Others signed up for Trump because of his second promise (the 20 million deportations) and viewed the first promise (about deporting only criminals) as the pap necessary to get the suckers onboard.

There are two crucial questions about these two groups. The first is:

What is their relative size? What percentage of Republican voters were tricked into voting for Trump’s immigration policies versus what percentage are getting exactly what they wanted?

Would you like to guess? Go ahead. I promise that whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t dark enough.

Here’s a survey tracking Republican approval of Trump’s immigration policies (the top line, in red) over most of 2025:

That’s a consistent level of support around 80 percent. Now here is the first poll conducted after the killing of Renee Good:

Even after the killing of an unarmed American citizen, a total of 80 percent of Republicans approve of what ICE is doing and 53 percent of Republicans strongly approve.

It seems pretty clear that, at best, one in five Trump voters were duped. The majority of them are getting exactly what they wanted.

Now if Trump were to lose the support of 20 percent of Republicans voters—or even 14 percent—it would be meaningful for Republican electoral prospects. Which is nice.

The problem is that having 80 percent of Republican voters actively supporting a fascist race war is meaningful for our societal prospects.

Which brings us to the second question: How are these groups distributed through the elite positions of power in government? And here it seems that many of the Republicans most invested in a race war have a great deal of power. Like, for instance, Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

At the elite levels, even the idea of 20 million deportations is too little. Here’s a tweet from the Department of Homeland Security on New Year’s Eve:

100 million deportations?

There are 43 million foreign-born Americans. Most of them are legal immigrants. In order to perform 100 million deportations, DHS would have to round up every immigrant of any status—even naturalized citizens—and then also snatch 57 million American who are citizens by birth and deport them, too.

Want to guess who those other 57 million Americans might be?

This week the Department of Labor published this:

Of course, the slogan sounds better in the original German.

Oh, and don’t forget the Department of Labor’s heroic propaganda posters depicting the American worker in a very specific way.

On the one hand, it feels weird to say that the U.S. government is attempting some low-key ethnic cleansing.

On the other hand, the reality is that we have a masked secret police force going door-to-door attempting to kidnap brown people; one government agency publicly daydreaming about deporting 100 million people; and another government agency saying that the ideal worker is a 20-year-old white guy.

2. Demographics

Another tell: This administration is obsessed with America’s falling fertility rate. From the NYT:

Vice President JD Vance last week called falling marriage rates “a big problem.” The deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in December urged his agency to “make America fertile again.” And at a recent conference for young conservatives, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, doubled down on the importance of marriage and children, holding out his nine kids as a model for others to follow.

Full disclosure: I am also obsessed with America’s falling fertility rate. Enough that I wrote a book about it.

The problem here is that nearly all of the declines in total fertility rate (TFR) over the last decade have been the result of declining Hispanic fertility.

Here’s the deal: The TFR—the total number of kids the average woman has over the course of her life—has been below the replacement level, but relatively stable, among white and black Americans for the last generation or so. But America’s TFR kept declining anyway. Why?

Because Hispanic Americans—many of whom were recent immigrants—had TFR’s higher than the U.S. average. And their baby-making propped up the nationwide number. The problem is that, as recent immigrants spent time in America, their reproductive behavior began regressing to the mean. The shift has been dramatic:

If you were concerned about the fertility rate in America, would you be trying to (a) halt all immigration—since immigrants usually bring with them fertility rates higher than native-born Americans—and (b) deport 100 million people from the ethnic group that has the highest fertility rate?

No.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the concern of people in the Trump administration isn’t about the total fertility rate. It’s about the white fertility rate.

I don’t know how much clearer the regime could be.

So tell me: What does the pie chart look like on Republican voters and race war? What is the percentage of Trump voters in each of these categories:

Group A: Sees and understands the administration’s intent and supports it.
Group B: Sees and understands, but oppose it.
Group C: Do not understand that the regime views its program as part of a race war and thinks it’s all business as usual?

And follow-up question: How big can Group A be for us to retain a functional, liberal society?

I look forward to your discussion.

Source: Jonathan V. Last, “The Nazi Slogans Are Not an Accident,” The Bulwark, 13 January 2026. I subscribe to the Bulwark, and so I have shared this article here as a service to my own readers. ||||| TRR

Forbes Breaking News, “BREAKING NEWS: Robin Kelly Introduces Articles Of Impeachment Against Kristi Noem,” 13 Jan. 2026

[. . .]

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to announce I will be impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem,” announced Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois.

“Secretary Noem has violated the Constitution and she needs to be held accountable for terrorizing our communities. Operation Midway Blitz has torn apart the Chicagoland area. President Trump declared war on Chicago and then he brought violence and destruction to our city and our suburbs in the form of immigration enforcement.”

Rep. Kelly then broke down some of the outrageous violence that ICE has visited upon her district.

“In my district, federal agents repelled down from Black Hawk helicopters and burst into an apartment building in the South Shore area. They dragged US citizens and non-citizens alike out of their beds in the middle of the night. They claimed the apartment was infiltrated by members of a Venezuelan gang. I don’t understand this president’s obsession with Venezuela, but they did not arrest a single member from that gang.”

“I visited that apartment building and saw firsthand the destruction those agents left. Doors to people’s homes or apartments were kicked down. Belongings, including little kids’ toys, were strewn about in the hallway. That raid and so many others shook our community, not just immigrants, but everyone. Now, Secretary Noem has brought her reign of terror to Minneapolis after she left Charlotte and Raleigh. We have all seen what happened.”

“ICE officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in cold blood. Without knowing any of the facts or an investigation, Secretary Noem lied about what happened. She called [a] beloved 37-year-old mom a domestic terrorist. Secretary Noem and her rogue agents are the ones terrorizing our communities, and she is breaking the law to do so. I will hold her accountable.”

“I’m filing three articles of impeachment against Secretary Noem. Number one, obstruction of Congress. Secretary Noem has denied me and other members of Congress oversight of ICE detention facilities. It is our constitutional duty to find out what’s happening in these centers where people are reportedly being treated like less than animals. Two, violation of public trust.”

“Secretary Noem directed ICE agents to arrest people without warrants, use tear gas against citizens, and ignore due process. She claims she’s taken murderers and rapists off our streets, but none of the 614 people arrested during Operation Midway Blitz has been charged or convicted of murder or rape.”

“Three, self-dealing. Secretary Noem has abused her power for personal benefit. She steered a federal contract to a new firm run by a friend, her friend. Her propaganda campaign to recruit ICE agents cost taxpayers $200 million. She made a video that turned the South Shore raid into something that looked more like a movie trailer. But make no mistake, this is not a movie. This is real life and real people are being hurt and killed. I really have to wonder who are the people behind the mask. These DHS agents have no identifying factor.”

“From all their botched raids and officer-involved shootings, I have to ask, what is their training like? What is the vetting? Is Secretary Noem recruiting January 6th insurrectionists? I was one of the last members of Congress to escape the House Gallery on January 6th. I remember hiding on my hands and knees and running through the hallways to a safe room. Insurrectionists are not fit to serve as law enforcement. I realize that impeachment of Secretary Noem does not bring Renee back.”

“True justice would be Renee alive today at home with her family. Impeachment doesn’t bring back the four other people killed by immigration officers this year, including a man in Chicago. We could not bring them back to their loved ones. What we can do, though, is impeach Secretary Noem. Hold her accountable. Let her know the public is watching. In this country, we do not kill people in cold blood without consequences. These are not policy disagreements.”

“These are violations of her oath of office and she must answer for her impeachable actions.”

[. . .]

Source: Occupy Democrats (Facebook), 13 January 2026

Audience members at the all-ages Minneapolis rock venue Pilllar Forum tussled with ICE agents on the street outside the club on Sunday — prompting that night’s show to be canceled.

The owner of Pilllar Forum, Corey Bracken, said several of his customers and musicians were pepper-sprayed by ICE agents and at least two were hit with batons on the street outside the venue, at 2300 Central Av. NE., where other ICE detainments and community protests have happened in recent days.

“My staff doesn’t feel safe after this, and our artists and customers don’t feel safe,” said Bracken, a dad who expanded his skateboarding store into a music venue and coffee shop in 2023 to bring more live music and art to underage fans.

He is leaving it up to his staff and the bands themselves to decide whether to proceed with upcoming concerts, including several more scheduled this week.

The ruckus started shortly after the 6:30 p.m. showtime for a four-band bill headlined by Pilllar Forum regular Anita Velveeta, a popular trans/queer punk act. Audience members saw ICE agents pull up and detain two individuals outside the neighboring Supermercado Latino market, prompting the club’s young music fans to quickly exit onto the street and protest the agents’ actions.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a Star Tribune request for comment. An employee at Supermercado Latino also declined to comment on the incident.

Antonio Carvale, singer/guitarist in one of Sunday’s opening bands, BlueDriver, said he was one of five people at the venue who had to be treated with water and saline solution after being hit with pepper spray. He said agents fired the spray after they pushed a protester who pushed back.

“Honestly, the pain felt brutal, but fortunately the community was prepared and helped treat our eyes,” Carvale said, but he commiserated with a bandmate who was also struck by a baton and “banged up pretty bad.”

The band was disappointed Sunday’s gig then was canceled, but he added, “It would’ve been hard to play when I couldn’t even see the frets.”

One of the audience members who was pepper-sprayed, Jess Roberts of Minneapolis, said she had to go to an urgent care clinic because she was sprayed in the ear, which led to an infection.

The run-in with ICE followed a viral Instagram post by Pilllar Forum that went up Friday and landed 25,000 likes. It showed a peaceful but loud crowd of protesters shouting down ICE agents on Central Avenue, with the message, “And that is how you get it done.”

Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne and the new Minnesota state senator representing northeast Minneapolis, Doron Clark, joined Bracken in another social media video posted late Sunday denouncing the incident. Clark called Pilllar Forum “an institution here on Central.”

Payne urged residents, “Stay safe and stay vigilant.”

Twin Cities musicians and music fans offered online support for Pilllar Forum after Sunday’s mayhem.

“Thank you for supporting the community!” veteran rocker Tim Ritter of the band Muun Bato wrote on the venue’s Facebook page.

Bracken did offer refunds to paid attendees of Sunday’s canceled show, proceeds of which were to be donated to families affected by ICE detainments, per headliner Anita Velveeta’s request.

“So far, I haven’t heard from anyone who wants their money back,” Bracken said.

Source: Chris Riemenschneider, “Music fans scuffle with ICE outside all-ages Minneapolis rock venue,” Minnesota Star Tribune, 12 January 2026. I subscribe to the online edition of this newspaper (which I grew up reading as a kid), and so I am just as happy to share its contents here when appropriate. ||||| TRR

(Anti)Fascism Today

Good morning,

My name is Brandon Siguenza, and I am a US citizen from Minneapolis. Yesterday, while doing legal observation, ICE stopped their cars to harass my friend and me. They sprayed pepper spray into the vent of our vehicle. We held our hands in the air and told them we were not obstructing, that the car was in park and they were free to drive forward and away. There was no active immigration raid. They returned to their cars, and drove forward a bit, then decided to stop again. They surrounded us, smashed the windows of our car, opened the doors (they were unlocked), ripped my friend and I out of the car and arrested us on charges of obstruction.

I was put in an unmarked SUV, separated from my friend. As I was put in the back seat an ICE agent tore the whistle off my neck and said “I’ll be taking this, I might need it later.” My phone was knocked out of my hand while being arrested. As we drove away I asked the driver and the passenger if they wouldn’t mind buckling my seatbelt, as they were driving erratically. I was ignored. I asked them if I could have the handcuffs loosened, as I was losing circulation, and was told no. At one point the passenger realized his own driver’s license was in the backseat next to mine, and tried to surreptitiously grab it without me seeing it.

We were taken to the Whipple federal building, where I saw dozens of brown people being processed in an unheated garage. I was frisked, told of my charges, and saw buses and vans being prepped. I later learned that these were being filled with detainees and driven to the airport for deportation. As we were led in, I noticed that the building was very busy. I got the impression that one of the 2 agents bringing me around was being trained. At multiple points throughout my stay, government agents were unable to open doors, not sure where they were meant to be going, and overall confused and overwhelmed. They couldn’t figure out how to use the building phones, or complained about a lack of cell service preventing them from checking the internet or making calls.

The people in the cells were extremely scared. We heard people screaming “let me out!”, crying, wailing and terrified screams. There were cells with as many as 8 people. I have no way of knowing how long they have been there, if they were allowed any contact with the outside world, or if they were being brought food or water. Most people were staring at the ground with almost no energy. I was not allowed to talk to anyone imprisoned. I distinctly remember seeing a desperate woman. She was staring at the ground with her head in her hands crying, hopeless, while her friend or family member sat on a bathroom seat observed by 3 men.

My friend and I were put in an area for “USCs,” which we eventually learned meant US citizens, separated by gender. We were imprisoned for 8 hours, during which my friend was never allowed a phone call. I was allowed to call my wife and tell her where I was. During my interview with Special Agent William and Special Agent Garcia, they asked me to empty my pockets. When I pulled out gloves, Agent William said those were meant to be taken when I was processed, and complained about having to fill out the form again. He frisked me once more, where he found glass in my pocket from when our car window was shattered. He filled out the form listing my personal items again, but put the wrong date. I was read my rights, I pleaded the fifth and was led back to my cell.

Food, water, and bathroom breaks were extremely difficult to acquire. I would ask over the intercom provided in the cell for a bathroom break, be told someone was on their way, then ask again 20 minutes later, be told someone was on their way, wait another 20 minutes, etc. Eventually they either turned off the intercom or it stopped working, because no one would respond. I could get water and bathroom breaks by pounding on the glass when someone happened to walk by and beg them directly. Hours would go by without anyone checking on us. I am vegan and the only food they offered were turkey sandwiches, fruit snacks with gelatin, and granola bars with honey. I eventually ate a granola bar out of hunger.

I was in the cell alone for between 1 and 2 hours, then another man was put into my cell, whose shirt was ripped open from his arrest, and an injured toe, who was carried aggressively into an unmarked car during his arrest. After about 4-5 hours, another man was brought in who had a cut on his head from his arrest. He told me he was tackled by 4 or 5 agents during his arrest. At no point was he offered medical assistance.

Later I was told that a lawyer was here to see me, and I was able to speak with him in a visitation room. The special agent told me that the door could not be closed all the way, so it was cracked during my interaction with my lawyer. I got the impression that they were not used to having lawyers present, and were trying to follow procedure as best they could. I asked an agent if the other detainees were allowed lawyers and was not answered.

At one point, 3 men from the department of Homeland Security Investigations brought me into a cell. They insinuated that they could help me out. After inquiring several times what exactly they meant they finally told me that they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don’t), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.

Finally, after hours of detention, I was told to follow an agent. At no point was I told whether or not I was being charged, or where I was going, but I was led out of the building. I asked if I could use a phone to call my wife to pick me up, and was told I could not. After pleading for several minutes eventually Special Agent William let me use his phone to call my wife. As I was escorted off the property by government agents, I was told to turn right. I was escorted to the protest area, where 5 minutes later, tear gas was deployed and I was struck by a paint ball gun. I was not protesting, I was simply being released without charges after an 8 hour detention. I was on the other side of the street, as instructed by the agents that released me and the agents shouting orders over a bullhorn. A passerby who was tear gassed was panicking and having an asthma attack, so I helped her find a medic to get her an inhaler. I used a stranger’s phone to co-ordinate pickup, and was picked up by my wife.

During my detention I knew that I was being released. I knew that as a citizen of the United States I have legal protection. The hundred or so other people being detained had no such protection. At this time I don’t need your help, it is the families that are being separated, abused, terrorized, harassed and killed that need your help. If this is happening to me, an American citizen born in the United States, then what is happening to the people in here that have no one calling lawyers on their behalf? That have no constitutional rights to due process? What is happening to the people that they will never be released to see their families, go to their jobs, or walk through their city ever again?

Please take care of yourselves, your family, and your community. I am safe and healthy, if you feel compelled to help, please offer your help to the Immigrant Defense Network at https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/. If you know someone detained by ICE, call or text CAIR-MN at 612-206-3360 for 24/7 legal intake.

Source: Brandon Siguenza (Facebook), 12 January 2025. Thanks to KFK for the heads-up.

KARE 11, “Taken by ICE & Detained | Breaking the News Plus”

What is it like in the Minneapolis ICE Detention Center? Patty O’Keefe & Brandon Siguenza join Jana to discuss their experience being detained for over 9 hours.

Source: KARE 11 (YouTube), 12 January 2026

In this week’s bulletin: Trade Union Confederation statement after January 9^th Russian attacks; statement by Ukraine Social Movement on Venezuela; captivity and oppression in the Russian-occupied territories; problems of the Russian economy; anti-war messages in Russian cities.

News from the territories occupied by Russia:

Ukrainian, abducted as a teenager from occupied Donbas in 2019, sentenced by Russian court to 22 years (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 9^th)

Ex-military and Ukrainian: No more needed for Russian ‘treason trials’ and massive sentences (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 9th)

The Face of Resistance: The Story of Crimean Tatar Political Prisoner Ismet Ibrahimov (Crimea Platform, January 9th)

‘Russian world’ in occupied Luhansk oblast: no heating and deliberately cut off from mobile telephones and Internet (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)

Desperate plea from Russian prison: Ukrainian political prisoners need to be freed now, not after ‘peace deal’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 7th)

Crimean Political Prisoner Tofik Abdulgaziev in Critical Condition (Crimea Platform, January 7th)

The Woman Who Didn’t Break. Part Two (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 6th)

Monstrous 27-year sentence against Ukrainian civilian abducted from Russian-occupied Melitopol (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 6th)

Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea on January 6, 2026 (Crimea Platform, January 6th)

Even Putin supporter debunks Russia’s lies about a ‘Ukrainian drone attack on civilians’ in occupied Khorly (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)

No answers & questions to Red Cross after Russia holds 64-year-old Melitopol journalist prisoner for third year (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)

“You must not show that you are afraid”: Tales of captivity in the Kremlin-controlled “People’s Republics” (The Insider, January 5^th)

News from Ukraine:

Fire Point’s large missiles and contracts: the story of Ukraine’s most enigmatic defence company (Ukrainska Pravda, January 9^th)

More artists killed in Ukraine (The Artist, January 9^th)

Statement of the KVPU on the critical situation in Ukraine after January 9 Russian attacks (Ukraine Solidarity EU, January 9th)

‘Bro-wolfieʼ: The story of a soldier who survived in Mariupol and rebuilt his life (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)

All change: why Zelensky needs to reshuffle Budanov, Fedorov, Shmyhal, Maliuk and other top officials (Ukrainska Pravda, January 5^th)

Engineers, missile strikes and high technology: can Ukraine produce more weapons in 2026? (Ukrainska Pravda, January 4^th)

Denys, a unionised railway worker on the front line (International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle, January 1^st)

War-related news from Russia:

Alexander Krichevsky of Izhevsk: Six Years in Prison for a Comment (Russian Reader, January 8^th)

The rise and fall of the “Heroes of the Surgut Land”. How the Russian state works with memory of soldiers who died in the war with Ukraine (Mediazona, January 7^th)

The streets speak. Anti-war messages in Russian cities (Mediazona, January 6^th)

Timofey Anufriev Dies Fighting for Ukraine (Russian Reader, January 6th)

On thinning ice: After almost four years of war, Russia’s central bankers are running out of tricks to keep the economy afloat (The Insider, January 6^th)

The Story of Gordey Nikitin: 17 Years for “High Treason” (Russian Reader, December 31st)

Analysis and comment:

Cedos held a discussion on the impact of research on policy change (Cedos, January 9^th)

Behind the Contact Line: How would the 20-point peace plan impact the millions of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation? (Meduza, January 9^th)

When Information Starts Working on Its Own (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)

From master spy to lead negotiator: what does Zelensky’s new chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, bring to the peace talks? (Meduza, January 8^th)

Women’s Careers in STEM: Barriers and Motivations (Cedos, January 7th)

The Non-Peaceful Atom (Posle Media, January 7^th)

Key challenges related to possible holding of an all-Ukrainian referendum on changes to Ukraine’s territory (Opora, January 5^th)

Social Movement: What’s wrong with US aggression against Venezuela? (Ukraine Solidarity EU, January 3rd)

International solidarity:

Ukrainian leaders in UK call for Kemi Badenoch to sack David Wolfson, Russian assets to be used to aid Ukraine (USC, January 8th)

Upcoming events:

Thursday 15^th January, at 7pm, Russia’s War On Ukraine, Us Strategy Review – Stopping The Authoritarians, organised by Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland, register here.

Thursday 5th February, at 6.30pm. Try Me For Treason reading and discussion event at Clore Lecture Theatre, Birkbeck College Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. Details here.

This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. To receive it by email each Monday, email us at [email protected].

Source: News from Ukraine Bulletin no. 178, 11 January 2026

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

Source: Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 9 January 2026

Comply or Die

“Comply or die” has always been my country’s operative motto, especially when “compliance” has been a priori impossible:

On May 14, 1854, six Missourian explorers crested a steep ridge, some 150 miles north of San Francisco. After days of hard travel through mountainous, broken terrain, they encountered a stunning sight. Spread below them was twenty-five thousand acres of lush, flat land. The next day, the six horsemen descended to the floor of what is now known as Round Valley, in northern Mendocino County. According to Frank Asbill, son of one of the six, “they had not gone far when the tall, waving, wild oats began to wiggle in a thousand different places all at the same time.” The group’s leader, Pierce Asbill, then called out: “We’ve come a long way from Missouri to locate this place . . . an’ be damned if wigglin’ grass ’ull keep us away! Git a-hold of yer weapons—we’uns are goin’ in!” Reaching a creek bed, the six horsemen reportedly encountered three thousand Yuki Indians. “A war hoop went up from the Missourians [who] just lay over the horse[s’] neck[s] and shot. . . . They just rode them down. . . . It was not difficult to get an Indian with every shot. . . . When the shootin’ was over, thirty-two dead and dying [Yuki] lay scattered.” By the end of the day perhaps forty Indians were dead. The massacre was a prelude to an American genocide.

Source: Benjamin Madley, “California’s Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History, California History, Vol. 96, Number 4, p. 11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2019.96.4.11. Image source.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. will seize control of Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way” and warned that he won’t miss out on the opportunity to Russia or China.

“We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” he said. He brushed off naming a price to purchase the land from Denmark but also didn’t describe what any potential military action would look like.

“I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” Trump said.

He made the comments during a press availability Jan. 9 as he met with some of the top oil companies in the world to discuss investment in Venezuela, where the U.S. just a week earlier captured leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to face drug charges.

Trump said if the U.S. hadn’t gone into Venezuela and attempted to reinvigorate their oil industry, Russia or China would have. He also referred to Venezuela as a next-door neighbor because of its location in the Western Hemisphere.

“And by the way, we don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which if we don’t take Greenland, you’re going to have Russia or China as your next door neighbor,” Trump said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Trump said there are Russian and Chinese destroyers, Russian submarines and larger Chinese ships, already sitting outside of Greenland.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark that has about 31 billion barrels of oil in reserves, about three-quarters of what the U.S. has. But the territory banned drilling in 2021, citing environmental concerns.

White House aide Stephen Miller questioned Denmark’s right to control Greenland in a Jan. 5 interview with CNN.

Source: Erin Mansfield and Bart Jansen, “By right or by might? Trump vows to take Greenland before Russia, China,” USA Today, 9 January 2026. I inserted the illustration, which I found here. ||||| TRR

Alexander Krichevsky of Izhevsk: Six Years in Prison for a Comment

In September 2024, Alexander Krichevsky, a 58-year-old resident of Izhevsk, posted a lengthy comment on a Chechen opposition blogger’s Telegram channel. In the comment, Krichevsky compared Putin and the “FSB clique” to a “darkness” which must be destroyed. The security forces deemed this statement incitement to murder the president and FSB officers. They monitored the man and intercepted his internet traffic. Last December, Krichevsky was detained and remanded in custody to a pretrial detention center despite his ailments and the fact that he is confined to a wheelchair. His ailing mother was placed in a care home, where she died a month later. Today, at the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg, where Krichevsky’s case is being heard, the prosecutor requested that he be given the maximum sentence of six years in prison.

“That is why we listen to him, because he is not afraid—he’s a ray of freedom in a kingdom of darkness! And only together will we destroy this darkness, only when we understand that we have only one enemy—Putin and his FSB clique. . . . Both you and we must destroy this enemy to continue living as peaceful neighbors,” 58-year-old Izhevsk resident Alexander Krichevsky wrote in a chat on the channel of opposition Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov aka Abu Saddam Shishani, on 11 September 2024.

This was Krichevsky’s response to a user who had asked Abdurakhmanov himself in a chat: “Tumso, aren’t you afraid that Kadyrov’s people might find you?”

When questioned in court, Krichevsky said that he was sure he was responding to the user personally, not writing in a public chat. He repeated many times that he had only figurative “destruction” in mind and had been trying to “reconcile” Abdurakhmanov’s readership by pointing out that they had only one enemy.

“Of course, I wasn’t even thinking about physically destroying such a large number of people and didn’t understand how [what I wrote] would even look. Apparently, my love for pretty words—all those rays of light and other nonsense—let me down. I was thinking in terms of games: when a person plays checkers or chess, they destroy their opponent’s pieces. Roughly speaking, that was the image I had in my head,” Krichevsky said in court.

The FSB operative who discovered Krichevsky’s comment saw it not as criticism alone, but also as a “public call to murder the president of the Russian Federation and officers of the Federal Security Service.”

The same conclusion was reached by Polina Komova, a philologist and expert at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Forensic Center in Udmurtia. She acknowledged in court that the word “destroy” could have other meanings “depending on the context,” but in her opinion it could be understood only in its literal meaning—that is, “to end [someone’s] existence, to exterminate”—in Krichevsky’s comment.

“He was planning a terrorist attack involving self-detonation”: wiretapping and arrest

The security forces began monitoring Krichevsky in early December 2024. It emerged in court that the FSB had requested data on his calls and connections from Rostelecom and learned that on 11 September, when he wrote the comment, he had accessed Telegram from home. Megafon provided the security forces with information about the base stations in the area where Krichevsky’s phone number pinged that day.

On 5 December 2024, the Supreme Court of Udmurtia gave the FSB permission to tap Krichevsky’s phones, and a few days later it approved “gathering information from technical communication channels and acquiring computer information.” A few days before Krichevsky’s arrest, operatives monitored his apartment to “document illegal activities.” The report states that Krichevsky did not leave his home.

On 19 December 2024, Krichevsky was detained and sent to a pretrial detention center. He described his arrest to journalists.

“There was a knock on the door at seven in the morning, and seven people came into [our] small flat: five FSB officers and two eyewitnesses. I opened the door myself. They immediately sat me down on a chair in the hallway. My ailing mother was lying there, barely alive. They said, ‘Can you hand over [your phone]?’ They tried to intimidate me once: ‘If you refuse, we’ll take you away and charge you with additional offenses.’ I realized that resistance was futile. I gave them the phone, and they looked at it and took what they needed.”

The social media comment charges against Krichevsky were accompanied by an FSB report containing much more serious, but in effect unproven, allegations. The document states that, according to “intelligence,” Krichevsky, who opposes the “state’s political course” and the conduct of the “special military operation,” supported radical Islamists fighting for Ukraine and was planning to convert to Islam and carry out a terrorist attack in Udmurtia “by blowing himself up with cooking gas.” The court never did hear what this report was based on.

“None of my comments or my own thoughts bear this out. When I heard this business about blowing myself up . . . In this case, everything that the prosecutor has just read aloud is pure speculation on the part of the investigators. None of my quotes corroborates it,” Krichevsky said in court.

Judge Alexander Raitsky simply reminded Krichevsky that the case centered on a single [social media] comment, which the defendant himself did not disput, and that the court would evaluate the evidence in the deliberation room.

The case file also contains another comment by Krichevsky from the same written exchange: “Many empires have collapsed in this world. I myself foresee the end of the Russkies [rusnya]. I don’t feel sorry for them: let them collapse with a bang. That’s where they belong. I myself hate these FSBniks, pigs [cops], and other scum who suck the blood of our homeland and shit on our neighbors.”

The security forces deemed this “a statement containing a negative assessment of the group of persons sharing the profession of Federal Security Service officers and police officers,” but it was not included in the indictment.

Responding to the judge’s question about this comment, Krichevsky said that he sometimes tried to “adapt” to the rude tone of the conversation [on the Telegram channel’s chat].

“My mother died four weeks after my arrest”: wheelchair-bound in a detention center

Krichevsky had worked as a systems administrator in Izhevsk before his arrest.

As a child, Krichevsky had moved with his family from Udmurtia to Rostov-on-Don. After high school, he enrolled in medical school, but in 1989 he broke his spine and had to drop out because his left leg was paralyzed and he had lost feeling in his right leg. After a long period of rehabilitation, he was able to walk again, but was unable to recover fully: he had a severe limp and had difficulty going up stairs.

Krichevsky said in court that his father had committed suicide on 11 September 2008.

“He had terminal cancer. He was in serious pain and turned to me because I was in medical school. He wanted me to tell him what poison he could use to commit suicide. I refused to do it. Then, two days before his death, I noticed he was sharpening a knife in an odd way. He died in a rather original way, if that word is appropriate in this situation—he stabbed himself in the heart with a knife,” Krichevsky told the court.

In early 2010, during a trip to Thailand, Krichevsky broke his left leg, which had been paralyzed since his [accident in 1989]. He underwent surgery at a local hospital, but he could not stay in hospital for long because his visa had expired. Krichevsky returned to his hometown of Izhevsk, where he underwent a second operation, but his condition only worsened.

“My knee wouldn’t straighten. They tried to do something about it, but because I had spinal injuries, my knee spasmed, and it remained crooked and they couldn’t do anything about it. And my hip didn’t recover either; I also had a fractured hip,” Krichevsky told the court.

Since then, Krichevsky has been confined to a wheelchair. Other ailments have also emerged: kidney problems, emphysema, and head tremors.

“I don’t know whether it’s early Parkinson’s combined with Alzheimer’s, or something else,” Krichevsky said.

Krichevsky had been living with his elderly mother and caring for her since 2016. Last year, she was hospitalized with a complex fracture. After she was discharged, she was unable to walk, and Krichevsky would help her to sit up and do breathing exercises in order to prevent pulmonary edema and bedsores. After Krichevsky was arrested, the woman was sent to a care home. She died of a pulmonary edema a month later.

“They apparently left her lying in bed at the care home. When a person lies in a horizontal position for a long time, they develop a pulmonary edema. That’s what my mother died of,” he said in court.

While in pretrial detention, Krichevsky formally lost his Group I disability status, which he had prior to his arrest, and so he was unable to obtain a medical examination.

According to Krichevsky, a neurologist at the Izhevsk detention center promised to send him to a hospital, but instead Krichevsky was transferred to another pretrial detention center. “I thought they were taking me to a hospital, but they took me first to Perm and then to Yekaterinburg. They basically lied to me when they said they were taking me to a hospital,” he said on the stand.

Krichevskny never did get any medical attention: “We’ll only help you if you’re dying, [they said.] Otherwise, just sit there and suffer.”

“Radical views and hostility toward the current government”: trial and pleadings

Krichevsky’s trial was postponed five times in a row: it took a long time to bring him in his wheelchair, first to Detention Center No. 1 in Yekaterinburg, and then to the court. He was brought to the hearings late, and had to spend four to five hours in the police van, where, according to Krichevsky, the temperature was the same as outside.

At the beginning of the trial, Krichevsky filed a motion requesting that he be assigned an inpatient forensic examination and treatment. He said that he had never been examined by a neurologist at the Yekaterinburg detention center, only by a GP. He was taken for examination to the local medical unit, which was not equipped for people with disabilities: there was a “big step” in front of the toilet and sink which he could not get over. As a result, the doctors only checked his reflexes and sent him back.

In their medical report, the doctors at the detention center stated that Krichevsky had no disability and that his overall health was satisfactory, meaning that he was able to take part in the court hearings.

Before the proceedings, Krichevsky again requested to be sent for treatment, “in accordance with the neurologist’s recommendation” in Izhevsk, but Judge Raitsky denied the request, seeing no need for it. Prosecutor Artem Terentyev also asked that the request be denied, as it went “beyond the scope of the criminal case under consideration.”

During the trial, the prosecutor asked that Krichevsky be imprisoned for six years in a medium-security penal colony. The prosecutor stressed that the defendant had “radical views” and was “hostile toward the current government of the Russian Federation and its officials,” and that he had written the offending comment at a time when the mobilization had not yet been completed. The prosecutor considered these to be aggravating circumstances.

The prosecutor cited Krichevsky’s “poor health” as a mitigating circumstance.

You can support Alexander by writing him a letter.

Address:
Russian Federation 620019 FKU SIZO-1, GUFSIN of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region • Sverdlovsk Region, Yekaterinburg, Repin Street, 4 • Alexander Anatolyevich Krichevsky, born 1967

You can also send letters through the online service Zonatelecom.

Source: Vasily Besspalyi, “Wheelchair user from Izhevsk sentenced to six years in prison for comment about Putin; his mother, sent to nursing home after his arrest, dies a month later,” Mediazona, 22 December 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader. Since letters to Russian prisoners are vetted by prison censors, they must be written in Russian or translated into Russian, something that can done more or less handily using an online machine translator like Google Translate. Please write to me if you need help or advice. ||||| TRR

Timofey Anufriev Dies Fighting for Ukraine

The name of the beautiful young woman in this photo, taken a month ago in Odessa, is Katya, and she is the mother of a wonderful young man, Timofey Anufriev, a Russian passport holder who went to war to defend Ukraine. Today we received news that he has been killed. You can learn more about him in the film to which I’ve linked in the comments. And try to think hard about [the difference between mere] words and real actions… May the memory of the heroes live forever!

Source: Vitaliy Manski (Facebook), 6 January 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

The Insider, “‘War is like playing chess with death’: Confessions of a philosophy student from the RVC” (in Russian, no subtitles)

Until recently, 21-year-old Timofey Anufriev (son of the renowned artist Sergei Anufriev) was an ordinary university student in Petersburg. For over a year, though, he has been fighting for Ukraine in the ranks of RVC (Russian Volunteer Corps). Our film crew met with him in Kiev. Timofey talks about why he made this decision and about war and death in this report by The Insider.

Source: The Insider (YouTube), 20 March 2025. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader. There is an egregiously machine-translated and machine-dubbed version of this same film which can be viewed here. |||| TRR

[The] 22-year-old Russian-Ukrainian fighter Timofey ‘Aeneas‘ Anufriev was kіlled in action while defending his second homeland.

“Timofey participated in many of the Corps‘ operations: assaults, cleanups, and capturing prisoners. He lived and dіеd like a true knight and poet, in a blaze of fiery glory! <…> Forever in the RVC, forever in the ranks!” the Corps wrote on its Telegram channel.

Anufriev served as a stormtrooper and had the call sign ‘Enei’ [Aeneas]. He was awarded the medal ‘For Assistance to Military Intelligence of Ukraine.’

“The son of a well-known conceptual artist [Sergei Anufriev], born in Moscow and raised in Odesa, Enei regarded both Ukraine and Russia as countries close to him. Highly intelligent and well-educated, open and kind, he sought to contribute to the Corps not only in combat but also beyond the battlefield.

From an early age, Enei was familiar with the cultural circles of two capitals. Unlike the detached, insular segment of the artistic elite that exists removed from reality, he was deeply concerned about the fate of his people.

The outbreak of the war coincided with his first year at university in Saint Petersburg, where he studied philosophy and planned to become a public intellectual. He was disturbed by the way many around him in Russia pretended that nothing was happening. As a result, he decided first to leave the country and later to join the Russian Volunteer Corps.

“There is always a choice,” Enei believed—and he made one guided by his sense of honor. Throughout his combat service, he served as an assault infantryman, one of the most dangerous roles in war.

He took part in numerous operations, including assaults, clearing operations, and the capture of enemy personnel. He lived—and died—in accordance with his convictions.” wrote RVC on its nocturnal post.

Source: ukrainciaga.international (Instagram), 6 January 2025

The son of a famous conceptual artist, he was born in Moscow and grew up in Odessa. Aeneas considered Ukraine and Russia to be his home countries. An exceptionally intelligent and educated, open and kind person, he sought to benefit the Corps not only in battle, but also beyond it.

From childhood, Aeneas was familiar with the cultural bohemian scene of the two capitals, but he was not part of the abstract and “airy” artistic elite that exists detached from reality. On the contrary, he was deeply concerned about the fate of his people.

The war began during his first year at university in St. Petersburg, where he studied philosophy and planned to become a public philosopher. He was disgusted by the fact that many of his peers in the Russian Federation pretended that nothing was happening. Therefore, he decided to first leave Russia and then join the Russian Volunteer Corps.

“There is always a choice,” Eney believed, and he made a choice dictated by honor. He spent his entire military career as an assault soldier — the most dangerous job in the war.

He participated in many operations of the Corps: he stormed, cleared, and took prisoners. He lived and died like a true knight and poet, in the rays of fiery glory!

He was awarded the medal “For Assistance to Military Intelligence of Ukraine.”

Timofey “Aeneas” Anufriev

Forever in the RVC!
Forever in the ranks!

Source: Russian Volunteer Corps Eng (Telegram), 6 January 2026

The Story of Gordey Nikitin: 17 Years for “High Treason”

I am going to tell you about a political prisoner who seemingly no one has written about yet. I came across information about him quite by accident.

His name is Gordey Nikitin. Thirty-two years old and a native of Ryazan, Gordey worked at an oil refinery before his arrest. According to Gordey, he has been interested in politics and held opposition views since 2014. When the full-scale war [against Ukraine] broke out, Gordey went into shock. He was in this state of shock when he wrote several comments on Telegram.

As Gordey found out when reviewing the files in his criminal case, it was precisely because of these comments that, three years later, FSB officers would come after him, calling him on Telegram and introducing themselves as Ukrainian intelligence.

A few conversations with the “GUR” (actually, with the FSB) sufficed to charge him with and convict him of high treason and sentence him to seventeen (17) years in a maximum security penitentiary facility.

Gordey did not testify at his trial and he refused to make a closing statement to the court. He also did not bother to appeal the verdict, and so he will soon be transferred to a penal colony.

Gordey is currently being held in a remand prison in the town of Ryazhsk, Ryazan Region. He writes that the worst thing about the remand prison is the library: “Mostly third-rate military science fiction.” In the eight months he has spent in the prison, Gordey has only come across six decent books—by Remarque, Dostoevsky, and Chuck Palahniuk.

You can write a letter to Gordey. And if you use a digital service, a New Year’s miracle may occur, and he will receive the letter on January 30. In the worst case, it will arrive after the holidays.

Write to Gordey at the following address:

Russian Federation 391999 Ryazhsk, Ryazan Oblast • ul. Krasnaya, d. 1a, SIZO-2 • Nikitin Gordey Andreyevich (d.o.b. 28.09.1993)

You can also send letters through the online services F-Pismo, Zonatelecom, and PrisonMail.Online (the last should be used by foreign bankcard holders).

Source: Ivan Astashin (Facebook), 26 December 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader. Since letters to Russian prisoners are vetted by prison censors, they must be written in Russian or translated into Russian, something that can done more or less decently using an online machine translator like Google Translate. ||||| TRR

On 22 February [2023], scheduled tactical and drill exercises were held at Ryazhsk Remand Prison No. 2 (Ryazan Region, Russian Federal Penitentiary Service).

Remand prison staff practiced negotiating procedures, organizing combat groups, dealing with the aftermath of mass disobedience, and repelling attacks on the correctional facility.

The exercises were observed by Young Army cadets from Ryazhsk High School No. 3. Remand prison staff showed the kids their weapons and equipment. The boys and girls were able to try on bulletproof vests and hold automatic rifles and pistols. At the end of the tour, the schoolchildren were treated to hot porridge and tea.

“Today, the students got a closer look at the penal system,” said Alexei Ogurtsov, acting chief warden at Remand Prison No. 2. “Our staff demonstrated their professional skills, equipment, and weapons to the students and answered their questions. Perhaps some of them will choose to enlist in our service in the future.”

Source: “Ryazhsk Youth Army Visits Remand Prison,” Izdatelstvo “Pressa,” 24 February 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Wine, Hot Tubs and Skating Rinks: Three Russian(esque) Stories from California

A longstanding San Francisco wine competition accidentally accepted Russian wines, which are illegal to import to the U.S., leading to an outcry from the Bay Area’s pro-Ukrainian community.

The San Francisco International Wine Competition apologized for the mistake and removed the Russian wines before judging took place in early December, president Amanda Blue said, adding that the competition “takes full responsibility for the oversight.”

Since March 2022, the U.S. has banned Russian alcohol along with other products such as caviar, seafood and diamonds as part of its sanctions against the country for its invasion of Ukraine. But 15 Russian wineries went to apparently great lengths to smuggle their wines in for the San Francisco International Wine Competition.

The San Francisco International Wine Competition is run by a group called the Tasting Alliance, which was founded in 1980 and organizes a range of alcohol contests, including the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and the Asia World Spirits Competition. Alcohol makers submit their products to the competition, which convenes a group of expert judges to evaluate them blind and issue awards. (It has no affiliation with the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, sponsored by this newspaper.)

Although awards from competitions like these tend not to be as influential as scores from wine critics, many wineries heavily feature their accolades — especially if they’ve won double gold, the San Francisco International Wine Competition’s highest honor — in their marketing materials.

“They were openly bragging about doing this,” said Dmytro Kushneruk, Ukraine’s consul general in San Francisco. His team learned about the smuggling operation from private Telegram channels that the consulate monitors. An article in the Russian publication Kommersant further explained the elaborate scheme that Pavel Mayorov, an executive with the Association of Winegrowers and Winemakers of Russia, deployed to sneak the wines into the U.S. He said that entering Russian wineries in international competitions was a priority for his organization in 2026, and that Russian customers like seeing international recognition for their country’s wines.

Pavel told Kommersant that he considered bringing the wine across the Mexican border using a “coyote,” and also weighed using a camper van to cross the Canadian border. Ultimately he used a passport that he possesses from another country (he did not say which one) to transport the wine as personal luggage, flying with the wine-stuffed suitcases through Tblisi and Doha before reaching San Francisco.

He told customs officers that the wines were “a collection assembled at the request of Californian winemakers,” according to Kommersant.

In total, 95 bottles of Russian wine from 15 wineries were submitted to the competition, Blue confirmed. The competition received roughly 2,000 entries.

Although the error was corrected, “we think it’s important for the public to know,” Kushneruk said. He noted the strong support that the Bay Area has shown for Ukraine throughout the war. Ukraine’s own wine industry has suffered significantly during the Russian invasion, he said: Some vineyards have been contaminated with the remnants of explosive materials, and bottles have burned, including at a large wine storage facility near Kiev that he said Russian soldiers destroyed.

Some Bay Area residents were outraged when they learned of the Russian submissions. Russia “has destroyed so much of Ukraine, displaced so many Ukrainians and also destroyed Ukrainian vineyards and wineries,” said Andy Starr, who, with his wife Deb Alter-Starr, runs Napa Valley to Ukraine, a nonprofit that raises funds for aid to Ukraine and its refugees.

“For them to potentially get awards at the same time as they’re destroying other wine regions, that doesn’t sit with me,” Starr continued. “That shouldn’t sit with anyone.”

Kushneruk’s office got in touch with the competition’s organizers once it learned about the submissions. He also contacted Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, whose staff reached out directly to the competition to ensure that the Russian wines would not be included in the judging.

“Sanctions are a critical tool in holding Russia accountable for its brutal war against Ukraine,” Thompson wrote in an email to the Chronicle. “I was proud to join the California wine community to raise these concerns and I commend this decision ensuring that our industry does not provide a stage for Russian businesses while Ukrainians are under attack.”

After “consulting with legal counsel and executive leadership,” Blue said in a statement, the competition “concluded that these wineries are not eligible to participate due to U.S. sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” The entries were not judged, and the wineries’ entry fees would be refunded, she said.

To Kushneruk’s knowledge, no Ukrainian wineries submitted bottles to the San Francisco International Wine Competition. “But next year we’ll definitely make sure our wine will be sent here,” he said. “Our idea is not only to make sure that the sanctions work, but that Ukrainian wine also has a chance to be evaluated by such a great competition as the San Francisco International Wine Competition.”

Source: Esther Mobley, “How a Russian winery group illegally smuggled its bottles into a longstanding San Francisco wine competition,” San Francisco Chronicle, 19 December 2025

Joseph Goldin Esalens Hot Tub Download

Source: Internet Archive. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

As a social activity, ice skating became the thing in the mid-19th century, popularized by Empress Eugene of France. For young women of her era, it became a way to present their slim ankles and effortless grace of their body in movement, not to mention an opportunity to fall into their partners’ arms without causing much scandal. In other words, ice skating provided freedom and romance, as documented in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina – in which Levin sees Kitty Scherbatsky, whirling like a fairy and promptly falls in love. But Saint Petersburg has nothing on Monterey. Skating by the Bay’s seasonal ice skating rink is open daily until Jan. 4 for you to practice your body balance or maybe even start a little romance-on-ice.

Source: Monterey County NOW, 18 December 2025. The emphasis is mine.

**Monterey’s tiny and extremely short-lived seasonal skating rink looks like this. Photo: The Russian Reader**.

***Unsurprisingly, Petersburg has an advantage over Monterey when it comes to size and number of skating rinks. Photo: Tripster***

Map References

An unseen ruler defines with geometry
An unrulable expanse of geography
An aerial photographer over-exposed
To the cartologist′s 2D images knows
The areas where the water flowed
So petrified, the landscape grows
Straining eyes try to understand
The works, incessantly in hand
The carving and the paring of the land
The quarter square, the graph divides
Beneath the rule, a country hides

Interrupting my train of thought
Lines of longitude and latitude
Define and refine my altitude

The curtain's undrawn
Harness fitted, no escape
Common and peaceful, duck, flat, lowland
Landscape, canal, canard, water coloured
Crystal palaces for floral kings
A well-known waving span of wings
Witness the sinking of the sun
A deep breath of submission has begun

Interrupting my train of thought
Lines of longitude and latitude
Define and refine my altitude

Source: musixmatch

This special holiday blog, featuring several versions of Wire’s evergreen classic “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W,” is dedicated to my old 1990s Russia comrade L.J., who lives a mere seventy or so miles from the map reference in question and once upon a (better) time invited me to screen the world’s greatest mockumentary, First on the Moon, at the fab Mars Cafe in Des Moines. ||||| TRR

Free Daria Egereva!

Brothers and sisters, colleagues,

I reach out to you in anger and pain concerning the arrest of my sister and colleague Daria Egereva and the new, large-scale crackdown against representatives of Russia’s Indigenous Peoples. Phrases like “isolated incident” or “local overreach” do not describe what is happening today. This is a deliberate, targeted state policy of intimidating, suppressing, and criminalizing Indigenous leaders, of destroying the will of our peoples.

I speak about this not only as a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues but also as someone who has fallen victim to this crackdown myself. On 17 December 2025, my home in the village of Lovozero was searched. Security forces broke into my personal space and confiscated computer equipment, communication devices, and documents. Similar searches and interrogations took place in the homes of other Indigenous minority activists throughout Russia. It was a planned, well-coordinated campaign of intimidation.

This is not a new reality for us. Back in 2014, I and other representatives of Indigenous Peoples were persecuted by the security forces for trying to convey the truth about the circumstances of Indigenous Peoples in Russia to the international community when we were prevented from leaving the country to attend a UN conference. Today, this practice continues in a much more brutal form, and it has been happening across the country. Crackdowns against the people involved in the events in Baymak, criminal cases against Erzya activists, and the detention of social movement activists in the Altai Republic are just recent examples of how the state has been trying to destroy the independent voice of the peoples of Russia.

Indigenous human rights activists have been labeled “extremists” and “terrorists” simply because they have used peaceful means to defend their peoples’ rights to their traditional lifestyles, cultures, languages, and basic human dignity. This is punishment for those who are not afraid to speak the truth openly, including outside their country, at the UN and other human rights forums.

Particularly outrageous is the fact that the Russian authorities accuse activists of terrorism, a crime for which Russia today imposes monstrous sentences of fifteen to twenty years in prison on people who have not committed violent acts and have never called for violence. These sentences are not intended to “combat terrorism” but to intimidate. The Russian authorities have laid their hands on those who have led a traditional way of life for centuries, herding reindeer, fishing, hunting, and foraging for wild plants on their own land, thus preserving their knowledge of Nature bit by bit.

We must not mince words: this is not a fight against terrorism, it is political vengeance. It is direct punishment by the state for the fact that representatives of Indigenous Peoples dare to appeal to the UN, speak out about violations of their rights, take part in the work of international bodies, and tell the truth about what is happening in Russia. The Russian authorities are deliberately criminalizing the very idea of cooperating with the United Nations.

There is virtually no room left in today’s Russia for free and independent opinion. Any criticism, any dissent, any independent social activism is harshly squashed. It is particularly cynical that the blow is being dealt to the most vulnerable—to the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia and the Arctic, who are socially disadvantaged, dwell in remote settlements amid harsh natural conditions, have no political clout, and are invisible to “mainstream society.” Our peoples cannot defend their rights except through international law, and nd that is precisely why we are being punished today.

I would particularly like to emphasize the Russian state’s profound hypocrisy. While formally declaring its commitment to protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, it has been systematically destroying independent Indigenous Peoples’ organizations for many years by persecuting their leaders and using state-controlled structures such as RAIPON and councils attached to regional governments as puppets on the international stage. These puppets do not represent the real interests of Indigenous Peoples, serving only as a front for repressive policies and a means of propagandizing the “happy lives” of our peoples in Russia.

What is particularly cynical about the current developments is that just recently, in November 2025, Vladimir Putin decreed April thirtieth “Russia’s Indigenous Minorities Day” and September eighth “Languages of the Peoples of Russia Day,” and declared 2026 “Peoples of Russia Unity Year.” While the Kremlin announces celebrations and talks about “supporting” our peoples, the searches, interrogations, and arrests of their leaders continue at the local level.

I appeal to states, UN bodies, special procedures, international human rights mechanisms, international Indigenous peoples’ networks, and civil society organizations. A clear, principled, and public position is what is needed today. We must demand the immediate release of Daria Yegereva and the other activists who have been detained, as well as the immediate cessation of all forms of repression, criminal prosecution, and pressure against representatives of the Indigenous Peoples in Russia. We must demand an end to criminal prosecution for engaging in peaceful human rights work and cooperating with the United Nations.

For my part, I intend to raise this issue at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and other UN bodies. I will seek international condemnation of what is happening, protection for those who have been illegally persecuted, and attention to the gross and systematic violations of the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Russia.

In conclusion, I would like to address Daria personally.

Dasha, sister, you are not alone. Your courage and your voice have struck fear in those who are used to acting in silence and with impunity. We are with you, and we speak out and demand justice! The solidarity of Indigenous Peoples is stronger than prisons and political crackdowns. We are in this together!

—Valentina Sovkina, member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)

Source: Valentina Sovkina (Facebook), 22 December 2025. Valentina Sovkina is a Russian-Sami politician and chair of the Kola Sámi Assembly. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

For Immediate Release

19th December 2025

The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) condemns the wrongful arrest of IIPFCC Co-Chair, Daria Egereva, and demands her immediate release.

Daria Egereva speaking into a conference microphone. Photo courtesy of L&DC

Daria Egereva is a Selkup Indigenous person of Russia and a long-time member of the Centre for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North (CSIPN). After many years of valued involvement in the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus at the UNFCCC, she was elected Co-Chair of the IIPFCC in 2023.

On December 17th, Russian authorities searched Ms. Egereva’s home, confiscated her digital devices, and arrested her under accusation of participating in a ‘terrorist organisation’ in direct retaliation for her Indigenous rights advocacy, including her leadership of accredited Indigenous Peoples at last month’s COP30 United Nations Climate Conference in Belém, Brazil.

A court hearing held on December 18th determined that Ms. Egereva will continue to be detained for two months, pending a further investigation into her case. The accusation carries a potential prison sentence of 10 to 20 years.

“For the last three COPs, Daria has been foundational to the effectiveness of the IIPFCC. Not only a principled leader, she is warm and generous to friends and colleagues alike. Her arrest is completely unfounded and our whole caucus is very concerned for her,” says Dr Graeme Reed, former IIPFCC Co-Chair

Ms. Egereva’s arrest was part of a coordinated operation by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), which targeted at least seventeen Indigenous leaders across Russia whose homes were raided, electronic devices confiscated, and who were accused under spurious terrorism-related charges.

This targeted attack on Indigenous leaders represents direct retaliation for their participation in United Nations processes, and sets a dangerous precedent for the treatment of Indigenous Peoples who participate in global human rights and climate change meetings.

“These reprisals are part of a broader pattern of repression affecting Indigenous Peoples across the globe, and are an unacceptable attack on the right of Indigenous Peoples to engage in the global human rights and climate change processes,” says Sineia Do Vale, Ms. Egereva’s fellow Co-Chair, IIPFCC

The IIPFCC is deeply concerned for Ms. Egereva, and calls upon all state parties to the UNFCCC, and all allies of Indigenous Peoples to mobilise in solidarity to:

1. Publicly and privately call for Ms. Daria Egereva’s immediate release and the dropping of all charges against her, which constitute an illegal retaliation for her legitimate and peaceful participation in COP30 and other UN processes.

2. Acknowledge and register this complaint as a case of intimidation and reprisal connected to participation in UNFCCC processes under the Code of Conduct for UNFCCC Events, and keep the IIPFCC informed of steps taken.

3. Raise this case without delay with the Government of the Russian Federation through appropriate diplomatic channels, stressing that criminalizing a UNFCCC Indigenous Co-Chair as a ‘terrorist’ is incompatible with the UNFCCC Code of Conduct and with Human Rights Council resolutions/determinations.

“This is not a prosecution of terrorism. It is a defiance of the Human Rights Council’s findings and an attempt to use domestic courts to override international human rights determinations and silence Indigenous Peoples.”

– Joan Carling, Executive Director of International Peoples Rights International

“Around the world, Indigenous leaders face criminalization, persecution, and judicial harassment mechanisms designed to silence our voices, dismantle our institutions, and weaken our collective efforts to defend our rights and territories. These targeted practices constitute serious violations of human rights and international law.”

– Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Vice Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and former Co-Chair of the IIPFCC

The IIPFCC firmly rejects this unjust intimidation and detention. We stand with Daria, the other Indigenous leaders who have been detained, their families, and all Indigenous defenders whose safety, dignity, and freedom are under threat.

The IIPFCC echoes the messages of the ICIPR, and recommends reviewing their statement here for further details.

Contact: [email protected]

About the IIPFCC: The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) was established in 2008 as the caucus for Indigenous Peoples participating in the UNFCCC processes. It represents the collective positions of Indigenous Peoples from all seven socio-cultural regions.

Source: International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC)