OVD-Info: stop political persecutions in Russia

We’re reaching out to say thank you for supporting OVD-Info. After a long break, we returned to GlobalGiving in November 2024. A lot has happened since then — too much to cover in one message — but we’d like to share the most important updates with you.

If you missed it:
At the end of January, Russia’s Prosecutor General listed GlobalGiving as an “undesirable organisation.”* In late February, OVD-Info was removed from the platform, and we lost access to foreign donations. We haven’t fully bounced back yet, but we’re excited to reconnect with you.
*In Russia, "undesirable organisations" are foreign or international entities deemed a threat to the country's constitutional order, security, or defence. Under a 2015 law, these organisations can be banned, their assets frozen, and their members face both administrative and criminal penalties.

A quick heads-up:

• Russian organisations were taken down to protect donors. Supporting “undesirable organizations” from within Russia can carry risks. While we assess the risks for donors as low, we want to offer you different options to support OVD-Info if you're ready to return.

If you’re outside Russia or don’t travel there:

• Set up a regular donation through GlobalGiving and help us keep going.
• Spread the word — share this update with your network and encourage it to support us too. There’s no risk for you. This strange legislation is designed to intimidate Russian citizens.

If you’re in Russia or planning to visit:

• Support us directly on our website .You can subscribe to monthly or yearly donations, choosing your preferred payment method and currency.
• Avoid publicly posting calls to donate through GlobalGiving (to us or other organisations on the platform). Also, it’s better to remove your old posts.
• We don’t recommend donating via GlobalGiving with cards from banks in unsafe jurisdictions.

New Projects
In Russia today, people are being sent to prison for speaking out against war, for protesting, or simply for expressing opinions the authorities don’t like. These people are often isolated and vulnerable. Our recent projects are designed to reach them directly — with care, letters, medical help and legal support.

Lifeline: Write to Russian political prisoners
Isolation is one of the toughest challenges of imprisonment. Especially for people who aren’t well-known: they rarely get attention, and that means that they do not get letters from the outside world. Many of them don’t have families. So we decided to launch Lifeline: a service where anyone can write a letter to a random politically persecuted person. And the best part: it’s not harder than writing up an email. You can write your message in any language. We will translate it into Russian before sending it. If the recipient replies, we’ll translate the response and forward it to you in your language

Initially, we aimed for each persecuted individual to receive at least five letters. But the support we got exceeded our boldest expectations:

Since the project’s launch:

• were written ~13 000 letters to 894 political prisoners
• were received 3,204 replies
• ~ 3,000 people supported Lifeline with donations. This allowed us to cover mailing costs (each letter costs ~2 euros) and improve the service.
• we got a tremendous amount of requests to make sure there is a way anyone can write a letter to a specific person in prison. In April we are releasing that feature. 

These messages have made a real difference. For many prisoners, they are a vital lifeline — proof that they are not alone. We’re happy we could contribute and make the time in prison less unbearable for many. 

Deliveries to Places of Detention
Prisoners often lack basic items like warm clothes, food, and hygiene products. Through our new project, we collect requests from detainees, families, and support groups — and bring those essentials to the prisons

Since the project’s launch:

• 97 requests from 91 individuals have been processed.
• we delivered New Year gifts to 31 people
• Gifts for International Women’s Day: 14 women received care packages, 16 women were able to send packages to their loved ones, 10 women were able to visit their families, and 1 woman was able to top up her detention center account to buy essential items.

Medical Assistance for Prisoners
In August, we launched the Neotlozhka project (Emergency Political Prisoners Care) to assist political prisoners who are denied medical care. Imprisonment poses serious health risks, especially for the elderly and those with chronic conditions. Neotlozhka identifies prisoners with medical issues, helps lawyers file complaints and petitions for the release of severely ill prisoners, and advocates for necessary treatment. Since August 2024, we have helped: 

• 17 persecuted individuals with health problems:
• 19 more cases are currently being worked on.

The Baymak Case: One Year Later
A year ago, in Baymak (Republic of Bashkortostan, Russian Federation), a public gathering in support of eco-activist Fail Alsynov was violently dispersed by riot police. As a result, 81 people faced criminal charges, and we are defending 20 of them. In January, we launched a major campaign supporting defendants in the “Baymak case.” 

Our journalists traveled to Bashkortostan, covering 1,650 kilometers in five days, meeting 15 people, and recording over 20 hours of interviews. You can read about what happened in this small Bashkir town over the past year here.

• «Our home is here»: On the ground at the Bashkortostan protests. On 17 January, a court in Russia’s remote Bashkortostan region sentenced indigenous rights activist Fail Alsynov to four years in prison. Thousands came to the final court hearing to protest — a rare sight in wartime Russia. Here is an account of the events of that day as seen by an OVD-Info reporter on the ground.
• «They took my Mom away». How the Russian authorities persecute protestors in Bashkortostan. It’s been weeks since the mass protests in Bashkortostan. Since then, police have been investigating, conducting mass arrests and random searches. Some of those arrested were abused. At least one man, Rifat Dautov, was found dead in police custody in unclear circumstances. Bashkortostanis have created support groups to help potential victims of persecution. People are seriously scared. We spoke to the relatives of those arrested.

Key Results Across Our Main Areas of Work (Jan–Mar 2025)

Express help
A call to OVD-Info hotline or a message to our bot are the easiest ways to report persecution and get a free consultation. Specialists will advise you on how your situation may develop, and instruct you about your next steps.

• we received 1,678 calls on our hotline and responded to 12,003 messages in Telegram-bot
• our legal instructions were viewed 40,422 times
• 185,511 active users were connected to our Telegram bot by the end of March. 

Legal aid
We provide and coordinate legal assistance in cases related to the restrictions of freedom of peaceful assembly or freedom of speech. Our attorneys visit those detained in police departments, and support defendants in Russian administrative and criminal courts. 

In January–March, our lawyers, jurists and defenders helped 268 people:

• went to the police departments 53 times, where they helped 101 detainees,
• defended 40 people in administrative court cases;
• achieved 1 case being sent for reconsideration or dismissed;
• accompanied clients during 2 searches and 5 interrogations;
• In total, at the end of March, lawyers from OVD-Info worked on 89 criminal cases against 103 defendants.

We consider all the charges and criminal cases brought in connection with them to be illegal and politically motivated.

News and media
The authorities that violate human rights prefer to avoid publicity. But as they say, silence in the face of evil is itself evil. We believe that information protects, and that media and social attention can prevent violations and change the whole picture.

What you should pay attention to:

• OVD-Info Explains: transnational repression. You might be thinking that Kremlin repression is limited to Russia or, at worst, Ukraine. But it goes much further, crossing borders to target not only Russians but also foreign politicians, journalists, and researchers. For example, politically motivated cases have been launched against Baltic state officials, Western journalists covering Russia (like the reporters in Kursk), and researchers such as the case of Laurent Vinatie (political scientist who pleaded guilty to felony charges of gathering military information). Even organisations like Meta face legal threats. While these actions create problems for those individuals — like restricting travel to Russia-friendly countries — the far more severe repression is aimed at Russian citizens abroad.
• The Micropolitics of Resistance. What should ordinary people do with their feelings of despair and helplessness in the face of naked power grabs by cynical figures? This is the question many civic-minded Russians face. The election of Trump might seem very distant from the realities of Russian society at war, but many Americans now find themselves asking the same questions, caught in a similar emotional landscape.
• Putin’s Approach to Authoritarianism Is Changing. Dan Storyev, an English-language managing editor at OVD-Info and published in Foreign Policy (FP), argues that the sentencing of Alexei Navalny’s lawyers signifies a shift towards unchecked lawlessness in Putin’s Russia. This action indicates the Kremlin's abandonment of the pretense of legality to suppress civil society and punish those who facilitated communication with the outside world for political prisoners.

If you want to be informed about political repressions in Russia you can subscribe to our Digest, follow us on Twitter or visit our website! Everything helps.

Reports, research and advocacy
We examine emerging problems from various angles, which helps us work out present-day tactical solutions and lay the strategic foundation for future systemic change. The results of our analyses are published as reports, data sets, or special projects.

Russian Repression Dashboard
What is going on with politically persecuted people? How did it change since February 2022 and fullscale invasion in Ukraine? Is the number of repression increasing? The answer to these and other questions is rapidly becoming outdated. The quickly changing reality requires new analytical approaches from us. These series of articles is an attempt to find such an approach. Everything you will read here is based on computational analysis of the most recent data.

Anti-War Repression Report: Three Years of Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine
The start of the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine not only meant the start of the largest war conflict in Europe since World War II, but it also meant the rapid worsening of the situation with human rights in the country. The civil society became an immediate target and everyone who was openly vocal about opposing the war, immediately became a target for persecution. In the comprehensive report about the pressure on the civil society in three years of war, we reflect on how the situation has worsened.

11 Years of Occupation: Establishment of the Repressive Regime in Crimea
Eleven years ago, Russian authorities illegally occupied Crimea. Since then, the peninsula According to our data, as of 2024, Crimea has recorded the highest number of politically motivated criminal and administrative cases, as well as the highest rate of politically motivated detentions per 100,000 people compared to any Russian region. Since 2014, we have documented 349 individuals prosecuted in politically motivated criminal cases in Crimea and Sevastopol. This number is higher only in Moscow, where the population is five times that of Crimea. Many of those targeted by Russian authorities are Crimean Tatars. Beyond criminal and administrative prosecutions, local residents have also faced other forms of repression, including forced disappearances and torture.

«According to OVD-Info» newsletter: Our research team is very active, and it is difficult to put all of their work into one letter. Therefore, we have a newsletter available in English. You can subscribe to follow our news and publications of upcoming reports and datasets 

Report on the Persecution of Political Prisoners (in English)*
In this report, we discussed the intensifying political repression in Russia. We showed how the authorities increasingly criminalized dissent — especially when it came to anti-war statements. This was done to suppress opposition and impose a single state-approved ideology. We also highlighted the poor conditions faced by political prisoners, including the lack of access to medical care.

International Direction OVD-Info at RightsCon 2025
The OVD-Info team participated in the RightsCon 2025 conference — one of the largest international events dedicated to human rights and technology. The conference annually brings together activists, researchers, civil society representatives, and the tech sector to discuss global challenges and exchange experiences.

It might seem like the UN and diplomats have a good understanding of the real situation in Russia — but that’s often not the case. Sometimes they lack sufficient data, and other times there’s a broader lack of understanding of the systemic issues. That’s why we continue to prepare reports and other appeals about the human rights situation in Russia, and take part in events where we can shed light on specific human rights violations and call on the international community to take action and support Russian civil society.

Thank you for supporting us. We can only do this work because you care.

Always with you,
The OVD-Info Team

Links:

• Detailed monthly reports
• Criminal repression in Russia: dashboard
• The Dissident Digest