MOSCOW — A spokesman for the radical art collective Voina on Monday announced that its members had broken into a St. Petersburg police station on New Year’s Eve and used gasoline bombs to incinerate a police vehicle used to transport prisoners as “a gift to all political prisoners of Russia.” Amateur video posted online showed a figure tossing lighted objects under a large vehicle, which was then engulfed in flames and spewed smoke into the night sky.
The St. Petersburg police responded skeptically to the Voina claims, releasing a statement that described the fire damage to the vehicle as “insignificant” and noting that there were similar rumors of arson after a fire in August that forensics specialists determined had been caused by a short circuit.
Voina, which was founded by a Moscow philosophy student in 2005, won a contemporary art award sponsored by Russia’s Ministry of Culture for a 2010 work that consisted of a 210-foot penis painted on the roadway of a St. Petersburg drawbridge, which rose to point at the offices of the F.S.B., the state security service. Its members went on to a project they called “Palace Revolution,” in which teams of men ran up to parked police cars and flipped them over, in what they described as a protest against police corruption.
The group’s activities dropped off in 2010 after two of its leaders were arrested on serious hooliganism charges; both men were released last spring on bail, with the assistance of $20,000 donated by the British street artist known as Banksy. The charges, which could bring seven-year sentences, still stand. A third member has been in detention on vandalism charges since taking part in a protest on Dec. 6 and is on a hunger strike, Aleksei Plutser-Sarno, the group’s spokesman, said by e-mail.
All day, liberals bickered online over whether the arson attack on the police vehicle constituted “pure art,” as one commentator put it, or, as another maintained, “an act as idiotic as voting for United Russia,” the ruling party.
Andrei V. Yerofeyev, a prominent intellectual who has championed Voina in the past, said he thought that the group had helped awaken a more activist spirit in the Russian populace, and that it should move away from radical political acts like the burning of the police vehicle.
“The goal of art is deeper than activism,” he said. “They have carried out their assignment.”
The Tver Court of Moscow sentenced the activist of the party “the Other Russia” Dmitriy Putenikhin, who poured water on the prosecutor of the Manezhnaya case, to seven months of corrective labor. The defendant was released from custody at the courthouse. Sentencing will take effect in 10 days.
Koza, Kasper and Skif Bratok
On October 28th Putenikhin splashed a prosecutor Alexey Smirnov with water near the building of the Tver court, where he was answering questions from the press after deciding in favor of a cruel sentence for those accused in organizing riots on the Manezhnaya Square in December 2010. The defendant fully admitted his guilt and repented. The prosecutor requested a punishment of six months of hard labor for insulting a government official. The sentence was read out by the Judge Sergei Komlev:
“The guilt of public offense has been proven. In view of repentance and the social danger of the offense, as well as an earlier conviction of the accused, he will be sentenced to seven months of hard labor with retaining of 20 percent of his wages.”
The court also decided to destroy the evidence in the case, namely, two bottles of mineral water “Senezhskaya.” The victim prosecutor Smirnov did not attend the hearing and requested a review of the case without him. Lawyer of Putenikhin, Dagir Hasavov, said that he was pleased with the outcome of the process and that his client will not appeal the verdict.
Dmitry Putenikhin (also known by the nickname of Bratok Skif and the pseudonym Matvei Krylov) was taken into custody October 28, 2011. The court sanctioned his arrest for two months, as public prosecutor stated that the defendant “could escape and continue their criminal activities.” Putenikhin kept in jail “Butyrka.” As a result of trial court on Thursday, the time spent in Butyrka will count towards the sentence on a oneday – to – three bases.
Thus, Putenikhin will have to work at the correctional facility for one month. As explained to the BBC by the lawyer of Putenikhin, Dagir Hasavov, the sentence means that Putenikhin will have to pay 20% of his first paycheck to the state. In the near future Dmitry Putenikhin’s lawyer intends to file a lawsuit against a TV show “VID” where, according to him, the convict worked until the day of his arrest. Putenikhin will demand that he be compensated for the moral damages. After completion of the trial on Thursday he said that on the day of his arrest he was fired without explanation. Hasavov added that the broadcaster refused to answer questions and stated that Putenikhin has never worked there. This includes the program “Wait for me” where Dmitry did work, which refused to give him a personal characteristic needed for the trial. The lawyer received a formal response from the television, according to which Putenikhin never entered an employment agreement and thus has no employment records with the “VID”. The reply says that Dmitry had a short term contract with the television company (two months). According to the lawyer this is not true, and Dmitriy’s work records were not released by the TV staff once they found out that the records would be needed for the court. The officials from the TV show “Wait for me,” said to the Russian service of the BBC that Putenikhin did not cooperated with them in any form. The assistant editor of the show, who refused to provide his name or the whereabouts of the editor, said that he didn’t know Dmitriy Putenikhin.
The victim in thhis case, Alexei Smirnov, was a prosecutor of the trial in the Manege Square December 10, 2010, following the murder of a football fan Yegor Sviridov. In this case five people, including three activists of the “Other Russia” Ruslan Khubayev, Igor Berezyuk and Krill Unchuk, were given sentences ranging from two to five and a half years in prison. In protest against the sentence imposed on October 28, 2011, Putenikhin splashed the public prosecutor with mineral water. He was arrested thereafter. The case of Putenikhin was considered without hearing of the witnesses, because the defendant did not deny his guilt. The victim Alexei Smirnov initially claimed that he heard the cry “Death to the prosecutor”. Those present at the scene say that Putenikhin shouted, “Do not forget, never forgive”, which is confirmed in several videos, including those shown on Russian TV channels. Further, Smirnov could not identify Dmitry Putenikhin with certainty and later dropped his allegations. After this charge was reclassified from “threats or violent acts in connection with the administration of justice” to “insulting a government official.” An open letter in support of the arrested “drugorossa” (member of the Other Russia party) was signed by many social and artistic personalities, including Marat Gelman, Artem Troitsky, Dmitry Bykov, Rustem Adagamov and others. On November 27th a rally was held in support Putenikhin on Clean Ponds in Moscow. It was attended by more than a hundred people.
An art collective put a phallus on a bridge and burnt a police truck on New Year’s Eve. Can they truly call their protests art?
For a group of artists, academics, and philosophers from Moscow and St. Petersburg, the war against the Russian government started six years ago, when the group formed an underground art club called Voina (which means “the war”). Their aim: declare war against police abuse and the government’s highly publicized authoritarian methods.
On May 29, 2009, Voina’s members carried guitars, amplifiers, and microphones to a federal courtroom during the hearing of Andrei Yerofeyev, a Russian curator being prosecuted for his Forbidden Art exhibition. They then performed a song called “All Cops Are Bastards” in front of the judge. Later, they projected a 120-foot-high skull-and-crossbones symbol onto the Russian White House, in what they called a warning message for corrupt authorities. In the summer of 2010, Voina artists painted an enormous phallus on the 200-foot-tall Leteyny drawbridge in St. Petersburg a few minutes before it elevated—in full view of the headquarters of the FSB, the successor of the KGB Voina proclaimed that the phallus was aroused by the hierarchy of Putin’s power.
Voina sees its role as a bellwether for Russia’s mass conscience, and by all accounts, Russian hipsters have enjoyed the group’s radical freedom of expression, with other guerilla performance artists joining in the subversive protest mission. In fact, for the past six years, many members of Russia’s more mainstream political opposition groups have sympathized with Voina’s unconventional methods.
That changed on New Year’s Eve, when Voina’s activists dedicated what they called “a street performance” to the group’s imprisoned members and all Russian political prisoners. They burned a police truck in the courtyard of a St. Petersburg police station, devoting their “fire gift” to Russian political prisoners.
A video claims to show members of Voina setting vehicles on fire in the courtyard of a St. Petersburg police station
As with all the previous projects by the art guerillas, a detailed description, photos, and a video of the act (arson, in this case)—was uploaded to a Web page by one of Voina’s ideologues, Alex Plucer–Sarno. In an email interview with The Daily Beast, the underground artists confirmed that on New Year’s Eve, Voina’s leader, Oleg Vorotnikov, took his 9-months-pregnant wife, Natalya Sokol; their 2-year-old son, Kasper; and Voina activist Leonid Nikolayev, dressed in a Russian Santa Claus costume, to burn the police truck. These are the same types of trucks that have transported each of the protesters to jail at least once.
“What do people normally get for a New Year’s gift? Shampoo? Or a bottle of whisky? Imagine, you are powerless, locked up in jail, and somebody gives you a gorgeous, fiery present,” Vorotnikov explained. As many as 20 legal cases have been filed against Voina group activists, and yet, says Vorotnikov, “We are up for the war. The war begins right now.” If burning a police truck is art, one might ask, then what is war?
Russian opposition leaders and civil-society figures see Voina’s act of arson as damaging and disturbing to the current political situation. Over the past few weeks, tens of thousands of Russian activists have taken to the streets in Moscow and other cities to protest against Putin’s domination of Russian politics. To Boris Nemtsov, one of the more conventional opposition leaders, Voina’s radical act has served to undermine the peaceful movement that has awakened in Russia since last month’s reportedly falsified election results.
“Half a year ago, when the country’s protest was deeply asleep, I would understand Voina,” Nemtsov says. “But today, when 100,000 people protest against the Kremlin on the streets, Voina gives Putin good reason to say, ‘See, they are nothing but criminals,’ about the opposition in general.”
One of the inspiring figures behind Moscow’s mass anti-Putin protests, theater critic and satirist Victor Shenderovich, long ago stopped seeing the antics by Voina as aesthetically attractive. “Voina’s latest performances—turning police cars upside down on Palace Square, spraying police with urine, or burning police trucks—look tasteless from an artistic point of view, unlike their previous art projects.” Shenderovich said that by burning the police truck, Voina performed an act of trivial hooliganism at a delicate historical moment for Russian opposition.
To Vorotnikov and his wife, aesthetics and diplomacy have long ceased being a part of the discussion. Since they take their 2-year-old son with them to each “action,” Kaspar has been detained by police three times; once, last spring, Kaspar was injured when a police officer grabbed him out of his father’s hands. Vorotnikov said that on Nov. 15, 2010, several police officers broke into the Moscow apartment where the Voina family was staying with friends and threatened to send Kaspar into social services. According to Sokol, police confiscated her passport, medical insurance document, driver’s license, and her Moscow State University employee’s certificate—leaving her without any legal documents or access to neonatal care when she gives birth later this month.
Despite the arrests and public outrage, Voina’s war goes on. The group deals selectively with unknown underground civil leaders and anti-fascist and anti-Kremlin Left Front–movement activists, sticking to its agenda of overturning Putin’s regime. It would seem that Voina should be happy about the mass rallies all across the country and opposition declaring the same goals as Voina. But that’s hardly the case. The group’s activists feel frustrated with the opposition. “The opposition leaders compromise with the Kremlin, they discredit the spirit of protest, people’s anger. The opposition’s goal is to become a part of the existing system and not to fight it,” Vorotnikov says, sarcastically complimenting the authorities for “allowing” the protests, so people’s anger “flies out of the chimney, like a puff of steam.”
If burning a police truck is art, one might ask, then what is war?
Internationally, Voina’s ideology—defined by the group as “an anti-consumerist lifestyle marked by alternative living strategies, such as dumpster diving”—is publicized more significantly worldwide than it is at home. Giant “Voina Wanted” banners can be seen in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany. As German film director Artur Zmijewski, a Voina supporter at the Berlin Biennale, put it, “Art is free, and Voina activists are not just saying words, they act to prove the idea.”
Last November, the Berlin Biennale appointed Voina’s activists, including Vorotnikov, Sokol, and their son, as the festival’s curators. That, of course, was before they burnt the police truck.
Vorotnikov holds his son as they stand in front of a police vehicle similar to the one Voina claims to have set on fire
St. Petersburg law enforcers have filed a new criminal case against award-winning Voina art group for burning down an armored police truck on New Year’s Eve. They also addressed the group, whose activists are in hiding, via news web site Fontanka.ru late last week. Late on Dec. 31, a Voina activist climbed over a fence surrounding Police Precinct No. 71 on the Petro- grad Side and set fire to a massive Ural truck using Molotov cocktails as an art stunt called “Cop’s Auto- Da-Fe, or Fucking Prometheus,” Voina spokesman and chronicler Alexei Plutser-Sarno said on his Livejournal.com blog. The statement said the armored Ural police truck was targeted because it was a prison-on-wheels used for holding and transporting detainees. “This is our modest New Year present to political prisoners from a group of artists,” Voina’s Oleg Vorotnikov said in an email interview this week.
“It’s undisputable that political prisoners are forgotten by Russian society — because they remain locked up in prisons. Political prisoners have become the norm in Russia, and this norm is a despicable crime of the state and its cowardly and indifferent citizens.”
According to Vorotnikov, the group came up with the idea of “giving the gift of a burning prisoner truck” when activist Filipp Kostenko, who spent 15 days in custody after being arrested at the Dec. 6 protest against electoral fraud, was arrested right in the detention center as soon as his term had finished on Dec. 21 and was sentenced for another 15 days on what he called fake charges. Vorotnikov believes that “Cop’s Auto-Da-Fe” had an immediate ef- fect: The court declined to put Kostenko in a pre-trial detention center at the end of his second prison term on Jan. 4 until his next court hearing due on Jan. 29, despite the investiga- tors’ request for it to do so. Kostenko was released on Jan. 5 after spending 30 days in custody.
“There are characters who act arrogantly and pretend to be kings, annoying everybody and interfering with everyone’s life — but only until the first hurdle,” Vorotnikov said. “Once they are given a rap on their forehead, such characters quiet down and start behaving respectfully and politely. Such are the cops from the political police in Russia. “Let them talk now about what methods are more efficient; peaceful dances in condoms at rallies [a reference to music critic Artyom Troitsky, who spoke at a Moscow antifraud rally in December wearing a condom costume] or the smell of fresh napalm at night.”
Published on Jan. 2, Plutser-Sarno’s posting included photos and a video of the arson. As the news made headlines, later on Jan. 2 the police issued a statement saying that the damage was “minor” and that an investigation into the cause of the fire was underway. The police pointed out that a similar blaze in a police car last year originally reported to be arson was in reality caused by a short circuit. On Friday, however, the police said that a criminal case into “hooliganism” or criminal mischief (Article 213 of the Russian penal code) had been filed over the incident, and addressed Voina via Fontanka.ru, a local news web site that has police ties. According to the site, the police suggested that the artists should come to a Petrograd Side police pre- cinct, get in touch with the investigator in charge of the case and “present their artistic views.” “In turn, the police officers promise to pass the results of these conversations to journalists in full,” Fontanka.ru continued, sarcastically. “We are not interested in the cops’ proposal,” Vorotnikov said in an email Monday.
“We don’t feel that we have any lack of communication with journal- ists. We can always arrange a press conference if we need to make a di- rect statement.” Vorotnikov reminded police that his wife Natalya “Kozlyonok” Sokol and their two-year-old son Kasper had been beaten by plainclothes po- licemen after a Voina press confer- ence in March. Meanwhile, the group said that a criminal case against its members for the Palace Revolution art stunt, which involved overturning a parked police car in St. Petersburg in Sep- tember 2010, had been closed for the second time. The case, which charged Vorot- nikov and Leonid Nikolayev with hooliganism motivated by hatred to- ward a social group, was originally closed in mid-October after Herzen Pedagogical University experts came to the conclusion that the police is not a “social group.”
However, the case was reopened two weeks later after the prosecutor’s office repealed the investigators’ de- cision. Voina reported that it had found out Sunday that investigator Vadim Rud closed the case for a sec- ond time as early as Dec. 1. Vorotnikov and Nikolayev spent three-and-a-half months in pre-trial detention after they were arrested in Moscow in November 2010, but were released on bail — 300,000 rubles ($9,455) each — paid from a dona- tion made by British street artist Banksy, who learned about the legal charges facing the group via the BBC. In April, two separate criminal cases against Voina activists — Voro- tnikov and his wife Sokol — were filed after the activists were detained during a protest march to City Hall held on March 31. They were charged with disorderly conduct, using vio- lence against a police officer and in- sulting a police officer. Later, inter- national arrest warrants were issued for the two. Voina’s lawyer Dmitry Dinze said Tuesday that investigators had not been in touch with the art group, two members of which have been issued with international ar- rest warrants over the new criminal case, Interfax reported. Dinze added that they lacked any evi- dence on the case besides the activ- ists’ claims. On Tuesday, the human rights as- sociation Agora said in a press release that Dinze had found himself under surveillance.
“I have been constantly and closely watched by two men over the past three days,” he was quoted as saying. “As soon as I cometothecity—Igotoacafé,they go there too. I go to a movie theater, they follow me there.”
SMOLENSK, Russia — As opposition leaders wait to see how Russian authorities intend to handle continuing political protests in Moscow, a criminal case here, 250 miles to the west, suggests that tough measures are part of the equation.
The wife of a radical organizer was sentenced late last month to 10 years in prison for the alleged possession of half an ounce of heroin, a move that her supporters say is aimed at intimidating and dividing the Kremlin’s political foes.
The conviction and harsh sentence for Taisia Osipova follow a trial that was marked by dubious testimony and the exclusion of exculpatory evidence. She and her allies argue that her arrest was part of an attempt to target her husband for his political activity — and now a key prosecution witness has come forward to corroborate that charge.
Osipova is an unlikely heroine. A 26-year-old diabetic without much education, she generously salts her conversations with profanity and, as a member of the fringe Bolshevik National Party, once walked up to the governor of the Smolensk region and struck him in the face with a bouquet of carnations.
She gave up such activism when her daughter was born six years ago, and she’s not part of the big-city, middle-class cohort that has turned out recently for demonstrations. Yet some of the young stars of the new political movement — as well as the members of a guerrilla art collaborative and a famous rock singer — have rallied to her side. Far from keeping their distance from her, they are demanding her release.
“She’s in jail as a hostage,” said Zoya Svetova, who writes about crime and civil rights for the crusading journal New Times in Moscow. “This is a political prosecution.”
An added dimension
The case against Osipova began more than a year ago. Investigators obtained a warrant to tap her phone on the grounds that her husband, Sergei Fomchenkov, was sending money from Moscow to pay for illegal party work in Smolensk, according to a copy of the warrant provided by Fomchenkov.
When she was arrested in November 2010, he says, police told her they’d let her go if she could persuade him to return to Smolensk. This is typical of a system that also relies on arresting businessmen to force them to pay bribes, and an example of the official lawlessness that is one of the chief complaints of the political opposition.
But a criminal case that began as an investigation of a small radical group — which now calls itself Other Russia — took on an added dimension as political protests attracted thousands after the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections. Osipova was sentenced Dec. 30.
“People can’t understand such cruel, unfounded treatment,” said Osipova’s attorney, Natalia Shaposhnikova. “And now everybody thinks — it could happen to me.”
Svetlana Sidorkina, a human rights lawyer in Moscow who also worked on Osipova’s case, thinks the intimidation can be effective. “People here remember 1937, they can be scared,” she said, referring to the worst year of Joseph Stalin’s purges.
“They gave her such a harsh sentence to show the people who came out on the streets that they mean nothing,” said Fomchenkov, who has remained in Moscow and continues his work for the un-registered party. “The authorities can do whatever they want. They spit in the faces of the people.”
Up to a point, he concedes, the tactic may succeed in scaring off potential protesters. “But people,” he said, “get tired of fear.”
In fact, argues journalist Svetova, the eruptions of the past month show that many thousands of Russians have already gotten past fear. “Even people who would have nothing to do with Other Russia support” Osipova, she said. “Nobody’s intimidated, and nobody’s afraid.”
‘They were dishonest’
Osipova lived with her daughter, Katrina — born in 2005 and named after the American hurricane — in a white cement-block house halfway up a steep hill on the right bank of the Dnieper River. Her husband, wary of the police, had left for Moscow in 2009.
Vor and Katrina
Investigators claimed to have found heroin while searching her house, which they did after three witnesses, all from Kremlin-related youth groups, allegedly saw her dealing drugs on the street.
One of them, Olga Kazakova, says she was summoned by a Young Guard leader and asked to act as a witness for a sting the police were setting up — a typical Russian practice. Investigators from the anti-extremism unit drove her to Osipova’s neighborhood, where at 9 p.m. one night, she says, she saw the transaction take place — from a distance of 200 to 300 yards, along a winding, dark, steep street. Cellphone records place Kazakova in another part of the city at that hour. But to this day she insists she saw the deal go down.
At the time, Kazakova thought this was a straightforward case about drugs, and she thought she was doing her duty as a citizen. But now she understands that it was about politics and that Osipova was ensnared as a way of getting at her husband.
“I feel very offended,” said the former Young Guard member. “They were dishonest. If I had known in advance that it was designed to put her husband in prison, I would hardly have taken part in this operation.”
Osipova’s conviction is under appeal, and Russian law prohibits prosecutors and investigators from making public comments.
Mushrooming support
Although Smolensk, like most of Russia’s smaller cities, doesn’t have many local news organizations, the Internet has started to pay attention to Osipova’s case. A Web site champions her cause. YouTube videos, some of them obscene, call for her release. Dozens of well-known figures, including the anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, have lined up to back her.
“Guys, wake up,” Yevgenia Chirikova, who organized an effort to save the Khimki Forest near Moscow, wrote in her blog after visiting Smolensk. Invoking the Soviet gulag, or system of prison camps, she added: “The archipelago is not somewhere in the distant past, it is quite near. It is in the callousness of prosecutors and judges, it is in our indifference. Who will be next?”
In Moscow on Tuesday, five people were detained after a series of one-person demonstrations were held at subway stations in support of Osipova, the Interfax news agency reported. Russian law permits one person to demonstrate without obtaining a permit beforehand.
Osipova is in ill health. Svetova calls her a political prisoner. By all accounts, she is angry rather than demoralized.
The authorities threatened to take Katrina away from Fomchenkov but backed down in the face of negative publicity. The 6-year-old now spends half her time in Moscow with her father and half with his sister in Smolensk.
“They are ready to go to jail for their ideas,” Mikhail Yefimkin, a 25-year-old reporter who has written about the case for a weekly supplement, said of Osipova and her husband. “It’s worth admiring.”
There is the Empire state building in the background
Photo - Brad Downey, Voina Group activist, with the help of Ed Zipco and Quenell Jones. Initiator & author of the action - Alexei Plutser-Sarno, Voina Group media-artist. Portrait of Oleg Vorotnikov in the courtroom - Vladimir Telegin.
Action “VOINA Wanted”. Bank of America Plaza & The olympic torch monument. Atlanta. USA Jan. 2, 2012
The banner was hung in front of the olympic torch monument in Atlanta, which was created for the 1996 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXVI Olympiad and unofficially known as the Centennial Olympics.
The olympic torch monument
The banner was hung in front of Bank Of America Plaza (aka NationsBank Plaza), Atlanta’s tallest skyscraper (312m/1023f, 55 stories, 1992), GA, USA.
Bank of America Plaza
“VOINA Wanted” is a worldwide solidarity action by the Voina Group for the persecuted artists and group members Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol, who were put on the international wanted list. Photo - Brad Downey with help from Phillip Gilbert, Voina Group activists. Initiator of the action - Alexei Plutser-Sarno , Voina Group media-artist. Portrait of Oleg Vorotnikov in the courtroom - Vladimir Telegin.
ANOTHER FRIEND OF VOINA SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS OF PRISON
On December 29th, 2011, after having waited 13 months in prison in Smolensk expecting a sentence, Taisiya Osipova, a 27 years old opposition activist, was made to wait another 12 hours in the court building. Then she was sentenced – to 10 years of prison.
Taisiya Osipova is a political activist of the oppositional party “Other Russia” and the wife of Sergey Fomchenkov, a member of the executive committee of “Other Russia”. They have a five-year old daughter, Katrina.
According to reliable sources, the criminal case of Taisiya Osipova has been trumped up and does not contain objective evidence. The sentence was read in the absence of the media and the public, a practice completely contrary to the Russian rule of open trials.
Taisiya Osipova was arrested in November 2010 in Smolensk, after the police broke into her house and supposedly discovered suspicious money and five parcels with white powder.
Normally, such police break-ins require the presence of neutral witnesses. In this case, the police seems to have selected the witnesses beforehand, making a planting of the evidence possible.
Members of the police force openly expressed towards Taisiya Osipova that they were mainly interested in her husband Sergei Fomchenkov. She was given the prospect of avoiding criminal punishment if she would cooperate.
Many Human Rights organizations, like the Committee for the Civil Rights and for Human Rights in the Smolensk region, the Committee for Children’s Rights of the Smolensk region, the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and others, tried to protect Taisiya Osipova by stressing that neither the public nor the prosecutor’s office nor the Commissioner can reliably prove Osipova’s involvement in drug trafficking.
The whole charge is based on the testimonies of the witnesses of the break-in. These witnesses are classified as “top secret” and did not appear in court, making it impossible for the defense to disprove their allegations. In addition, the court under Judge Dvoryanchikov ignored a number of proven inconsistencies in the case.
Since Taisiya is suffering from a number of serious diseases, like pancreatitis and diabetes, the overly hard sentence means death for her. There was no initiative to transfer her to a prison hospital or to give her a normal medical examination.
In addition to the above charges, both Taisia Osipova and her husband Sergei Fomchenkov are being investigated with the aim to remove their parental rights over their daughter Katrina. This removal of parental rights has no legitimate reason and should be perceived as way to put pressure on Fomchenkov in connection with his political activities.
Before the trial of December 29th, there have been attempts from human rights organisations all over the world to interfere with the case. Defense attorney Svetlana Sidorkina’s complaint regarding the case of Taisiya Osipova has been accepted by European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The complaint was filed under application number 41366/11 and has been classified as urgent.
The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) in Geneva has demanded a prompt medical examination and treatment for Taisiya Osipova, as well as her release in the absence of valid legal charges.
As it turns out now, none of these appeals did help.
According to one potted history lesson given by a former Russian (female) colleague, Russian young men were sent to war and died in world war one, in the civil war, in world war two and in the purges, where the bright (mainly male) stars of the intellectual scene were disposed of. Add to this the poor life expectancy for men, who on average die at least twelve years younger than women at 63, and Russia still has a predominately female population who are beginning to make their mark on the country. These are the ‘rossianki’ to watch.
Natalia Sokol, aka Koza, is one of the core members of Russian guerrilla art group Voina, most famous for painting an illuminated phallus on a drawbridge in St Petersburg, and is often pictured with the group’s youngest activist, two-year-old Kasper
These were the activists, philosophers, artists and citizens whom we met each month of this year across our pan-European citizen media landscape, from Egypt to Russia - follow the links to re-read the articles. Happy holidays!
We first meet Voina, Moscow-based self-styled ‘street art gang’ formed in 2005, in October.
