Open Letter
Alexandra Skochilenko
Hi everyone!
Thank you for the enormous support, for the petitions that you’re signing, for the parcels and messages that you’ve sent me. If every political prisoner in Russia had the support that I have, we would probably live in a different country.
It so happens that I represent everything that Putin’s regime is so intolerant to: creativity, pacifism, LGBT, mental health education, feminism, humanism, and love for everything bright, ambivalent, unusual. I was surviving and growing in opposition and in spite of everything that was forced upon us here. I lived in Putin’s Russia as if I lived at Woodstock. Sooner or later, what happened to me now must have happened.
But I believe that this is not the end, that I’ll manage, I’ll make it out of here, I’ll survive, regardless of how many years in prison I’ll get.
And I see that they’re trying to restrict my freedom in every way possible. There were two women in the cell with me: one of them allegedly stole someone’s bank card, the other—an elderly Uzbek lady—100,000 rubles [roughly $1,200 at the time of translation] and a gold necklace; both of them were let out and put on house arrest, and no one evaluated the risks of them escaping the investigation. But I, in the opinion of the court and the investigation, am a highly dangerous criminal, and that’s how everyone treats me here. Only your support gives me hope and faith in the future, and the confidence that what I did isn’t evil.
I do have real health and nutrition problems here. I don’t know who’s the person who decided that I must die here of malnutrition or cancer, but I hope that at least he isn’t sleeping too well.
I believe in peace and that it will come. Please keep fighting for it. That’s what’s most important!
20th April 2022
St. Petersburg
temporary detention facility
Petition for Sasha's release from Detention Center 5