For the second straight week, there have been no new Russian/Belarusian/Eastern European political arrests in the press. Perhaps they’ve just been knocked out of the headlines by the suspicious deaths of two high-ranking Russian military officers, and the continuing war in Ukraine. The better reason, of course, would be that there were none to report.

But I continue to honor the remaining political hostages in Vladimir Putin’s prisons and penal colonies, and will do so each week until not one remains locked up. And so, once again, here they are . . . at least, those whose names are known to me:

David Barnes
Gordon Black
Marc Fogle
Robert Gilman
Stephen James Hubbard
Ksenia Karelina
Andrey Kuznechyk (in Belarus)
Michael Travis Leake
Ihar Losik (in Belarus)
Daniel Martindale
Farid Mehralizada (in Azerbaijan)
Robert Shonov
Eugene Spector
Laurent Vinatier
Robert Romanov Woodland
Vladislav Yesypenko (in Crimea)

And yet again, to the incoming Trump administration, I respectfully urge you to place the release of these hostages at the top of your immediate to-do list in January. The negotiations by the Biden administration and several of our allies that were so successful in August must be carried on.

No excuses, please.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
12/22/24