What a wonderful gift it would be for the New Year, if we were able to bring home the remaining political prisoners from Vladimir Putin’s penal colonies: those people who never should have been there in the first place, who have done nothing more heinous than speak the truth about the Putin regime or about the war in Ukraine in particular, but who missed out on the prisoner swap in August of this year.

It saddens me beyond words to have to end this year, and face the beginning of yet another year, by once more listing their names in my small effort to ensure they are not forgotten. But here they are again:

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)

I wish each and every one of them — and all those whose names are not known to me — continued courage, hope, and a one-way ticket home in the year to come.

Godspeed.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
12/29/24