As happily reported yesterday, the escape of Mikita Losik from detention in Belarus enabled me to move his name from the list of hostages to a new category: that of “endangered exiles.” He remains in hiding; but he is out of prison and outside Belarus. That’s one step forward in the fight to free all of the political hostages being held by Vladimir Putin and his cohorts in Belarus and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, there is a new inmate in Russia’s archipelago of prisons and penal colonies: 35-year-old Grigory Skvortsov, a professional photographer and musician from the city of Perm, nearly 1,000 miles east of Moscow.

Skvortsov was arrested, beaten, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 16 years in prison for sharing with an American journalist some declassified documents from a publicly-available book, Secret Soviet Bunkers, by historian Dmitry Yurkov.

Architecture had always been Skvortsov’s passion, and he earned his degree from the Perm Construction College. However, he also had a talent for photography, and combined the two interests by photographing places of architectural interest. According to a colleague:

“He had no equal in photographing industrial sites. He loved it: roofs, abandoned buildings — he could make eye-candy from any workshop. real estate companies in Perm and elsewhere in Russia ordered advertising shoots from him. I remember there was even an exhibition of his in the building of the local administration. He was very much in demand.” [RFE/RL’s Siberia.Realities, July 21, 2025.]

Quite naturally, Yurkov’s book would have been of great interest to Skvertsov. The volume he bought was one of thousands sold across Russia, and contained previously-classified diagrams of Soviet installations. But the material was no longer considered secret, and his sharing of them was merely an exchange between history enthusiasts, not a monetary transaction. A friend said, “He did not pursue any selfish goals.” [Id.]

But Skvortsov also had a love of music, and had founded a band called Jagath whose music he described as “industrial ambient.” Their website explains:

“We create our music in abandoned industrial places — at the bottom of a damp underground sewer shaft and inside huge hollow oil tanks.” [Id.]

A recording of the band’s music was released by a British record label, which attracted the attention of Sonic Seducer Magazine, a German music publication. And it was during an interview with that magazine that Skvortsov made his mistake: he voiced his opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [Id.]

The assumption is that someone who saw the interview informed on him to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, successor to the KGB) . . . and the rest doesn’t require much imagination.

And so, Grigory Skvortsov joins the ranks of those being held for purely political reasons in a prison somewhere in Russia, simply for having spoken against Putin’s war against Ukraine. The charges regarding the declassified book were just gravy.

*. *. *

Now, another week having passed, here again is my list of those remaining hostages known to me:

Prisoners of War:

The People of Ukraine
The Azov 12

Endangered Exiles:

Mikita Losik
Yulia Navalnaya
Countless Journalists and Other Dissidents

Political Prisoners:

In Azerbaijan:

The “Azerbaijan 7”:
— Farid Mehralizada
— Ulvi Hasanli
— Sevinj Abbasova (Vagifqiai)
— Mahammad Kekalov
— Hafiz Babali
— Nargiz Absalamova
— Elnara Gasimova

In Russia, except as otherwise indicated:

David Barnes
Ales Bialiatski (in Belarus)
Gordon Black
Andrei Chapiuk (in Belarus)
Antonina Favorskaya
Konstantin Gabov
Robert Gilman
Stephen James Hubbard
Sergey Karelin
Vadim Kobzev
Darya Kozyreva
Artyom Kriger
Uladzimir Labkovich (in Belarus)
Michael Travis Leake
Aleksei Liptser
Ihar Losik (in Belarus)
Grigory Melkonyants
Nika Novak
Marfa Rabkova (in Belarus)
Nadezhda Rossinskaya (a.k.a. Nadin Geisler)
Igor Sergunin
Dmitry Shatresov
Robert Shonov
Grigory Skvortsov
Eugene Spector
Valiantsin Stafanovic (in Belarus)
Laurent Vinatier
Robert Romanov Woodland
Yuras Zyankovich (in Belarus)

. . . and any others I may have overlooked.

Your families, your friends, and your countries have not forgotten you, and will not rest until you are all at home once again.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/27/25