On August 1, 2024, at an airport in Ankara, Turkey, a multi-national swap took place involving 26 political and other prisoners from several countries, including Russia and the United States. One of those freed from the Russian GULAG was Russian-British journalist and critic of the Putin government, Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Since his release, Kara-Murza has continued his efforts, in coordination with others including Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late dissident Aleksei Navalny, to free the remaining political prisoners in Russia — currently estimated at between 1,500 and 2,000 — and to bring about democratic reforms in a post-Putin Russia.

In a recent interview on Times Radio London’s Frontline on November 14th, he told, from first-hand experience, of the prisoners’ worst nightmare being the possibility that they might be forgotten. He said that the Russian government’s intent in locking them away in isolation for multiple-year sentences is to demoralize them and instill in them the fear that with the passage of time they would be overlooked.

Which is precisely why I continue to write this column each week. My little effort certainly does not reach an audience as wide as those of Kara-Murza, Khodorkovsky, or Navalnaya; but my hope is that words, like drops of water in a bucket, are cumulative. So I keep talking.

*. *. *

And on that note, here they are once again: the political prisoners of the Putin regime and those of his allied states — all those known to me, and the thousands I don’t know about:

Prisoners of War:

The 19,500 Kidnapped Ukrainian Children
The People of Ukraine

Immigrant Detainees in Russia:

Migrants from the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

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 Belarus:

Ales Bialiatski
Andrei Chapiuk
Marya Kalesnikava
Uladzimir Labkovich
Andrzej Poczobut
Marfa Rabkova
Valiantsin Stafanovic
Yuras Zyankovich

In Georgia:

Mzia Amaglobeli

In China:

Chenyue Mao (American)

In Russia:

David Barnes (American)
Gordon Black (American)
Antonina Favorskaya
Konstantin Gabov
Robert Gilman (American)
Stephen James Hubbard (American)
Sergey Karelin
Timur Kishukov
Vadim Kobzev
Darya Kozyreva
Artyom Kriger
Michael Travis Leake (American)
Aleksei Liptser
Grigory Melkonyants
Nika Novak
Leonid Pshenychnov(in Russian-occupied Crimea)
Nadezhda Rossinskaya (a.k.a. Nadin Geisler)
Sofiane Sehili (French)
Igor Sergunin
Dmitry Shatresov
Robert Shonov
Grigory Skvortsov
Eugene Spector (American)
Laurent Vinatier
Robert Romanov Woodland (American)

Stay strong . . . you are not forgotten.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/16/25