As he was transferred through various prisons of Russia’s vast prison system, Oleg Orlov had a mission: to find out how many political prisoners were in each facility.
The veteran dissident, freed in August in the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War, knew the lists.
His Nobel Prize-winning human rights organization Memorial has painstakingly recorded the names of people jailed for condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 71-year-old was one of them: sentenced to 2.5 years for speaking out in an article against the military offensive.
But what he found left him in no doubt: Russia has “far more” political prisoners than rights groups know.
In addition to the known cases, “in every prison I found there were just as many people who were reasonably believed to be in prison for politics,” he said.
“We didn’t know anything about them.”
Now free and living in Berlin, his life’s goal is to get them out.
Forced into exile after never planning to leave Russia, Orlov struggles with his freedom, his mind focused on those left behind.
He often thinks of one cellmate: 29-year-old Alexei Malyarevsky, jailed for putting up posters condemning the conviction of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“He got seven years. A young man…” Orlov said.
“The feeling is numbing: I’m here and he’s there.”
Hopelessness
Orlov manages to avoid “all conflicts” in the prison and tries to talk to everyone, with the intention of finding the people he thinks can be considered political detainees.
“There is contact between cells, even if they try to limit it,” he said.
He witnessed how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed its vast prison network, with prison authorities trying to “recruit literally everyone” to fight in the war.
He laughed as he remembered how the guards tried to recruit him as well.
“I said to them: do you understand how old I am and why I am here?
The issue divided the prisoners, and Orlov took part in discussions among the prisoners whether it was worth fighting for their freedom – if they survived.
The majority of those who joined did so because they wanted a “clean biography and money”, he said, not out of patriotism.
He also met deserters in the prison: three men who told him that most of their squad had been killed and that, facing almost certain death, they had decided to escape.
Orlov said they were “psychologically traumatized” and, facing a huge sentence, one considered returning to the front to try to regain his freedom.
“It is (from) utter hopelessness,” he sighed.
I want to go to Ukraine
Now that he is free, Orlov has another desire: to travel to Ukraine to see with his own eyes the war he condemned and to document the war crimes.
“I hope it will be possible,” he said.
He has covered war crimes before, devoting much of his work to the wars in Chechnya.
“I would like Russian human rights defenders to be able to visit Ukraine,” he said.
“I think it is very important that we get involved in the work of recording the crimes of this war and that this is also done by Russian human rights activists.
He did not say what stage the plans are at, and it is unclear whether Ukraine will allow it.
Orlov has been condemning the invasion since the day President Vladimir Putin sent troops in 2022.
He dismissed the idea of massive public support for the war in Russia, but also said it was not just “Putin’s war” and many Russians were getting rich off the back of the invasion.
“It cannot be denied that a significant part (of society) – not the majority, but a noticeable part – benefited from the war,” he said.
Stunned
As he traveled through European cities, Orlov often blinked and thought he was seeing a Moscow street – still unable to believe what had happened to him.
About 10 days before his release, guards told him to sign an application for a presidential pardon, which he refused.
Then they woke him up at dawn, told him he was being transferred and put him in a prison van.
“The doors opened. I was stunned. I thought I was going to see a penal colony, but I saw the Samara airport,” Orlov said, referring to the southern Volga city.
During the flight to Moscow, he was escorted by security in civilian clothes.
“It just seemed like they were my friends: I was unshaven, with these big men around me.”
Held in solitary confinement in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison for days, he became convinced that there was a new case against him and wrote a complaint that he was not allowed to bathe.
He waited days to hand it over to someone until a prison officer came in.
“I ran to him, so happy that I was able to file my appeal,” Orlov said, but was told instead that his punishment had been overturned.
Soon after, he was on a bus bound for the airport with other political prisoners.
Despite his ordeal in prison, if he could go back in time, he would still be speaking from Russia, Orlov said.
“I would do the same.”
Published – October 21, 2024, 12:39 PM IST
