Artyom is a 36-year-old Moscow poet. In September 2022, days after Putin announced the call-up of reservists for the war in Ukraine, he read his poems against the war at an open-air poetry evening beside the Mayakovsky monument in central Moscow. Police raided his flat the next day, and he was beaten and sexually assaulted by police during his arrest. A Moscow court found him guilty of 'calls against state security' and 'inciting hatred' and sentenced him to seven years in a prison colony. He now works long shifts in a colony east of Moscow, most recently taking apart old gas masks, and his health has suffered. His wife Alexandra campaigns for him and says that in five birthdays behind bars he has never been allowed to phone her.
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Artyom is a 36-year-old Moscow poet. In September 2022, days after Putin announced the call-up of reservists for the war in Ukraine, he read his poems against the war at an open-air poetry evening beside the Mayakovsky monument in central Moscow. Police raided his flat the next day, and he was beaten and sexually assaulted by police during his arrest. A Moscow court found him guilty of 'calls against state security' and 'inciting hatred' and sentenced him to seven years in a prison colony. He now works long shifts in a colony east of Moscow, most recently taking apart old gas masks, and his health has suffered. His wife Alexandra campaigns for him and says that in five birthdays behind bars he has never been allowed to phone her.
