Hi, my name is Petr Kuzmin and I'm a Russian Australian political activist representing Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation in Australia.

In Russia today, people are going to prison for a social media post, a donation, a hand-written sign, or saying out loud that they are against the war. They include teachers, doctors, students, pensioners, artists and journalists, and most of them are people the rest of the world has never heard of.

The scale is growing steadily. As of mid-2026, the Russian human rights project Memorial recognised 1,680 people as political prisoners, and its broader list of people deprived of liberty on politically motivated and unlawful grounds contained 5,567 names. It learns of roughly 500 new politically motivated prosecutions every quarter, or about five people a day. Memorial itself has been targeted as well: in April 2026 Russia's Supreme Court designated it an "extremist" organisation.

I have been supporting Russian political prisoners for many years, and I got to know some of them via correspondence. Given my political activities against Putin's regime and my public stance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I will most likely be sent to prison should I return to Russia. So this cause has a special significance for me.

Please help me raise funds for those imprisoned for political reasons in Russia and their families. Your support will go towards the costs of food, medicine, legal defence, and travel for prison visits.

Thank you for your support!

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