By 2024, it’s already hard to shock any of us with the injustice and cruelty of a sentence. But when I learned of the sentence handed down to Tomsk City Duma deputy Ksenia Fadeeva @ksushafadeeva, I was genuinely shocked. Nine years in prison. I just sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, staring into space. The case against Fadeeva was so insane and absurd that it seemed even the authorities themselves were embarrassed by it. And right up until almost the very verdict, Ksusha’s pretrial restriction was limited freedom of movement, not detention in a pretrial jail (SIZO, Russia’s remand detention center). Everyone expected the sentence to be as lenient as possible under the circumstances. Really, what could be more legal, proper, and straightforward than running in an election and becoming a deputy in your own city? How can that possibly be extremism? But in the eyes of Putin and United Russia, Ksenia Fadeeva committed the worst offense of all — she beat them in an election. People chose her, not some wealthy United Russia party candidate. She became an excellent deputy. Everyone in the city knows and loves her. It was because of that love that she didn’t leave after the case was opened, even though people urged her to and offered to help. She said: “How could I leave? I was just elected — what about my voters? I love Tomsk, I live here, my family is here, I haven’t done anything wrong, and I’m not going anywhere.” You understand, of course, how much our authorities — deprived of real love and support — hate those who actually have it. And this is the measure of that hatred: nine years for invented extremist activity. More than the average sentence for murder. And one more thing: I was reading a book about the revolutionary movement of the 1870s and 1880s, *A Census of the Narodniks* (the Narodniks were a 19th-century Russian populist movement). It quotes correspondence between two prominent figures in the movement — Stefanovich and Deich. There is a line in it that struck me so much with its relevance a century and a half later that I wrote it down: “The foremost place in steadfastness and the constancy of revolutionary spirit in Russia belongs to women, always has belonged to them, and always will.” That’s exactly right. Look at the women being prosecuted in today’s political trials. They are all great people. I wish the wonderful Ksusha Fadeeva strength and the ability to get through this ordeal safely. I’m sending support to her family. And yet, for all of us, in this terrible injustice there is also one small bright spot. (Post continues in the carousel) ------- Malicious villains, obsessed with the idea of putting the entire country on its knees, occasionally stumble upon those who will not yield, who won't betray or abandon their voters. They drag them into prisons, and through this, we see those whom we can trust, those who will stand by their voters. Those from whom a future and honest government can be formed in Russia. Please, write a letter to Ksenia Fadeeva through the Zonatelecom service or regular post mail: FKU SIZO-1 UFSIN of Russia for the Tomsk region, Ksenia Vladislavovna Fadeeva, born in 1992, 634003, Tomsk, Pushkina Street, 48.