What hilariously cunning people they have sitting in the Kremlin and in the prison system. They obviously imagine themselves masters of intrigue. They won’t let me call either my wife or my mother. Everyone else in the unit, all the other inmates, gets regular calls with their relatives, but I’m not allowed to. - That’s our daily schedule; it’s your own fault. And they have these sly, satisfied little looks. Everything is so loaded with meaning—you can tell right away: orders from Moscow. Here’s what they do: they put my legally entitled phone call into the “schedule” in such a way that it cannot actually happen. For example, they make my lawyer wait for 5 hours at the gates of the penal colony, then let him in, and a few minutes later announce: "You have a scheduled phone call. You may refuse the meeting with your lawyer." Strategy! At the same time, they deny me the call and pressure me to give up meetings with my lawyer. Judging by the self-satisfaction with which this cunning plan is being carried out, Putin must have come up with it personally together with Shoigu, the chief of the General Staff, and the other brilliant strategists—a Special Prison Operation. P.S. Really, you read any book about Soviet dissidents, and it’s all exactly the same. The same caliber of endless “inventions,” all designed to make life as difficult as possible and harass you over petty things. Of course, adjusted for those vicious, brutal times. Now it’s incomparably easier—you can feel the support from outside. And as for the calls, yes, it’s unpleasant, of course, but I’m not made of sugar—I’ll survive without them.