If you haven’t yet read the interview kashin conducted with members of the group "Voina" ("War"), which recently received a state prize for its brilliant artistic and political action, give it a read.
I think a lot of people won’t like it, but the text is बेहद curious. A must-read. —*** As I understand it, you’re not happy about the "Innovation" prize. Why? Vor: We’re focused on other things, we have other concerns. Our comrade was just sentenced to 2 years in a penal colony. ... Rinat was locked up with us at Lebedevka, and the eshki (officers from Center "E," Russia’s anti-extremism police unit — editor’s note) came to the prison and pressured him there. ..... The cops broke Koza’s leg with a cell door in the drunk tank. Next. Taisia Osipova, despite the press attention, is still sitting in a pre-trial detention center in Smolensk with diabetes, just as she was before. Local pro-Kremlin youth movement MGER thugs planted drugs on her, and Center "E" fabricated the case. At a meeting in Prague, a human rights memo from Yebnuty about Taisia was handed to presidential adviser Fedotov — the reaction was precisely zero point fuck-all. Her five-year-old daughter, Katrina, is being hidden by comrades from the child protection authorities as if from cannibals. Taisia’s investigators openly promise her ten years: "your daughter will grow up without you." In these circumstances, we have nothing to celebrate. And a statuette from the clutches of the state will always be unpleasant for anyone — probably all sticky, too.*
"Voina" asked for the interview to be illustrated with this photograph: "The hat of Lieutenant Colonel V.A. Zasypkin, head of Police Precinct No. 78, lying on the roadway of Nevsky Prospekt during a clash between Voina and the cops." Full text