There are about thirty people in Oleg Shein’s room. Twenty-two of them have gone on hunger strike. Today is day 23. This is a step of desperation, because every request, complaint, and appeal either goes unanswered or is sent back to the hunger strikers through the usual bureaucratic loop. It is stifling inside; the smell of hunger—you cannot mistake it for anything else—is noticeable already in the corridor. At first the hunger strikers are talkative, but their strength does not last long. All of them have a waxy pallor, especially visible in Shein’s face and hands. People are unconsciously conserving energy, calculating their movements and the positions they hold. They lean on the table or against the wall when they speak. It is an energy-saving mechanism the body has switched on. At first glance, you cannot tell who needs help; they greet every visitor eagerly, with renewed hope of being heard. But after an hour it becomes clear how hard even the slightest communication is for them. An elderly woman is lying on the floor. A middle-aged man is asleep by the entrance, not hearing people come in and not reacting to the cameras and questions of the few journalists present. A young man, about twenty, deathly pale, stands against the wall and says that all appeals mean absolutely nothing, and that this lawlessness is impossible to endure. http://doctor-liza.livejournal.com/474983.html All day, and even now, I have been in a kind of daze because of this story. Liza says the place smells of death. She is a doctor, so it is harder for her—she sees the situation from the point of view of someone who must help but does not know how or with what. I do not know what to do either. After all, these people are asking for nothing more than a prosecutor’s investigation into election violations that have already been acknowledged by a huge number of people, including Churov (then head of Russia’s Central Election Commission), not that one should mention him lightly. There has been no response whatsoever to the hunger strike. No one is paying any attention. The whole city knows that in a certain place people are sitting and dying. http://doctor-liza.livejournal.com/474983.html I called oleg_shein — he is not picking up, communicating only by brief text messages. It looks bad. I called doctor_liza. Liza says: "There is not much time left. He could die very soon, not even from exhaustion but from a heart attack. He looks very bad. One of the six who has been fasting since day one has started to swell." The situation is idiotic. If the Central Election Commission provides video from all polling stations, then the mayoral election in Astrakhan will have to be annulled. Then they could end the hunger strike with dignity. But the commission is not releasing the footage. http://roizman.livejournal.com/1345889.html The man who was elected mayor of the city has been on hunger strike for 23 days because local gangsters stole that victory through outright lawlessness, so blatant that it stands out even against the background of the usual widespread election fraud. The chief gangster, recently promoted upward, is flying by private jet to celebrate his birthday in Italy in the company of 50 officials. Here and here. Everything is obvious to everyone. Even the United Russia section of the interparliamentary delegation seemed somewhat taken aback by what was happening. Even the fraudster Churov (!!!) is expressing grave concern, stroking his beard. Footage from Putin’s web cameras has not been released for several weeks. If this continues, Shein will die within a few days. Doctor Liza, whom I spoke to just now, said that the hunger strikers could be left disabled even if they stop the strike right now. Where does this go from here? How much longer can this continue? We sit here, writing posts. If anyone wants to set up tent camps, then Astrakhan is exactly the place for it right now. Quite literally: it is a matter of life and death. I believe that if tomorrow (Monday) all the authorities (the courts, the Central Election Commission, the prosecutor’s office, and so on) do not do what they are legally obliged to do, then all of us should go to Astrakhan. And wait for the outcome of this story there.*