Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov: political prisoners should be on Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s agenda in Moscow
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, the former editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, spoke about Russia’s political prisoners in an interview with CNN.
During the interview, Dmitry Muratov displayed photographs of several political prisoners: theatre director Zhenya Berkovich, former municipal deputy Alexei Gorinov, the first person ever convicted for refusing to support the war, saxophonist Andrei Shabanov from Samara, who lives with a survivor skin disease, and paediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova. Among them was a photograph of pianist Pavel Kushnir, who had written in his blog that he disagreed with the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine and the killing of Ukrainians. Pavel Kushnir died in custody.
‘Anyone who speaks about peace is prosecuted. People have no legal way to express their views.’
Zhenya Berkovich was imprisoned over a poem and several Facebook posts, along with her friend and fellow playwright Svetlana Petriychuk. According to her lawyers, Zhenya now weighs about 40 kilograms. She was sent to a punishment cell for the second time during her imprisonment, on a trumped-up pretext: she had supposedly worn her headscarf incorrectly, failed to make her bed on time, and not put her hands behind her back quickly enough when a prison officer ordered her to.
‘She has two adopted daughters, an elderly mother and a 95-year-old grandmother with cancer. Her grandmother will not live to see her released. Why keep this woman in prison?’
Dmitry Muratov also spoke about Oleksandra Strilets, a young Ukrainian woman imprisoned on treason charges for helping Ukrainians, whose baby daughter, Lera, died while Oleksandra was in prison.
‘Oleksandra Strilets was not allowed to leave to see her daughter. She was in prison while her child was dying in hospital. Three days ago, the girl’s heart stopped, and she died.’
Oleksandra Strilets wrote from prison that she and her daughter had fought for life as best they could until the very end. Her only regret, she wrote, was that she never even heard her daughter’s voice.
Dmitry Muratov called on American politicians to press for the release of Russian political prisoners and on journalists to report on them, urging Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s envoys in negotiations with Russia, to raise the issue in their meetings with Vladimir Putin:
‘Mr Witkoff has already been to Moscow eight times or more, and God willing, he’ll keep coming. But here’s my question. When he leaves, his plane flies back empty. Why can’t he ask Mr Putin, whom he has a good relationship with, to release a few political prisoners so they can fly out with him?’
‘I’ve spoken with presidents, diplomats and ambassadors: no one seems interested in how political prisoners live and die in Russia. That is terrible. Please help me change that.’