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Mikhail Khodorkovsky

@khodorkovsky_en

Nov 25

"My friends died at the hands of Russian soldiers. Why can't I talk about it?"

This question will cost Varvara Volkova 7 years in a Russian penal colony

🧵Here's her story [1/7]

Varvara was a flight attendant, not an impassioned political activist.

In a neighborhood chat, she stated the obvious: Russian forces are killing civilians in Ukraine. The prosecution framed it as "fake news" motivated by hatred toward the armed forces, and the court accepted it.

[2/7]

The mechanism used to go after her relies on a Soviet-style culture of snitching: a Russian tank driver complained about her comments, then a professional informer, who intentionally hunts dissidents, amplified the case and demanded she be jailed.

[3/7]

Read 8 tweets

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

@khodorkovsky_en

Nov 25

A Russian man who yelled at an 11-year-old for wearing a hat with a 'Z' on it just got 4.5 years in a maximum-security prison.

[1/9] 🧵 He was already serving time when he said the wrong thing to 8 inmates

In April 2023, Alexander Neustroev lost his temper in Yekaterinburg. He saw a boy wearing a hat with the ‘Z’ — the symbol of the invasion of Ukraine, yelled at the child and insulted his father.

[2/9]

Initially, the court fined him 7,000 rubles. But the state machinery, driven by outraged servants of the regime, insisted on appealing and managed to turn this fine into a 3-year prison term.

[3/9]

Read 10 tweets

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

@khodorkovsky_en

Nov 18

"If something happens to me, I want people to know what and how." Aliya Ozdamirova said this on October 20, the day she fled Chechnya for Georgia.

On November 9, her uncle lured her back.

🧵3 days later, she was buried. [1/11]

Aliya was 33. Her father, Usman Ozdamirov, was close to Kadyrov—had been elected to the local assembly multiple times, and served as deputy sports minister.

[2/11]

When he died in 2020, her brothers and cousins, who are also connected to Chechen leadership, began beating her over her alleged homosexuality.

[3/11]

Read 11 tweets

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

@khodorkovsky_en

Nov 15

A Russian court sentenced a student to 5 years in prison for ordering medication to treat his sleep disorder.

[1/12]🧵After hearing the verdict, Andrey Moroztsev tried to kill himself in the courtroom

Andrey has idiopathic hypersomnia (he sleeps 14-15 hours daily just to function). He would had fallen unconscious during classes, and Russian doctors misdiagnosed him for years. His rare neurological disorder was identified by a foreign doctor from a private clinic.

[2/12]

Russia has no approved medications for this condition and in 2023, this foreign doctor prescribed him armodafinil—drug used in many countries for treating hypersomnia. Andrey ordered it from India by mail. When he picked up the package, customs officials were waiting.

[3/12]

Read 12 tweets

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

@khodorkovsky_en

Nov 11

For decades, the West has made the same catastrophic mistake with Russia: searching for a "good tsar."

This approach has failed every single time — and it will keep failing until we understand: Putin's position is cursed.

The system needs to change 🧵[1/14]

I've watched this pattern repeat since my first trip to America in 1989. Yeltsin becomes unpopular—the West wants to find a "good tsar." Putin turns authoritarian—the same response. This is the most dramatic error possible when dealing with Russia.

[2/14]

I once posed a scenario to high-level American politicians and strategists: 'You are Russia's president, you control territory from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, you need to redistribute 50-60% of taxes through the federal center just to hold the country together — how will you convince people to accept this massive concentration of power?

[3/14]

Read 14 tweets

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

@khodorkovsky_en

Nov 3

EU excels at denying bank accounts to Russians with humanitarian visas but fails to control exports of dual-use goods that fuel Putin's killing machine.

🧵How the discriminatory interpretation of the 19th sanctions package hands the Kremlin a new mobilization tool — [1/10]

On November 1, 2025, thousands of Russian citizens who fled dictatorship and Putin's criminal war, legally residing in the EU, discovered their bank accounts had been unexpectedly closed. These are people who chose Europe over complicity in Putin's war crimes.

[2/10]

One of the major banks justified its decision by citing compliance with the 19th sanctions package imposed on Russia's economy on October 24. The company claims the new sanctions policy prohibits servicing any bank accounts of Russian and Belarusian citizens without valid temporary or permanent EU residence permits.

[3/10]

Read 10 tweets

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