"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]

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]

"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]

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]

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]

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]

Putin's biggest fear has been exposed.

As a Russian dissident who spent 10 years in his prisons, I can tell you it's not sanctions or missiles. It's the rising legitimacy of the Russian opposition.

🧵 And that legitimacy just got a major boost.

[1/12] In an unprecedented decision, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recently voted to establish a "Russian Democratic Forces Platform". For the first time since the Ukraine invasion, Russia will be represented at PACE — not by Putin, but by a relatively united democratic opposition.

[2/12]

In Putin's army, soldiers are being tortured, executed, and buried by their own commanders.

It's a practice so widespread that it's got a name - 'obnuleniye', or 'zeroing out'

(🧵Read on) 'Zeroing out' means killing one's own soldiers, sometimes by gunfire, sometimes through torture, and sometimes by sending them into suicidal wave assaults without weapons

[2/17]

Trump's new sanctions won't work, but Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv might. Putin isn't a politician, he's a mob boss who only understands force.

🧵Here's why the recent talk of long-range weapons has rattled him, and what needs to happen next: [1/12]
It is a positive step that President Trump seems to have abandoned the 'good cop' role in dealing with Putin. But no amount of sanctions are going to be damaging enough to get results

[2/12]

In 2019, Putin pompously opened a gas pipeline to China.

6 years later, having lost its EU market, Gazprom finds itself drowning in a staggering $72.7b of debt

(🧵Read on — 1/11) This month, Forbes Russia released its list of the 10 Russian companies with the largest amount of debt.

And Gazprom was at the very top of that list

[2/11]

This is Sergey, a 19-year-old Russian conscript. He refuses to fight in Ukraine, and warns that any contract 'signed' by him would be coerced.

🧵 Sergey is far from alone — [1/8] In Moscow—a city Putin has long sought to shield from the impact of the war—the military is rounding up so-called draft dodgers at Metro stations, using facial recognition technology.

[2/8]

If you had any illusions about Putin's rule and his war, look at this: a regular Russian school.

A boy in tactical gear stands while classmates kick him; his peers were shown photos of corpses and not allowed to call parents.

1/5🧵(Read on) This happened in Belgorod, a city near Ukraine. Men in military uniforms gathered ninth-graders in the auditorium, took away their phones and forbade them from calling parents.

[2/5]

Is Putin's grip on power weaker than it seems?

I believe so. A single misstep could be his last.

🧵 Here're his top 3 vulnerabilities

[1/12] 1. Putin’s power structure is a careful balancing act.

Like many dictators, he skillfully uses support from the lower levels of society as a tool to intimidate and control his own inner circle. This keeps the elites in line, but this system only works while he is healthy and can manage it effectively.

[2/12]

Expressing nuclear fears is normal for most people, but in Putin's Russia, it can lead to being forcibly injected with tranquilizers in a psychiatric ward.

🧵 The case of Oleg Savvin reveals the return of Soviet-style punitive psychiatry

[1/8] Oleg Savvin was arrested in Kaliningrad in March for allegedly spreading 'fake news' about the army after he posted on criticizing Putin's aggression and speculating about the global consequences of a nuclear explosion.

[2/8]vk.com

Putin attacks the Russian Antiwar Committee for creating a platform for dialogue with PACE because he knows what we've proven:

🧵 Russians deserve legitimate representation, and we're delivering it

[1/6] The claims being pushed about the Russian Antiwar Committee by the FSB are obviously false and patently absurd. At the same time, they demonstrate that our efforts have clearly hit a raw nerve with Putin

[2/6]

One of Putin's closest allies didn't quit for "personal reasons" or his alleged war opposition.

🧵$300M blown on elections in Moldova might have something to do with it

(Read on)

As Deputy Chief of Staff of the Kremlin, Dmitry Kozak oversaw the post-Soviet space. An ethnic Ukrainian, he led Russia's negotiations on Donbas for years. His departure coincided with the crushing defeat of pro-Kremlin forces in Moldova's elections.

[2/8]

Putin's ambitions are crumbling under the weight of reality: China is not the ally he hoped for.

🧵 Here's why: [1/11] No matter how hard Putin tries to please Xi, the partnership between China and Russia ends where the risks of sanctions begin. Without export licenses for dual-use items, Beijing no longer sells even machines with precision of 3–4 microns:

[2/11]newsweek.com/russia-denied-…

There are thousands of Russians in U.S. immigration detention

Several hundred anti-war activists among them face grave danger if deported to Russia.

🧵 We're ready to help identify those most at risk Among the approximately 100,000 Russians seeking asylum or humanitarian visas in the U.S., around 5,000 are being held in immigration detention facilities. Within this group, several hundred individuals face genuine political persecution in Russia due to their anti-war and pro-democracy stances.

The diplomatic chaos around Ukraine is what happens when all sides realize their positions have become unsustainable.

Every major actor has hit their limit.

🧵Here’s why I believe a path to Peace in Ukraine is real:
Let me be blunt about Trump's position as I see it: He doesn't care about Ukrainian sovereignty or Russian security concerns.

He cares about one thing only – reporting back to his voters and getting his Nobel Prize.

7 years after Putin unveiled 5 'invincible' superweapons, only 1 has seen combat.

Now he's betting the Burevestnik missile—which killed 5 people in testing—will end the war on favorable terms.

🧵 The Update on all of Putin’s 2018 Weapons At the end of August, in a highly symbolic act, Putin visited Sarov, the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear program. Alongside him was his Chief of the General Staff, Gerasimov.

When Russian model Guzel Ganieva threatened Epstein's network in 2015, he turned to an unusual source: Sergei Belyakov, the FSB-trained official running Putin's St. Petersburg Economic Forum.

🧵Here's how Epstein worked with Putin's regime: Belyakov wasn't some rank and file official. He graduated from the FSB Academy in 1998 and embedded himself in Russia's economic elite.