Rights in Russia

Our guest today is Iryna Khalip, a Belarusian journalist and participant in the 2010 protests against election fraud in the presidential elections in Belarus. Her husband is the politician Andrei Sannikov who ran as an opposition presidential candidate in those very elections. Since 2006, Iryna has been working as Belarus correspondent for  Novaya gazeta , now  Novaya gazeta –...

My guest today is Leyla Latypova, a journalist who works as a special correspondent for the English-language newspaper  The Moscow Times . An ethnic Tatar from the republic of Bashkortostan, Leyla writes about politics and civil society in Russia’s regions and national republics.  In her work, she promotes and defends the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Russian...

Our guest today is Zoia Svetova, renowned journalist and human rights activist. She continues to live and work in Moscow.  She is the author of several books, including  Priznat’ nevinovnogo vinovnym  [ To Find the Innocent Guilty ]. Her voice is perhaps one of the few authoritative oppositionist voices still heard in Russia today.   This podcast was recorded on 26 Ma...

My guest today is Anastasia Burakova, a human rights lawyer and democratic activist from Russia.  We are still in shock at the news of the murder of Aleksei Navalny in a high-security penal colony in the settlement of Kharp.  Aleksei Navalny’s political star rose as a leader of the opposition to the Putin regime in 2011.  That year, 2011, played a significant part in the  polit...

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of our Russian-language podcast  Then & Now  with me, Teresa Cherfas.  My guest today is Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev. Lev Ponomarev trained and worked as a physicist in the USSR before devoting more time and energy to issues of human rights in the Soviet Union and subsequently in the Russian Federation. He was one of the founders of  « Mem...

My guest today is the author Maxim Osipov.  Following in the great Russian tradition of Chekhov and Bulgakov, he has pursued a career in medicine in parallel with that of a writer.  For his works of fiction – for the most part short stories that are sharp and witty commentaries on modern-day life in the Russian provinces – Maxim Osipov has won a number of literary prizes, and his plays h...

Welcome to the eighth edition of our Russian-language podcast  Then & Now  with me, Teresa Cherfas.   As a rule,  guests on our podcast are individuals for whom 24th February 2022 was a turning-point in their life; today we are talking about an organisation that came into being as a result of that fateful date. The Reckoning Project was created in response to Russia’s...

Welcome to the seventh episode of our new Russian-language podcast  Then & Now  with me, Teresa Cherfas. In recent weeks, politically motivated trials and lengthy prison terms in Putin’s Russia reached a new peak. Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for treason and Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk have been remanded in custody awaiting trial for “just...

Welcome to the sixth episode of our new Russian-language podcast  Then & Now  with me, Teresa Cherfas.  Whilst our podcast is mostly about people for whom February 24th 2022 was a turning-point in their lives, the subject of today’s conversation is the country, whose leadership caused that date to be so significant in all our lives. We are talking, of course, about Russia. To le...

Welcome to the fifth episode of our new Russian-language podcast  Then & Now  with me, Teresa Cherfas.   With me today is Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist who shocked the world with her anti-war protest on 14 March 2022, which went live on Russian State TV’s prime time news programme “ Vremya ”.  Since that moment, she has been through such a rollercoaster o...

Our latest guest is the Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov. Andrei Kurkov became widely known to readers around the world in 2001 when his novel  Smert’ postoronnego  [ Смерть Постороннего ] was published in English translation as  Death and the Penguin . Other novels followed and, in their wake, worldwide recognition and success at prominent international literary awards. His late...

Welcome to our new Russian-language podcast,  Then & Now , with me, Teresa Cherfas.   After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the  Then & Now  podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war. My fi...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Varvara Pakhomenko. Varvara Pakhomenko has been a human rights activist for a very long time. Back in her native Tomsk she was actively involved in human rights activities. Having moved to Moscow, Varvara began working with many human rights activists in the capital, but the geography of her travels remained very wide. Since 2006, Varvara Pakhomenko has worked...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Nikolai Kavkazsky. Nikolai Yurievich Kavkazsy is a Russian civil society activist, human rights defender and opposition politician. He is one of the leading Yabloko activists in Moscow. Nikolai Kavkazsky was a defendant in the Bolotnoe case. Politically, he defines himself as a left-wing social democrat, an internationalist, a supporter of LGBT rights and...

Our guest on the podcast this week is the historian Nikita Vasilievich Petrov. Nikita Petrov is deputy chair of the board of the Memorial Research and Information Centre (which is based in St. Petersburg). Born in Kiev, Nikita Petrov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering and went on to study at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. His association with the Memorial S...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev (pictured, left, with the late Andrei Babushkin). Lev Ponomarev is a human rights activist and head of the For Human Rights movement and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. He also participated in the creation of the Memorial Human Rights Center. As a legal entity, the For Human Rights Movement was liquidated by a Nove...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Andrei Kalikh, a human rights researcher, journalist, and activist with a special interest in the issue of corruption. In the past, Andrei worked as programme director at the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights and he has been a board member of Perm Memorial Society. Until recently, Andrei lived in St. Petersburg. He recently left Russia a...

Our guest on the podcast this week is the lawyer Kirill Koroteev, head of international legal practice of Agora International Human Rights Group. Previously, Kirill worked as legal director at Memorial Human Rights Centre, where he specialized in handling cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Kirill graduated from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and received his master's degree...