Nadine Geisler worked as a photographer in Belgorod, a city close to the border with Ukraine. In February 2022, after the war began, a former client from Ukraine wrote to her for help: her mother was about to cross the border into Belgorod Oblast and had no idea where to go. As Nadine told the BBC’s Russian language service in 2022, she met the mother, as well as others coming from Ukraine, at the border and brought several families to her one-bedroom apartment. After this experience, she began to work as a volunteer helping Ukrainians with evacuations from dangerous areas to Russia and Europe, as well as distributing food and medical supplies and managing a network of several dozen volunteers.
Geisler was arrested in 2024 for allegedly posting an online appeal for donations to Azov, a Ukrainian organization banned in Russia. Geisler denied that the account belonged to her. She was eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison for treason and abetting terrorism. We publish excerpts of Nadine’s last statement in the courtroom, where Russians are given the opportunity to contest the case against them. Despite attempts to limit this tradition, it remains one of the country’s only platforms for free speech.
Here, we offer an abridged translation of Geisler’s Last Word:
Your Honor, I believe that all 14 volumes of my criminal case comprise lies, theories, and suppositions made by the FSB. When you look at the substance of the case, it turns out there is no evidence proving my guilt. And, as has been repeatedly stated here, rumors, guesses and suppositions do not constitute proof. The ownership of the account in question has not been demonstrated, and even the IP address of the device has not been established.
If we examine the substance of this case, what difference does the color of my hair or my clothing at different times of my life make? The news on the REN TV channel is shown in a yellow font on a blue background. The front of the detention center where I’m currently being held has bright blue signs with bright yellow lettering reading “State Institution” or “Parking,” which I saw today. These aren’t offending anybody, they don’t frighten anybody… finally, the flag of the country where I was born is blue and yellow. So, is it color that has people upset, or is it me?
There was a question from the prosecution: Did Ukrainians ever thank me for helping them? Did they do so publicly? For some reason, this question was addressed to my mother, rather than myself. But nobody can answer this question better than I. Did they thank me? Yes, from the very first time, when I did not abandon people to spend the night on the street, on March 7, 2022.
For the first cans of food and loaves of bread. They thanked me in audio and in video calls, in messages, in comments on my social media page and group and on my posts and my stories. They thanked me personally for saving their lives, for the fact that their child was dressed, fed, or given medication. Simply for the fact that the child made it to Russian territory and back to its mother. They thanked me for paying for vitally important surgeries on Russian territory, which nobody was going to perform for victims of armed conflict for free. I was thanked by hospitals’ head doctors to whom I supplied medicines. Although, I would assume that this is not a task that should be shouldered by concerned Russians, who, out of the kindness of their hearts, were doing the work of the state and financing it as well. My desire to help is due to the value of these people and their lives, the fact that they did not deserve to suffer. I have my own moral compass that I follow, and there are laws that protect lives, of humans, animals, and even plants. And I am not going to stop speaking the truth just because of threats, of which I received many over the past three and a half years.
If for this, people want to punish me, then what is the essence of the people who want to punish me?
But even if I’m convicted, and if I die within the confines of a penal colony, I won’t die childless, as some people have wished on me. I have awarded myself the right to be a mother of many. A mother of all the children that I was able to help. And no punishment will eclipse the joy and knowledge of the fact that they are all safe and sound.
You can fabricate case materials. You can frighten witnesses or create fake ones. But you can’t destroy truth in the form of the tens of thousands of people who have been helped and the millions who have witnessed this. I fought for every human life using every possible and impossible means. I only allowed myself the luxury of having my own opinion and of expressing it publicly. I spoke the truth, which they wanted to hide. But I am not a criminal and a murderer; there isn’t a drop of blood on my hands. And yet they still asked for me to be sentenced to 27 years in prison. As had been required.
My goal, however, is not to be free, but to be human. And if I’m not acquitted, if I serve this 27-year term, then give me 27 years and one day. That way there is something unusual; I will break the female record.
That’s all. Thank you for listening.
(Source: Pervy Otdel Telegram channel.)
«Лето — это период, когда стол наполняют не просто свежие ягоды, фрукты и овощи, а те, что выросли в нашей полосе, ведь организм генетически настроен на картофель, морковь, землянику, огурцы, а не на бананы или манго»
"Summer is the season not just when fresh berries, fruits and vegetables laden our table, but those that have grown in our climate, for our bodies are genetically predisposed to potatoes, carrots, strawberries and cucumbers, not to bananas and mangos."
«Никакого ущерба нашим гражданам это не нанесет, подача ситуации в таком разрезе, мне кажется, была бы просто безответственным искажением реальной картины. Россия, напомню, остается приверженной своим международным обязательствам в области прав человека.»
"It won’t cause any harm to our citizens. To present the situation in such a light would be a complete distortion of the real picture. Russia, I remind you, remains committed to its international obligations in the realm of human rights."
«Не хотелось бы управлять авторитарно, по-диктаторски… Но пока не получается.»
“I would prefer not to govern in an authoritarian way, like a dictator… but so far, it is just not working out.”
“There is a lot of footage one could watch and, personally, when I start going down that rabbit hole, it becomes sort of obsessive… The tricky side to me was that the public face that we see, we see very, very little. There is this mask.”
Teachers working in 73 Russian regions have salaries below the national minimum wage (which is about R22,400, or $280, per month in 2025). According to data from Uchitel, the independent teachers union, teachers’ salaries in many regions are actually below R5,000 rubles ($62) per month. For example, in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, teachers earn between R2,369 and R3,969. Only in three regions, Moscow, Tatarstan and Primorsky Krai in the Far East, did teachers have salaries higher than the minimum wage .
Source: nemoskva.net
A media investigation by the Mediazona and Meduza news websites into the number of Russians who have died fighting in Ukraine has arrived at an estimate of 219,000, including 125,681 who are known by name from various media, government, or family announcements, or other online sources. The names are being documented on the website 200.zona.media. Additional figures are calculated via a methodology using probate registry data. Another Russian media website, IStories.media, has published its own estimate of 117,978 deaths, using a neural network that trawls the internet for reports of deaths and publishes them on its own specialized database called Kharon («Харон» – база данных о российских потерях в войне с Украиной). The Russian government does not publish any official figures about military casualties in Ukraine.
A court in Moscow has ruled that ads offering apartment rentals that mention specific ethnicities are illegal and are banned as discriminatory. Ads for flats ending with “Slavs only” have been ubiquitous in the capital and an abiding symbol of xenophobia: in one 2021 poll, 17% of Muscovites said they would like to only rent their property out to “Slavs.” A similar investigation in St. Petersburg by the Bumaga news website found that 22% of all ads published on the popular Avito platform required that any potential tenants have a “Slavic” appearance. The court ruling is unexpected in the context of Russia’s trend toward increased intolerance in large cities toward people of visibly non-Russian ethnicities. For example, St. Petersburg this summer installed cameras that allegedly identify six possible ethnicities in passersby, enabling “law enforcement to make appropriate decisions” using this tool to identify illegal immigrants, according to communications official Igor Nikonov. The exact technology used by the cameras has not been made public.
Russia has taken its fight against the invasive Sosnowsky’s hogweed, a fastspreading plant with burn-causing toxic sap, to a new level this year, with parliament enacting a law that obligates land users and owners to ensure their property doesn’t contain any dangerous plants, under penalty of expropriation. The drastic measure follows decades of inaction after the plant, native to the Caucasus Mountains but carelessly introduced into central Russia by Soviet agricultural policies, spread throughout the country, dominating formerly agricultural landscapes and even populated areas. In 2022, researchers at Moscow Oblast’s Skolkovo Research Center forecast that the species may infest all of European Russia by 2040, its spread accelerated by climate change. The new law seems to place the burden of eradicating this dangerous plant onto people that are neglecting their land, but in remote rural areas, people often simply move away, as nobody wants to buy or tend their land. Meanwhile, in urban areas, authorities are coming up with creative ways to use public funds to identify hogweed: in St. Petersburg, municipal workers will use AI to help find and kill the plants before they spread.
In a poll gauging Russians’ knowledge of foreign languages, 40% said they have at least minimal knowledge of English, 12% have some German, and 3% have French. Arabic, Spanish, Chinese and Italian were named by 1%; 6% named yet another language, and 46% said they don’t speak any foreign languages. Among those that know foreign languages, 7% use it at work, 7% use it watching movies and series, 6% use it when traveling, 6% uses it to help friends and family with translations, 5% read news articles, 5% communicate with foreign friends, and 4% read books. 27% said they don’t use their language skills. 70% said they wouldn’t want to learn another foreign language, and 76% believe they don’t actually need it.
of Russians believe they have аn average income, up from 69% in 2020 and 55% in 2004. Meanwhile, 22% think they are poor, down from 27% in 2020 and 41% in 2004. Only 2% of respondents said they think they are well off. Among reasons for their poverty, Russians cited reaching pension age (5%), price increases (4%), health problems (2%), low or decreasing salaries (2%) and losing a provider (1%). Meanwhile, most people who don’t consider themselves poor cited the following factors enabling them to escape poverty: hard work (22%), education (3%), their kids reaching adulthood (1%) and general economic stability in the country (1%).
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