‘I couldn’t just stay silent and spoil my obituary’ The elderly Russians who risk their freedom to oppose the war in Ukraine
Despite the Russian government’s brutal treatment of dissidents, Russians are continuing to protest against the war. The human rights organization OVD-Info estimates that over 200 pensioners have been convicted for anti-war activity since February 24, 2022. Despite serious health issues, many of them have been sent to prison and hit with exorbitant fines that their pensions are insufficient to cover. Journalists from the independent outlet Verstka examined how elderly Russians are refusing to abandon their convictions despite the risk of imprisonment. With their permission, Meduza is sharing an English-language version of the story.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
'What do they have to lose?'
Opinion polls from VTsIOM (the Russian Public Opinion Research Center) and FOM (Russia's Public Opinion Fund) found that when Moscow's “special military operation” began, nine out of 10 Russian residents who were either in retirement or approaching retirement age supported it. According to surveys conducted by the independent research group Russian Field in the summer of 2023, a plurality (43 percent) of elderly respondents (60 and older) supported an escalation of the “operation" in Ukraine.
The elderly are more disposed than people in other demographics to “cosplay World War II,” political scientist Konstantin Kalachev explained to Verstka. “What do they have to lose? They do very little critical thinking, and they get their information about the war from TV,” he said.
But despite the fact that pensioners are thought to be the segment of Russia's population that's most susceptible to propaganda, at least 46 Russian citizens over 60 have been charged in criminal cases linked to anti-war statements, while at least 165 people aged 60–84 have been detained at anti-war rallies, according to OVD-Info. Pensioners and people approaching the pension age have been prosecuted all over the country, from Kaliningrad to Nakhodka.
The law used most frequently to prosecute elderly people is Article 207.3 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which outlaws “disinformation” about the Russian Armed Forces. At least 19 people over 60 have been convicted of violating the ban, including 65-year-old Marina Novikova from the Tomsk region and 64-year-old Igor Baryshnikov from Russia's Kaliningrad exclave.
In April 2023, Novikova, a human rights activist, was found guilty of spreading “disinformation” about the military. The court sentenced her to a fine of 1 million rubles (about $10,500). Novikova requested a prison sentence instead of the fine, which she couldn’t afford on her pension.
Baryshnikov, who suffers from serious health problems, was sentenced in June 2023 to 7.5 years in prison for making online posts about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He's currently in the medical unit of a pre-trial detention center. His sentence forced him to miss the funeral of his mother, who died after he was taken into custody. Baryshnikov himself has been diagnosed with a potentially cancerous prostate tumor, meaning he has to live with a suprapubic catheter (through his abdomen) and will require surgery. During Barishnikov’s trial, his doctor said he may die in prison.
At least 15 criminal cases have been brought against elderly Russians under Article 280 of Russia’s Criminal Code. 13 of those cases concern “public actions aimed at discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code) and two, according to OVD-Info, concern incitements to extremist activity (Part 2 of Article 280).
Another four elderly people are being prosecuted under Part 2 of Article 205 of the Criminal Code for “public appeals to carry out terrorist activities, or public justification of terrorism or promotion of terrorism." Four people have been charged for the “desecration of corpses and burial places” and vandalism (Articles 214 and 244 of the Criminal Code).
At least 15 elderly people are in pre-trial detention facilities, receiving coercive medical treatment, or already serving a prison sentence.
‘The most painful part is leaving her grandson’
On September 5, 2022, the home of Dolite Sinitsina, a 65-year-old former history teacher from the city of Nakhodka, was searched by the Russian authorities. She was charged under the Criminal Code’s article against online incitement to extremism (Part 2 of Article 280) because of two posts and comments she’d made online: “Death to fascist occupiers!!!” and “Russia is a fascist state.” An analysis requested by investigators concluded that her statements “encouraged violence” against the Russian military.
Members of the FSB confiscated Sinitsina's computer, her WiFi router, and her phone. She was later interrogated by intelligence officers and taken to Vladivostok.
Dolite told Verstka that she was shocked and horrified by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and that she was simply expressing her feelings when she wrote the offending posts. Although she feels the accusations against her are absurd, she agreed to plead guilty at the request of an investigator and her lawyer.
“We were counting on getting a suspended sentence; I guess that was naive of me. But that’s what I was told: plead guilty, and you’ll be given a suspended sentence and told to report to a parole officer,” Sipnitsa recounted. “So that’s what I resolved to do, and when the judge ruled otherwise, I broke down.”
The judge, Maksim Kiselev, sentenced her to one and a half years in prison. An appeals court upheld the verdict.
Although the court proceedings concerned only the aforementioned statements, it's clear from Sinitsa’s social media profile that she has been vocally opposing the Russian state for years. For instance, Dolite expressed sympathy for supporters of Navalny.
In 2017, while Nakhodka’s inhabitants were choking on the dust from its open coal mines, Sinitsya stood as a candidate for the Nakhodka City Duma and promised voters she would “always vote in accordance with their wishes.” She didn’t manage to get elected, but in the comments under one of her posts, she wrote: “Our state is represented by a colonial administration of timeservers, who sponge off the brutal exploitation of natural and human resources.”
I’ve always been an active citizen; I was secretary of the Komsomol teachers’ organization and party secretary. And when the city’s ecological problems began, it was suggested that I stand as an independent candidate in the delegate, so I agreed. But it quickly became clear that the whole system is just a rat race, the decay has already taken root, and I’m too old to be trying to rebuild and reorganize it.
Any day now, Sinitsa expects to be taken to prison, where a place awaits her. According to her, she'll most likely be sent to a colony near either Ussuriysk or Vladivostok, which are 160–200 kilometers (99–124 miles) from her home. For her, the most painful part is leaving her little grandson.
My eldest grandkids are 20 and 12 years old, and I didn’t get a chance to spend time with them. The youngest is two. I’m very attached to him; I thought that I’d at least be able to help raise him, if not the others. I’m really suffering over him. When they told me at the appeal that I’d go to prison for a year and six months, my first thought was that I’d never go, that I’d kill myself. But then a kind of malice rose up in me, and gave me strength to bear it. It will be hard, but I have to get through it.
Sinitsa admitted that if she had known what her online protests would lead to, she probably wouldn’t have written the posts that got her convicted. But she feels the war in Ukraine is a tragedy of global scale: “All those homes destroyed, people killed, and the way that the rest of the world is reacting to it — it’s all so wrong, I can’t bear to watch it unfold.”
‘I couldn’t just stay silent’
On March 6, 2022, while protests against the war in Ukraine were happening all over Russia, 65-year-old Nikolai Gutsenovich staged a solitary picket protest in Penza. One side of his poster showed a rocket being snapped in half by a pair of hands with the words “No to war,” while the other had a quote from a song by Aleksander Galich: “The Fatherland is in danger, our tanks are on foreign land.”
I was motivated by the injustices happening in Ukraine. I have relatives there. A civilized, 21st-century nation does not resolve issues by declaring war. And to wage war in a land that has three nuclear stations is madness — it could lead to a second Chernobyl.
Gutsenovich is originally from Belarus. In his youth, he served in the military in East Germany. Later, he traveled a lot, working as a photographer. He was interested in electronics, and began building tape recorders and electric guitars by himself. When he retired, he began working on his house, like many people his age. But he also has a major bone to pick with most of his peers: he's furious that there are so few pensioners actively opposing the war.
During the 10 minutes Gutsenovich stood protesting, five or six passersby thanked him for taking a stand, while one called him a traitor to the motherland. Then some policemen approached, arrested him, and brought him to the police station.
According to Gutsenovich himself, he knew the risks of protesting, but he “had no choice”: “I’m in my twilight years — I couldn’t just stay silent and spoil my obituary.” The judge fined him 30,000 rubles (around $300) on misdemeanor charges of “discrediting” the Russian army (Article 20.3.3 of the Criminal Code). But his case didn’t end there.
Gutsenovich expressed his sympathy for Ukraine on social media, “liking” posts containing information that contradicted reports made by the Russian Defense Ministry. These “likes” led to felony charges.
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Stanislav Fomenko, Gutsenovich’s lawyer from OVD-Info, told Verstka that his client’s lone protest likely led law enforcement to begin surveilling him. When they saw his online “defamations” of the Russian Armed Forces on his social media page, Fomenko speculated, they decided to “knock him down a peg.”
The criminal case against Gutsenovich was opened on February 15, 2023. He was indicted on April 14, and in early May, his documents were submitted to court.
Gutsenovich was charged with “discrediting” of the Russian army (Article 280.3 Part 1 of the Criminal Code) by “liking” 18 anti-war posts in Odnoklassniki. According to investigators, the defendant "clicked reactions on posts on the aforementioned social network, after which the posts were displaced on his page and became viewable by an indefinite number of people."
At the trial, Gutsenovich did not deny that he had responded to the Odnoklassniki posts, but noted that he “had no intention of defaming the Russian army and was simply expressing his opinion in accordance with Article 29 of the Russian Constitution.” His lawyer, Stanislav Fomenko, recalled that Gutsenovich also attempted to make an anti-war speech, but the judge cut him off.
“Sadly, it appears our Constitution is meaningless,” Gutsenovich told Verstka. Prosecutors requested that he be fined 120,000 rubles (about $1,200). Penza's Leninsky District Court ended up fining him 100,000 rubles ($1,060).
He still hasn’t paid the fine: “I need to get some more money together; I’m no millionaire,” the pensioner said, grinning. Still, he said, he doesn’t regret expressing his opposition to the war.
Gutsenovich remains optimistic. He is sure that the war will come to an end, and that Russia will become a democratic country: “But all the same, there is a tough road ahead. Firstly, the sanctions against Russia aren’t going to be lifted straight away. Secondly, Ukraine will have to be rebuilt, and reparations paid. So any way you look at it, things are going to be hard for Russia.”
‘I wasn’t a dissident, but I wasn’t poisoned by propaganda’
Elena Ivanovo (surname changed at her request) is a 69-year-old research associate from Novosibirsk. She began attending protests when Alexey Navalny was imprisoned, and when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, she had no intention of hiding away at home.
I’m a grandmother, and I imagined every woman my age would be out on the streets, protesting. When it became clear this wasn’t the case, I was distraught — I still haven’t gotten over it. Back then, I was in tears every day, but these days I don’t cry as much. Obviously, our tragedy, Russia’s tragedy, cannot be compared with Ukraine’s, whose fertile lands, its people, its cities, are all being destroyed. That's why I went out to protest.
On March 6, she went to Lenin Square in downtown Novosibirsk with a friend of hers who's also a pensioner. Even though the police far outnumbered the protesters, Elena said, she chose to hold up her anti-war sign.
On one side of the poster, she had drawn a picture of a crossed-out bomb, while on the other side, she’d written the words “We want peace.”
Immediately, the riot police, with their spacemen helmets, herded a group of protestors, us included, into a circle and began to close in on us. Then they were ordered to arrest me and my friend. So they arrested us and ripped up my sign. Four policemen — brawny, armed, and highly trained — were tasked with bringing us to the van. They fulfilled their orders gently, directing us with hands under our elbows.
It was the first time in their long lives that either of the two friends had been in a police van. The vehicle was full of young people, all of whom were taken to the police station. As they were getting out of the van, a policeman offered Elena his hand. “You don’t get that sort of treatment on the city bus,” she laughed. “Actually, I hadn’t realized how similar buses and police vans are.”
The “cops’ assembly hall”, as Elena calls it, was full of detainees, who she refers to as “clever-looking young people.” When Elena and her friend entered, “they all got up and started clapping.” That day, Elena was charged with a misdemeanor offense under Article 20.2 of the Russian Administrative Code.
The fine she received was only 5,000 rubles (around $50), but Elena hasn’t been to a protest since.
“It’s not about the risk; I just don’t want to subsidize the regime,” she explained. “If I’m at the protest for three minutes before I’m arrested, what effect can I have? And then I have to give my money to the regime? What's the point?”
She attributes her stance on the war to the fact that she has never owned a television. “I wasn’t a dissident by any stretch of the imagination. But I was never poisoned by propaganda.” At the same time, she said, she's always considered herself a patriot.
I worked in a different country for two years, and I couldn’t wait to return to Russia. But I’ll tell you how I formed my attitude towards the war in Ukraine. Imagine a married woman with children. She loves her husband, they have a happy home life, and suddenly she finds out that her husband has been raping their daughters. How is she supposed to react? It’s a tragedy that can’t be put right. But now I’m left without a homeland — I’m some kind of a moral freak.
Elena knows other pensioners who oppose the war, but she has severed relations with several longtime friends her age because of their support for the invasion.
“I don’t understand how they don’t grieve for the Ukrainians. How can you have no pity for the people, the cities, the woods, the animals?” Elena said mournfully. “But trying to convince them is pointless. I’ve lost friends that way. I’m ashamed of my generation. They have blood on their hands. But who cares about us — the most important thing is that the war ends. But the war isn't ending.”
Story by Rita Loginova for Verstka
Translation by Lily Samarine