‘I must figure out the fate of my cats’ Human rights campaigner Gregory Winter, now on trial in Russia, has diabetes and doesn’t expect to survive if he goes to prison. He is trying to find new owners for the animals he rescued.
Gregory Winter, 54, was arrested in September 2022, after posting an outraged social-media comment about the Russian army’s atrocities in Bucha and Irpin. “Everything we already knew about from Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Syria has been repeated in Ukraine,” Winter wrote. “This is the end of ‘the Russian civilization.’ No one is ever going to fall for Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Everybody will know that this is just a cover for Aleppo, Grozny, and Bucha.” Winter is now on trial for spreading “fake news” about the Russian military. His lawyers think he has a high chance of being sent to a prison colony, but Winter, who is diabetic, doesn’t think he would survive in those conditions. To prepare for the worst, he is trying to find new homes for the nine cats he has rescued from the streets over the years. Here’s the story of Gregory Winter and his cats, as told by the independent Russian media The New Tab.
Gregory Winter is a human rights activist from Cherepovets, a city in the Vologda region of northern Russia. Formerly the head of a local branch of the NGO For Human Rights, Winter is known for his outspoken, sometimes provocative presence in the local media. He is used to the wrath of the Russian authorities, too, having been jailed in the past, and threatened with physical violence for campaigning to preserve his region’s forests from logging.
Gregory also has a passion for animal welfare. He grew up with parents who were constantly bringing home cats and dogs from the street, caring for sick animals, and trying to get them back on their feet. When he found himself living alone as an adult, Gregory started doing the same. About 20 years ago, he already had 12 cats living in his apartment. “You can’t just walk past a cat who’s been tormented by sadists and lies dying in the street,” he told The New Tab. “So the number of my animals rarely got smaller. It would only happen when a sick animal had to be euthanized.”
Winter only adopts new animals if he is sure that they won’t make it without human help. This is what happened with his cat Vasya, who had been dropped off at a dog shelter in a plastic bag. For six months, Gregory spoon-fed the emaciated cat. When Vasya got back on his feet, he unexpectedly turned into a fierce “godfather” to the rest of Winter’s gang of felines.
Sign up for The Beet
Underreported stories. Fresh perspectives. From Budapest to Bishkek.
Another cat, named Susu, had her hind leg torn off by someone who then left her to die in the foyer of an apartment building. By some miracle, the vets managed to reattach her limb, but the traumatized cat spent three years hiding under Winter’s desk, without ever coming near him.
Susu might never have become attached to Winter if the Russian authorities didn’t arrest him and put him in jail. In 2020, he was charged with spreading misinformation about COVID-19. (The human rights organization Agora has pointed out that the new Russian law against COVID-related misinformation was frequently instrumentalized to persecute the government’s critics.) In jail, Winter was brutally beaten. Meanwhile, his friends were caring for his cats.
The cats proved to be so attached to Winter that two of them died: one before he was released, and the other not long afterwards.
In September 2022, Winter became a criminal suspect once again, this time for a social-media comment about the Russian army’s atrocities in Ukraine. After some time in custody, Winter was put under house arrest. He is certain, however, that this will only last for a couple of months — until the next court hearing, to be precise. His lawyers think his chance of getting a prison sentence very high.
Winter has no close family members in the area. His adult son lives abroad, and because he is subject to being drafted into the Russian army, Winter would never even think of asking him to come to Russia for his cats. He is also pessimistic about his own chances of surviving in prison: “I have a complicated form of diabetes,” Winter says, “and if they put me in prison, I’ll never get out. They don’t have any medications there. One way or another, I must figure out the fate of my cats.”
The cat named Susu has already been adopted by a family from Yaroslavl, but Gregory’s other cats don’t seem to interest anyone in Cherepovets. Their owner hopes that Russians from other regions might come forward to adopt them. “There are only nine cats at the moment,” he says,
and all of them are sweet, well-trained, and unfussy with food. I’m asking people who love animals to help me. My friends will bring the cats to Moscow, St. Petersburg, or to other cities in Central Russia. Some of the cats can do well in a suburban home. My cat Baldie is an excellent mouser. Vasya can be an excellent working cat, he has just the right temper for guarding a house.
If you can help with an adoption of one or more of Gregory Winter’s cats, please send a message to The New Tab on Telegram.
Translated by Anna Razumnaya.