Russian authorities raid letter-writing event for political prisoners

Security forces in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg broke up an event dedicated to writing letters to political prisoners on Sunday, Mediazona reported, citing an eyewitness.

According to the witness, officers in masks and balaclavas stormed into a local office of the Yabloko political party, where the gathering was taking place. “They immediately lined us up against the wall and took everything — passports, phones. They searched us, then sent us one by one to a bus,” the source said.

A total of eight people were detained, including Maksim Petlin, head of Yabloko’s regional branch, the person said.

The detainees were reportedly taken to a police station, where they were forced to unlock their phones and allow officers to access their contents.

After his release, Petlin told the local Telegram channel It’s My City that police had confiscated all equipment from the party office, along with several books, including All the Kremlin’s Men by journalist Mikhail Zygar.

Mediazona noted that pro-government activist Yekaterina Ipatova has admitted to reporting participants at similar events to the authorities. News of the raid was also shared by the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel UralLive, which is closely linked to propagandist Vladimir Solovyov. The channel claimed participants were “trying to establish contact with saboteurs and Wahhabis convicted of terrorism.”