Russia Wants 10 Years of My Life for Remembering Bucha The Russian state has charged me with a crime that carries 7 to 10 years in prison. The authorities have ordered me held in detention. I was not surprised that they came for me. I was surprised by what they chose. I talked about this with Johan Harto in our new conversation: https://youtu.be/2MDapE3I_Uo The evidence is my social media publications from 2024. In them, I wrote that Bucha is one of the best-documented massacres in history, and that the Russian army used cluster munitions in Odesa. International organizations have documented both. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/29/ukraine-russias-odesa-cluster-munition-attack-harms-civilians Some key points: DENYING THE DOCUMENTED One of the people who reported me to the authorities states flatly that no civilians were harmed in Bucha. That echoes Moscow's official line that Bucha was staged. Yet the UN documented the killings of 73 civilians in Bucha alone, many of them summary executions, and was corroborating 105 more. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/un-report-details-summary-executions-civilians-russian-troops-northern Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, the Kakhovka dam: each time, Moscow offers several conflicting stories. It was the CIA, it was Ukraine, it was the "Anglo-Saxons." The goal is to make the truth seem unknowable. THE PARADOX "We will never know the truth" goes hand in hand with a state that knows exactly what it wants the truth to be, and imposes it. Occupied regions are written into the Constitution. History textbooks are rewritten to reflect the occupation and reframe it as legitimate. A SEALED-OFF INTERNET People in Russia are now prosecuted for sending Telegram stars, which are tiny donations, essentially paid "likes." This week, a man in Tyumen was sentenced to eight years for "financing terrorism" over stars worth about $3. https://ovd.info/en/express-news/2026/09/23/resident-tyumen-has-been-sentenced-8-years-giving-stars-telegram-amounting I expect VPN use and "Russophobia" to be criminalized next. The "sovereign internet" of the Max messenger, VKontakte, and Odnoklassniki is being built as a closed world. THE YOUNG GENERATION Yabloko, the only registered party campaigning for peace, was barred from the Duma elections on a technicality: a copyright claim over a Soviet children's song used in its campaign. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-political-party-yabloko-disqualifying/33826730.html Young people came out in response, and police threatened to send them to the front. Meanwhile, viral posts from millennials told them: we were Navalny supporters too, and you'll fall in line like we did. WHAT I'M DOING I'm writing a book in Russian, "Decolonizing Russia: Toward the Meaning and Origins of Russian Colonialism." The war in Ukraine is a colonial war, and Russians need to hear it in their own language. I'm also starting an ethnographic project on Bucha, in the spirit of Svetlana Alexievich, based on conversations with witnesses. The state claims a single "truth." One answer to it is to keep remembering and naming the atrocities. That is what I intend to do. Watch the full conversation with Johan Harto: https://youtu.be/2MDapE3I_Uo YouTube Russia Wants 10 Years of My Life for Remembering Bucha | Vasilina Orlova with Johan Harto The Russian state has charged me, Vasilina Orlova, with a crime that carries 7 to 10 years in prison, and the authorities have ordered me held in detention. The evidence is my social media publications from 2024. In them, I wrote that Bucha is one of the…
- 9
- 1