Murder-crat Vlad Putin has seduced Trump into all but abandoning Ukraine to slaughter by rocket and drone. As our special East Europe correspondent Anna Solcaniova King explains, Russians themselves (those with a conscience) face horrific threats of imprisonment by questioning Putin’s killing spree. Here is their story. — Greg Palast
Oleg Orlov, co-chair of Russia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization Memorial, was released in the summer of 2024 in a landmark prisoner exchange between Russia and the West — the largest since the Cold War. The exchange freed 26 individuals (16 from Russia), including prominent dissidents and journalists such as Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Orlov had been sentenced last year to two and a half years for “discrediting” the Russian military after publishing an article condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“At the opening of this trial, I refused to participate in it, and as a result I was able to read Kafka’s The Trial during the court sessions,” Orlov said.
“There are parallels between our reality and Kafka’s: absurdity and arbitrariness, masquerading as legal procedure. Kafka’s character never learns what he’s accused of. In Russia, we are told — but the charges defy logic and law. We are punished simply for criticizing the authorities. And in today’s Russia, that is absolutely forbidden.”
Shortly after his release, Orlov joined fellow human rights activists Natalia Morozova and Vladimir Malykhin on a groundbreaking mission to Ukraine — the first time since the full-scale invasion that Russian civil society actors have traveled to document war crimes committed by their own government. Partnering with the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, the team visited Kyiv, Bucha, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Poltava, interviewing survivors of torture and occupation and inspecting destroyed civilian infrastructure.
Their goal, Orlov said, is simple: “To ensure the perpetrators do not go unpunished.”
In one village, they visited a former farm turned “filtration center” by occupying forces — a site of interrogations, torture, and extrajudicial killings. Survivors described mass detentions and interrogations that echoed Russia’s tactics in Chechnya and Syria. “It’s a continuation of state terror,” Orlov said, noting the soldiers arrived with prepared lists of names.
At a local administration office, a woman (name withheld for security) told the team that her husband had been abducted and tortured. She only learned of his fate after the Russians withdrew — his body was found in a shallow grave, showing signs of brutal abuse.
“There is and can be no forgiveness for this,” she told Orlov. “But you are not our enemies.” Orlov was stunned by her grace amid such suffering.
During the mission, Malykhin collected survivor testimonies from regions under constant threat of air raids. In one village near Chernihiv, a man recounted how his three sons were taken by Russian troops after learning one had served in the Ukrainian military. Two were executed. The third survived and escaped with a gunshot wound.
In another interview, a former Ukrainian POW described psychological torture inside a prison — being forced to stand still for 16 hours a day, hands behind his head, for six months.
These accounts are consistent with reports from international watchdogs.
Amnesty International, in a March report, concluded that Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian POWs and civilians may constitute war crimes.
One of the war’s most haunting attacks occurred on 8 July 2024, when a Russian missile hit Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt children’s hospital. Olena Barkova’s 10-year-old goddaughter Daryna was among the 627 pediatric patients inside that day. She had been undergoing chemotherapy.
“During the evacuation, it was complete chaos,” Barkova told Amnesty. “We were running down the stairs, where there was blood. Children with cancer — children who had been isolated for their safety — were forced to crowd into the basement. It was unbearable.”
The team also gathered evidence related to ongoing detention of civilians and children. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin himself for the forced deportation, re-education, and adoption of Ukrainian children to areas under Russian control, a war crime. Some children have been reunited with relatives, but many are still held incommunicado.
“We know many Ukrainian civilians were taken to Russia and disappeared,” Orlov told Novaya Gazeta Europe. “They’re not being exchanged because there is no mechanism for civilians.”
A 2023 report from Yale’s School of Public Health exposed a broad network of more than 40 camps — stretching from Crimea to Siberia — where Ukrainian children were sent for re-education. “This is a massive logistical operation that does not happen by accident,” said Nathaniel Raymond of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab. A follow-up report in 2024 warned these actions may constitute crimes against humanity.
Natalia Morozova, a member of Memorial and acting head of the Eastern Europe desk at the International Federation for Human Rights, warned against sidelining these crimes in the context of peace talks.
“The other side has spent years perfecting this system,” she said. “A peace built on impunity won’t last. It only paves the way for more crimes.”
In March 2025, the U.S. administration discontinued a federally funded initiative that had been documenting Russian war crimes, including the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. According to U.S. officials and The Washington Post, the database built through this program had been instrumental in advancing international accountability efforts.
For Ukraine, the return of these children remains a core demand in any just peace process.
Russian dissidents — including Oleg Orlov, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, and Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Putin’s late Presidential opponent Alexei Navalny — continue their advocacy in exile. At a recent rally in Berlin, Yashin urged the international community not to pursue a superficial settlement, but to ensure that the war ends with a just peace and meaningful security guarantees.
History will record what was taken — and who gave it back. Even frost can thaw. And in that brief thaw, a chance still lingers for one act of return, one step toward redemption.
Anna Solcaniova King is a human rights and environmental justice advocate, artist, and research associate with the Palast Investigative Fund. Solcaniova was born in former Czechoslovakia during the Soviet occupation.