Russian human rights activist commits suicide over war in Ukraine

Human rights activist Nina Litvinova has committed suicide because of the war in Ukraine and her inability to help political prisoners, as stated in her suicide note, an excerpt from which was published by her cousin, journalist Maria Slonim, on Friday.

“I have to leave; life is unbearable. Unbearable ever since Putin attacked Ukraine and started killing innocent people, while here in Russia he endlessly imprisons thousands of people who are suffering and dying there because, like me, they are against the war and the killings. <...> I tried to help them, but my strength is gone, and I suffer day and night over my impotence. I am ashamed, but I have given up. Please forgive me,” Litvinova wrote.

Slonim noted that state-run RIA Novosti and Gazeta.ru reported on her cousin’ suicide without publishing the contents of her suicide note.

“No one, <...> of course, will publish the note. The reasons for her death are too graphic, and we decided to show the real reasons: Putin killed her!” Slonim wrote.

The late human rights activist is the granddaughter of Maxim Litvinov, former Council of People’s Commissars for Foreign Affairs, and the sister of Pavel Litvinov, a participant of the 1968 Red Square demonstration on 25 August 1968 against the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Litvinova has been helping political prisoners since the 1960s, Nobel-winning human rights organisation Memorial wrote in her obituary. During the Soviet years, she read and distributed samizdat, attended trials, visited her brother and other dissidents in exile, bringing them letters, books, and packages.

For the past eight years, Litvinova has traveled to Petrozavodsk for the trials of historian Yury Dmitriyev, attended hearings on the cases of Memorial co-chair Oleg Orlov and director Yevgeniya Berkovich, and assisted many unknown political prisoners.