Translated material
Family stages
Traditional Russian values are to imprison father and son, brother and sister, mother and daughter
Photo: URA.RU / TASS
Alexander Dotsenko, an artist-jeweler from Gatchina, died yesterday. In prison. And it is unlikely that his wife, artist Anastasia Dyudyaeva, will be allowed to say goodbye to him. Because she is also in prison.
The married couple was convicted in the summer of 2024 - found guilty of calls for “terrorist activities”: they left notes with pacifist inscriptions in the Lenta store. The terms are almost symbolic by today’s standards - 3.5 and 3 years in a colony-settlement, but...
At the beginning of 2026, Alexander Dotsenko (he is 65 years old) suffered a massive heart attack in the colony. The attack occurred on February 12, 2026, the man was urgently hospitalized. Doctors assessed his condition as critical at the time. Over the next week, the man seemed to begin to regain consciousness, but on February 17 he became worse and was put into a medical coma. At the same time, the convict’s relatives and lawyer have great difficulty in extracting information about Alexander’s state of health.
Planting as a family is something we know how to do, it is our dear and loved one. And it’s not a new phenomenon at all, but a method developed over decades. The beginning was laid by Stalin, who repressed his own relatives through his two wives, as well as the relatives of his comrades-in-arms, not to mention the entire country...
The method is simple: suspicion falls on one person, then on the rest of the family members, including even children. They punished wives, adult children, brothers, sisters, relatives of the wife, husband, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law... The older ones, at best, went to camps, the very young ones to orphanages (this was their personal sentence and personal punishment - for their parents).
Under Stalin, there were tens or hundreds of thousands of these destroyed families (it’s hard to say exactly, since the authorities still have a tight grip on closed archives). Now there are dozens.
Before the SVO, the imprisonment of the entire family was, perhaps, more often than not an isolated case, but always known and hotly discussed. Families of bakers, merchants, and small entrepreneurs were imprisoned for selling poppy seeds and other things that the now abolished Federal Drug Control Service considered a crime. Navalny’s brother was imprisoned as a hostage in the Yves Rocher case. A couple from Kaliningrad was imprisoned for publishing a photo from a wedding where the guest was an FSB officer. He also reported... The cases caused resonance, bewilderment, reports and articles.
Now news about family landings has become commonplace. They are used to the landing of families.
According to security officials, people with entire families suddenly began to “attempt” treason, sabotage, terrorist attacks and simply began to think poorly about the authorities and special operations.
Husbands and wives, parents, older children get sentences... The end result is what we have: an atmosphere of total loneliness and defenselessness of minor children in the face of the state, which every now and then declares that it seems to care about them. But some kind of very peculiar care results - refusals to mothers (women who are not dangerous to society) in alternative preventive measures and deferments of punishment until the child is 14 years old.
Well, the main natural feature of repression, both in the Soviet period and today, is that the authorities with manic persistence promote “family values.” And at the same time, these same families are easily destroyed by jailings and laws, thereby creating the preconditions for new intergenerational trauma. Trauma that cannot be reflected on. Don't get rid of it. Can't heal.
We remind you of the stories of Russian families destroyed over the past four years. The most famous.
The case of Alexandra Strilets and her disabled infant daughter
A story that makes mentally normal people feel everything inside. A court in Sevastopol in 2025 sentenced Alexandra Strilets and her mother to 12 years in prison on charges of high treason for allegedly transferring photos of Russian military facilities to the Ukrainian side.
Alexandra has two small children left at large: her youngest daughter was only four months old at the time of her sentencing. The court did not delay the mother's punishment, even though the child was born weighing 530 grams, with bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and has been in intensive care since the first day of life because she cannot breathe on her own. The girl lay in intensive care during those hours when the judge read out the verdict to her mother and grandmother (suffering from a serious illness). He read it without flinching.
In the same way, nothing wavered inside and at the higher authority - the verdict was upheld. Novaya has written a lot about this case and will continue to do so.
Now the father takes care of both children independently. About 30 thousand rubles are required monthly for medicine, food and diapers for my youngest daughter. The man is also trying to deliver parcels to his wife and her mother, who are in custody. He practically doesn't have time to work. You can help your family on the “At the same time” platform.
Husband, wife and mother
At the beginning of 2026, a court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced an entire family from Melitopol to terms ranging from 20 years to life on charges of partisan activity in the annexed territories. Artem Murdid was sentenced to life, his wife Anna Voshkoder - to 20 years, his mother Anna Murdid - to 22 years. According to security officials, in June 2022, “being an adherent of pro-Ukrainian ideology,” Artem Murdid began collaborating with the SBU, and then involved his wife and mother in this. The motive, according to the prosecution, was “hostile attitude towards the Russian Federation.”
Family members told reporters that they testified under torture. There are no details about the trial - it was held behind closed doors.
Three brothers
Three sons of Lipetsk priest Igor Ashcheulov were convicted in July 2024. They were accused of trying to get to Ukraine and join the “Freedom of Russia” legion there, banned by the Russian authorities*. 24-year-old Ioann Ashcheulov was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison, 20-year-old Alexey and 19-year-old Timofey Ashcheulov received 17 years each (with the first three years to be served in prison, and the remaining term in a maximum security correctional colony).
The court found the brothers guilty of “attempted treason,” “an attempt to illegally cross the state border by a group of persons by prior conspiracy,” as well as “an attempt to participate in the activities of a terrorist organization.”
That is, not in the deed, but in the intentions.
In court, all three brothers confirmed that the circumstances in the case materials were presented correctly, but refused to plead guilty to anything. The prosecutor said during the debate that mitigating circumstances include the fact that the Ashcheulov brothers “actively contributed to the investigation,” as well as the serious illness of their mother. With all this, the prosecutor asked to sentence each of the brothers to 18 years in prison. The 2nd Western District Military Court gave almost that much.
Family of Razumova and Martynov
At the beginning of the special operation, artist Lyudmila Razumova and her companion Alexander Martynov posted news about the SVO on social networks and left pacifist graffiti at bus stops and shops in their native Konakovo, Tver Region. A month later, they were arrested for “vandalism,” adding to the charge an article about military “fakes” based on “motives of political hatred.”
In March 2023, Razumova was sentenced to seven years in prison, Martynov was given six and a half. The criminal prosecution, the pre-trial detention center and the trial itself destroyed the civil marriage: Alexander, hoping that this would help, did not actively defend himself and did not touch upon the topic of the SVO and his attitude towards it, Lyudmila, on the contrary, spoke in court with emotional involvement and indifference to what was happening. The couple moved away from each other. Today in the colonies both are literally fighting for survival.
Martynov sought dental treatment for a long time and experienced extreme pain. Lyudmila went on hunger strike, demanding respect for her rights and basic medical care. The colony administration often sends her to a punishment cell and arranges various provocations. The woman still has a minor daughter and an adult son at large.
No one is waiting for Alexander Martynov to be free - his mother died after his arrest, and the house burned down.
Two brothers and a sister
In December 2025, a family from the Urals - two brothers Artem (41 years old) and Alexey (44 years old) Nazarov and their sister Tatyana (46 years old) Nazarova - were arrested on charges of preparing a terrorist attack. They were also included in Rosfinmonitoring’s list of terrorists and extremists—a key stigma of the modern era, on par with the labels “foreign agent” and “undesirable organization.” There are no details about the family, except that they lived in the village of Verkhneye Dubrovo in the Beloyarsky district of the Sverdlovsk region and that Tatyana Nazarova’s full namesake once worked as a director at a local library. The trial was closed to the extent of suppression. It is only known that the case is being conducted by Moscow investigators and that the brothers and sister face up to 10 years in prison.
According to state media, the defendants tried to appeal the court's arrest decision, but were denied.
Brother and sister
Danila Bagrov was arrested back in August 2024, when he had just turned 18 years old. The young man was accused of planning to fight against the Russian army as part of the Russian Volunteer Corps*. He allegedly corresponded with his representatives and bought a ticket to Georgia to then go to Ukraine.
Danila’s sister, Eva Bagrova, who was then in the 8th grade, was detained three months after her brother’s arrest, in December 2024. A few days before, photographs of RDK participants appeared on the information stand at the school. The investigation considered that the portraits were hung by Eva. She was accused of publicly justifying terrorism and was placed in a pre-trial detention center, but in March she was transferred to house arrest.
Later she was charged with another charge of involvement in committing crimes of a terrorist nature. Allegedly, the schoolgirl recruited a boy who had not yet reached the age of criminal responsibility to post leaflets.
In court, both Eva and the same boy retracted their confessions and stated that they were under pressure. Eva said that the security forces threatened her with violence against herself, her father and brother.
On September 16, 2025, the court sentenced Danila Bagrov to 9 years of imprisonment in a maximum security colony with the first three years to be served in prison. A month later, Eva Bagrova also received her sentence - 4 years in an educational colony. She was taken into custody in the courtroom.
Father and son
In February 2026, a father and son from the Zaporozhye region were sentenced to 12.5 years and 15 years in prison in the case of “committing sabotage,” “participation in a sabotage community,” as well as “using ammunition and explosives.”
The father is 56 years old, the son is 25. Their names are still unknown. As are the details of the closed trial. Only a dry message from the press service of the prosecutor’s office: “ As a result of a planned operation, men in September 2023 blew up two units of military equipment of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, causing damage in excess of 17.6 million rubles .”
That is, the family doesn’t even have a name. Only the criminal case number.
Uncle and nephew Krieger
The story of these two political prisoners in one family is already known to many. A representative of the older generation - an entrepreneur and participant in the human rights movement in Moscow since the early 90s - Mikhail Krieger paid for his views in the fall of 2022. A year later, he was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of calling for extremism and justifying terrorism due to the same pacifist posts .
“ The case was made up of nothing, Uncle Misha is not a terrorist,” commented his nephew, the young journalist Artem Kriger, who decided not to leave Russia after the SVO, commenting on the criminal prosecution of Krieger Sr. The security forces came for Krieger Jr. in the summer of 2024. More precisely, they didn’t come, they broke into the apartment early in the morning and reported that he was a suspect in the case of participation in the activities of an extremist organization - the Anti-Corruption Foundation**. Krieger Jr. himself denies this collaboration.
Artem received his sentence of 5 years 6 months in 2025.
Today both uncle and nephew are already in the colonies. Different. The first is 66 years old, the second is 25. According to their relatives, both are trying very hard to hold on, despite provocations, regular placement in a punishment cell and forced hunger strikes (they are periodically organized by Mikhail Krieger, thereby trying to defend their rights), as well as the same stigma:
Krieger Jr. is on the list of “terrorists and extremists,” Krieger Sr. is a “foreign agent.”
...How do relatives of repressed families live today? The same thing that such families lived before and that is now sometimes studied by world scientists and specialists in psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Social stigma, discrimination, traumatic events, isolation of loved ones, long separation, poverty, fear, silence, survival, lack of information - all this gives rise to transgenerational trauma, or generational trauma, transmitted in families to descendants.
In a word, nothing has changed. Let’s take some year at random for comparison. Well, at least it’s 1940. I deliberately take time after the Great Terror. History teacher at school No. 168 in Moscow Noemia Rubinstein. Arrested on charges of “anti-Soviet agitation.” At a special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR she was sentenced to 5 years in the camps. She served her sentence in the Karaganda ITL. Next, her brother Lev, a junior researcher at the Academy of Sciences, was repressed - the same term, but in the Vorkuta ITL. They also arrested her husband, Georgy Litinsky, an employee of the editorial office of the Teatral magazine, and sent him to a camp in Komi to cut down forest.
Or 1953. It would seem... A month before the leader’s death, in February 1953, his son-in-law, the young composer Moses Weinberg, was sent to Lubyanka prison for his connection with the MGB director Mikhoels, who was killed five years earlier. The late Mikhoels at that time in the Soviet press was called nothing less than a “bourgeois nationalist” and an agent of the Joint, and also the main defendant in the “Doctors’ Case” (allegedly he was the initiator of a “conspiracy” between the Joint organization and the accused doctors). In addition to Mikhoels’s son-in-law, his cousin, a famous doctor, Professor Miron Vovsi, and Vovsi’s wife, also a doctor, are also arrested. And a dozen other doctors and their wives...
But the “doctors’ work” turned out to be the first task that Stalin could not complete - as you know, closer to March 5, he began to experience Cheyne-Stokes breathing...
All the defendants in the “doctors’ case,” along with their wives, as well as Mikhoels’ son-in-law, were released from custody almost immediately after breathing stopped. And the slander in Pravda and Izvestia was refuted.
A striking example (one out of tens of thousands): the parents of the future hematologist scientist Andrei Vorobyov: the father, a doctor, was shot, the mother, a biologist, was sentenced to 10 years in labor camp, then there was exile, then again a sentence. The authorities sent the child to a boarding school.
...They also sometimes take revenge on the relatives of those repressed. Most often, because they make the mistakes and lawlessness of the security forces, trials and investigations public. Thus, at the beginning of 2026, a court in Khakassia fined the sister of a convicted entrepreneur for a video that described torture and the “seizure” of a business by the police. Back in 2019, Krasnoyarsk resident Vladimir Tsyganov was sentenced to 21 years in a maximum security colony in a case of fraud, robbery, kidnapping and murder to obtain expensive apartments for sale. The convict’s sister, Margarita Krasevich, said in her video that the head of the 4th criminal investigation department of the Krasnoyarsk Ministry of Internal Affairs, Pavel Tokureev, and other police officers who were involved in Tsyganov’s case allegedly participated in the “seizure” of his real estate, equipment, transport and business assets. And my brother agreed to this after being tortured in the operatives’ office and in pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Krasnoyarsk. The security forces were offended. In September 2023, the Abakan City Court ordered Krasevich to remove the video from social networks, as it “discredits the honor, dignity and reputation” of police officers. The woman was also charged 20 thousand rubles as compensation for moral damage.
A “refutation” of the video appeared on one of the TG channels, but it also cited the words of another entrepreneur who allegedly spoke about the pressure exerted by the same security forces. Then a criminal case for libel was opened against the convict’s sister. The courts acted promptly - this is not torture based on complaints “tolerated” to be considered. This time, the fine for the sister of the convicted person was 15 times larger - 300 thousand rubles. Moreover, in the court in the sister’s case, the brother himself spoke via video link and told the judges how in the Krasnoyarsk pre-trial detention center they “stuck needles under his nails and into his tongue, put a boiler in his mouth and turned it on, and also beat him.” Not impressed.