How we helped political prisoners this summer, and what comes next
11.09.2025
Hello!
This is Ksenia Fadeeva from the Marathon of solidarity with political prisoners “You are not alone”.
I can see even from my own social media that people are tired of hearing about political prisoners. Post a silly selfie in the park and you get fifteen hundred likes. Write about how important it is to support political prisoners and write to them, and you’re lucky if 300 people like it.
And do you know what gets even fewer likes and views? A report on the help we’ve given, of course!
We’ve added up the results of the Marathon’s work over the summer, and I’m sharing them with you. Since 1 June, 241 people have asked us for help: relatives of political prisoners, activists from support groups, and people persecuted for political reasons who are not in custody.
170 political prisoners received help. They were able to see their loved ones during visits, eat proper food and get medical care. We spent 6,999,600 roubles on this help. We already have a plan to help 156 political prisoners, and we have allocated 15,736,800 roubles to it — enough only until the end of December.
Unfortunately, we’ve had to cut the amount per person drastically. In fact, the minimum a prisoner needs each month is 20,000 roubles; the amount we’d like to give, enough for good-quality food and basic necessities, is 30,000.
This year we pay out an average of 10,000 roubles a month — we simply can’t manage more.
About 80% of all our requests are for paying for parcels or topping up prison accounts. With this money prisoners can buy the everyday items and food they need, for example:
We’ve calculated that to keep helping in 2026 at even this minimal level, we need to raise 3,000,000 roubles in donations every month. At the moment the Marathon receives 1,400,000 roubles a month.
Around 8,000 other people are receiving this letter along with you. If each of them set up a recurring donation of 5 euros, we would receive about 40,000 euros, or 4,000,000 roubles, a month to help political prisoners, and we could meet the needs of everyone who has turned to us.
Of course, not everyone will open this letter. But you’re here and you’ve read it to the end. So I’m asking you, please, to set up a recurring donation to the Marathon, of whatever amount suits you.
We are grateful to every one of you. We can keep helping people who are behind bars for their beliefs only because you decided not to look away from someone else’s misfortune. Thank you so much. Sooner or later, thanks to you, human life in Russia will be valued again.
Kind regards,
Ksenia Fadeeva