One of the Moscow regime’s key arguments for starting the war against Ukraine was the alleged “protection of the Russian people” and the “protection of the Russian language.” Yet reality increasingly looks like a mirror refutation of that rhetoric: inside Russia, people are prosecuted and imprisoned even for the Ukrainian language — down to songs saved in a playlist. It becomes a stark sign that behind the slogans of “protection” there is, in fact, a repressive system that punishes culture and identity.

“Better than we feared, but worse than we hoped”

“It could have been better, it could have been worse. A Solomon-like decision,” said Alexander Nesterenko about the ruling of Moscow’s Lyublinsky District Court: on December 19, he was sentenced to three years in a general-regime penal colony for Ukrainian-language songs in a VKontakte playlist.

His wife Irina, whom he married in August this year while in pre-trial detention, said she had booked him a dentist appointment “just in case.” She summed up the verdict bluntly: “Better than we feared, but worse than we hoped.”

Irina added that she now works “in the system” and only now truly understands what the system is: “You can live only if there are people in this system — honest, sincere, fair. It depends only on a person how we hold on in this system. Only thanks to such people, honest, sincere… Such people exist. That’s great. It gives hope.”