Help Russian Political Prisoners and Their Families

Every day, hundreds of people in Russia remain behind bars for peacefully opposing the war, defending human rights, or speaking out against the government. Many are subjected to torture, denied medical care, held in punitive isolation, and cut off from the outside world.

At the same time, their families are left to face overwhelming financial and emotional burdens alone. They struggle to pay for legal defense, prison visits, food, medicine, and fines imposed by the authorities.

Freedom Zone is a volunteer-run human rights initiative supporting Russian political prisoners and their families with direct financial assistance. Every donation goes where it is needed most—to people affected by political repression.

Even small contributions make a real difference: helping a wife visit her imprisoned husband, covering legal fees for an elderly mother, or ensuring a political prisoner can buy food inside prison.

Please stand with Russian political prisoners and their loved ones. Your support can help protect dignity, preserve hope, and save lives.

Russian political prisoners and their families urgently need your support.

The human rights organization Freedom Zone asks for your attention and solidarity. Without your help, opponents of Vladimir Putin's regime who are being held in inhumane prison conditions risk losing their health—or even their lives—before they ever regain their freedom.

Why is this not merely our concern, but a very real threat?

There are several reasons.

1. Reports of torture and abuse continue to emerge from Russian prisons.

Human rights defenders regularly receive testimonies about torture, ill-treatment, and other forms of abuse in Russian detention facilities. Political prisoners are denied medical care, arbitrarily placed in punitive isolation cells, beaten, and tortured. Sometimes previously healthy people die unexpectedly in custody, with authorities claiming suicide as the cause of death.

2. The system is deliberately shielding itself from accountability and cutting political prisoners off from outside assistance

In the autumn of 2025, Russia denounced the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture. In practice, this means that international monitoring bodies can no longer access Russian places of detention, allowing virtually anything to happen behind closed prison doors without independent oversight.

Russia's Supreme Court declared Memorial—recipient of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize—an "extremist organization." Memorial was the country's leading organization supporting political prisoners. Today, even donating to Memorial or sharing its publications, including information about political prisoners, can expose Russian citizens to criminal prosecution.

Under these circumstances, Russian political prisoners and their families have only one remaining source of hope: support from people abroad.

That is why we are reaching out to you today.

Please help Russian political prisoners and their families!

Freedom Zone is run entirely by volunteers. None of our team members receive any portion of the donations we collect.

Every donation goes directly toward helping victims of political repression and their families.

At this very moment, we have urgent requests that remain unfunded:

€338 is needed to enable the wife of a political prisoner to travel for a long family visit with her husband.

€337 is needed by an elderly mother to cover legal fees for her imprisoned daughter.

€170 is needed by a political prisoner to replenish his prison account so he can purchase food from the prison commissary.

€282 is needed by the mother of a political prisoner to pay a court-imposed fine.

For security reasons, we do not disclose the names of political prisoners or their family members