Opposing Russia’s war against Ukraine requires great courage in the face of impending political persecution. But anyone who provides even the smallest amount of financial aid to Ukrainians faces legal proceedings and accusations of “high treason.” They are confronted with charges of “providing financial support to a foreign state “ or “providing funds to support the activities of an extremist organisation” (Article 275 alongside Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). We present two stories of opponents of the war in Ukraine that exemplify the absurdity of the Putin-controlled justice system:

Lyudmila Kolesnikova © Memorial

Lyudmila Kolesnikova, born on January 3, 1990, in Yalta, Crimea, served in the Ukrainian police force before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and continued to work for several years as an investigator with the Russian police afterwards. She retained her Ukrainian citizenship. In 2022, she moved to Ireland, where she applied for temporary protection. In June 2024, she travelled to Yalta because of her mother’s illness; her mother died shortly thereafter. A few days after the funeral, on June 27, 2024, Kolesnikova was arrested and sentenced to twelve days of administrative detention just one day later. In fact, she was held for over three months in Pre-Trial Prison No. 2 in Simferopol. In her letters, she wrote: “The place where I was for three months is terrible: without hygiene products, a comb, underwear, or help, in a room with stained-glass windows like in Solzhenitsyn’s books. “ At her trial on October 3, 2024, she was accused of providing Ukraine with financial support equivalent to 25 euros. She was also accused of buying Ukrainian postage stamps, the proceeds of which were allegedly used to purchase drones in Ukraine . On July 25, 2025, she was sentenced to 17 years in prison for high treason.

Nadezhda Rossinskaya © Memorial

Nadezhda Rossinskaya, born on August 4, 1985, and residing in Belgorod, Russia, about 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian-Russian border, worked as a photographer and model. After the start of the Russian invasion, she began helping refugees from the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine by providing them with food and medicine and finding them accommodation. On March 20, 2022, she and her sister, dressed in yellow and blue, went to Belgorod’s Cathedral Square and distributed flower seedlings to passersby free of charge. Subsequently, on April 29, 2022, she was fined 15,000 rubles (approximately €165) for “an anti-war picket line.” To help residents of the front lines and Ukrainian refugees, she and like-minded women founded the volunteer movement “Army of Beauties.” Afterwards, she received threats, and her parents’ greenhouse burned down. In May, she travelled to Turkey, then to Georgia, and coordinated the aid effort from there. Rossinskaya returned at the end of January 2024. She returned to Russia and was arrested on February 1, 2024. The prosecution was able to prove that she had made five money transfers totaling 11,650 Ukrainian hryvnia ( approximately €230). On June 20, 2025, a judge of the Military Court of the 2nd Western District (Moscow) sentenced her to 22 years’ imprisonment in a general-regime penitentiary and a fine of 320,000 rubles (approximately €3,500), followed by a further two years of restricted liberty.

These two women, and many others imprisoned in Russia for their active opposition to the Russian war of aggression or for helping their fellow Ukrainians, deserve our respect. The sentences handed down to them are crimes. The ISHR will continue to report on those sentenced to absurdly long prison terms, so that their names are not forgotten, and they retain the chance of being released after this war ends.