Happier Times

1 January 20182 January 2018 / editors (JC)

Yury Dmitriev‘s beloved Alsatian Vedma (Witch) died a while back. He himself, as we know, has spent over a year in the Petrozavodsk Detention Centre. During that time he and his foster daughter have not seen one another.

Among the dozens of New Year’s greetings sent to Katerina Klodt via the Russian supporters’ page on Facebook, one simply remembered and named a person at the centre of this whole dreadful case:

“Dearest Katya! May God restore your family to you, and may Papa and Natasha return home …”

footage from Jessica Gorter‘s 2017 film “Red Soul” (De Rode Ziel) of Dmitriev, Witch and Natasha.

Yury Dmitriev was arrested at his apartment in Petrozavodsk on Friday, 13 December 2016, while his wife was at the hospital and Natasha was at school. Natasha was picked up by the Child Protection Agency and today lives with her natural grandmother.

Can we expect a Year of Compassion?

1 January 20182 January 2018 / editors (JC)

“The past twelve months have been difficult and for many, and in many ways, it has not a compassionate year,” writes ANATOLY RAZUMOVSKY in a New Year’s Greeting on the Books of Remembrance website.

“In addition, it was a year of woeful anniversaries.

“One hundred years since Russian history was derailed [October 1917], since the creation of Soviet punitive agencies [December 1917] and the transition to Lenin’s Red Terror. It was also eighty years since Stalin’s Great Terror [1937-1938]. Continue reading →