In July 2025 Yury DMITRIEV was sent from Camp 18 to the Barashevo medical centre for prisoners in Mordovia for a regular check-up, report colleagues in contact with his defence attorney. While there the hospital director Alexander Yakovlev condemned him on 1 August to 13 days in the cooler (solitary confinement).

Dmitriev’s health has worsened considerably during his imprisonment; he is 69 years old and is currently serving the ninth year of a 15-year sentence. At times he is simply unable to stand due to his dizziness.

For two years the camp authorities have not investigated the suspicion that he has cancer although the related symptoms have become more and more serious.

This time the camp administration failed to send Dmitriev’s medical records with him. When they finally arrived, Dmitriev was already being punished for sitting on his bed, supposedly, ten minutes earlier than official rest time was permitted.

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The imposition of such a punishment at the hospital, and for such an offence, might seem absurd were it not for the date.

This, it seems, is how the administration chose to mark the Remembrance Day for Victims of the Great Terror. For 20 years on 5 August, Dmitriev organised an act of remembrance at Sandarmokh where more than 6,000 were killed and buried in 1937-1938.

The day was marked again this year, despite everything, and Dmitriev’s supporters expressed the hope that even in the punishment cell he could feel “the support and gratitude of people who preserve the memory of the crimes of the past and a sober view of the present.”

(This report was published on 5 August on the Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/delo.dmitrieva, by Alexandra Kononova, formerly a student at the Moscow Film School, see top photo in right-hand column.)

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