Alexey Rozhkov has been sentenced to 16 years for setting fire to a military enlistment office, whilst Ruslan Sidiki has received a prison sentence of 29 years. Sidiki was beaten and received electric shock torture in custody.
Rozhkov made an arson attack on a military enlistment office after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army on March 11th, 2022. He said in an interview:.
“I just understood that I couldn’t stay indifferent. (…) Any war means death for ordinary, simple people. War in the 21st century seems completely alien to me. Especially with such absurd reasons [they gave]. We annexed Crimea in 2014, and even then I said it was all done in vain. Crimea is not ours and never will be. There will be consequences. And that’s exactly what happened.
I find it deeply upsetting that people are dying — civilians are dying, and those who don’t want to fight but were conscripted are also dying. I wanted to make a statement, to get people to fight against this war. I wanted to influence the situation, to do something to stop or at least weaken [the Russian military]. That’s why I set fire to the military enlistment office.”
Rozhkov was abducted from Kyrgyzstan where he had fled, by Putin’s secret police, the FSB. In addition to the arson charge, now updated to “terrorism”, he was also accused of “justifying terrorism” and spreading “fake news” about the Russian military due to an interview he gave to the Khodorkovsky Live channel.
Another anarchist, Roman Shvedov, 39 years old, had been earlier sentenced to the same number of years imprisonment on similar charges. After his sentence, he committed suicide in December 2024..
You can write to Alexei to show support:
Mailing Address:
Rozhkov Alexey Igorevich, born 1997
Repina St. 4, SIZO-1
620019, Yekaterinburg, Russia
Letters should be written in Russian, you may use automatic online translation tools.
Ruslan Sidiki
Ruslan Sidiki, a Russian-Italian, was sentenced by a military court in Ryazan to 29 years , nine years of which in a prison, and the rest in a maximum security prison. He was accused of derailing a freight train and attacking a military airfield near Ryazan on the orders of Ukrainian special services. He denied working for Ukraine. Here is part of his final statement in court:
My targets were Russian military equipment and the logistical chains used to transport military hardware and fuel. In this way, I wanted to impede military operations against Ukraine…I have said more than once that I had no intention of deliberately intimidating anyone. I chose the targets myself. I attacked the military aircraft parking area, intending to destroy the aircraft. The train was derailed to disable the railway line on which I had observed the movement of military equipment.
I would like to point out that I monitored the train traffic on the line I sabotaged and made sure there were no passenger trains running on it. For additional assurance, I maintained visual contact. If I had been indifferent to people’s lives, I could have derailed the train without direct involvement…The impossibility of peacefully influencing the authorities’ actions and the criminal prosecution of those who disagree with them leads some to leave the country, while others decide to take action.In any case, regardless of the severity of the act, the use of torture during interrogation is unacceptable if we live in a state governed by the rule of law. To torture someone with electric shocks and beat them while they are tied up is an utterly despicable act. Responsibility here lies not only with those who used these interrogation methods but also with those who know about it, those who fail to react, and those who help to cover it up.
And finally, I will read an excerpt from a poem by Nestor Makhno*:
“Let them bury us now,
But our essence will not sink into oblivion,
It will rise up at the necessary hour
And will triumph, I believe in this.”
As soon as we obtain an address for Ruslan, we will publish it
*Nestor Makhno , Ukrainian anarchist who inspired a mass insurrectionary movement during the Russian Civil war.
Photo: Ruslan Sidiki