November 24, 2025
From prison, a prominent critic of Putin and the war calls for an end to the conflict.
Boris Kagarlitsky was first arrested in July 2023 in connection with a video deleted on YouTube about the explosion of the Crimean Bridge in 2022. His case reveals the cruelty and absurdity of what is happening.
Kagarlitsky is perhaps Russia's most prominent left-wing intellectual, a Marxist critic of both Western imperialism and Putin's domestic authoritarianism.
After spending almost five months in a pre-trial detention center 1,000 kilometers from Moscow, Kagarlitsky was found guilty but released with a fine of 609 thousand rubles.
Supporters raised the money in less than an hour. However, paying the fine was complicated by the fact that Kagarlitsky was already classified as both a “foreign agent” and a “terrorist or extremist” (general terms aimed at anti-war advocates remaining in Russia), and was therefore legally prohibited from conducting financial transactions.
The state then appealed his December release because the fine had not been paid. Eight weeks later, a military court overturned the December sentence and imposed a harsher prison term of five years.
Kagarlitsky is currently serving his sentence in correctional colony No. 4 in Torzhok, 155 kilometers from Moscow. On November 8, he was sent to solitary confinement for three days; reasons not specified. On November 20, lawyer Yulia Kuznetsova appealed to the head of the colony with a request to hospitalize Kagarlitsky: according to Kuznetsova, the health of the 66-year-old prisoner had deteriorated.
Current number
Kagarlitsky is one of the most famous Russian political prisoners. There are others, much less visible, including many labor rights advocates, environmentalists, and advocates for ethnic and racial minorities, that no one writes or talks about. According to the UN Human Rights Committee in Russia, there are still more than 2,000 political prisoners in Russia, at least 120 of whom are “in immediate danger due to critical health, age or disability.”
Kagarlitsky demanded that he No be included in any exchanges. “I have repeatedly stated and repeat once again,” insisted Kagarlitsky, “that I do not want to participate in such exchanges… I do not see the point or benefit for myself in emigration. If I wanted to leave the country, I would do it myself.”
Just last weekend, Kagarlitsky posted the following comments about the Trump administration's 28-point plan to end the war in Ukraine:
The twenty-eight points proposed by Trump, as they are now published, look rather strange. Many aspects are written unclearly, vaguely, ambiguous and quite contradictory. The only thing that is described in great detail and detail is the financial part. It is clear that Donald Trump has remained true to himself here: everything related to money is the only important and significant thing in this situation.
It is clear that all these documents will be processed and settled in the near future; there will be further negotiations where things will be clarified and explained. The resulting document will likely be significantly different from what we read today.
But if we take today’s document, the main conclusion that for some reason comes to me is the following: Ukraine looks like the losing side, and Russia in this situation does not look like the winning side. The only winner in this war, according to Trump, is the United States of America.
And yet the most important thing is that the conflict must end. However, this happens if they stop killing people, if cities stop being destroyed, if the sides stop exchanging blows, this will already be good news. Therefore, we can only hope that this document, albeit very crude, very strange, and at times unpleasant, will still become an important milestone on the path to peace.
—Boris Kagarlitsky, from colony No. 4.
