Former political prisoner and anarchist Ilya Romanov is in need of our help. After 20 years of imprisonment in Ukraine and Russia, a stroke, and numerous surgeries, he remains severely disabled — yet he refuses to give up. Ilya continues to paint, stay in touch with friends, and keeps his sharp mind and sense of humor.
Ilya now lives with a full-time caregiver. His ex-wife, human rights activist and political prisoner under the NRA case, Larisa Romanova, helps him from abroad — paying for his care, food, and medicine. However, the funds are insufficient even for basic needs such as annual medication courses, food, and the caregiver’s salary.
Larisa writes (Facebook post):
“Ilya’s condition is stable. In January–February this year, he underwent an excellent annual rehabilitation course at the NPRC on Abramtsevskaya Street — huge thanks to everyone who helped make that possible!
The problem now is that my family and I, who support Ilya, don’t have enough money for even the minimal essentials. Income and pension remain the same, while prices keep rising. In addition, I have been living outside Russia for over a year now — and although I work, adjusting to a new country makes everything quite difficult.”
Who Is Ilya Romanov
The name Ilya Romanov is well-known to anyone familiar with the history of the anarchist movement in Russia and the post-Soviet space. Since the late 1980s, he has organized anarchist circles in Nizhny Novgorod, participated in the squatter and environmental movements, gave lectures, published the newspaper Solntse (The Sun), and supported political prisoners.
In 2002, Ilya was imprisoned in Ukraine under a fabricated SBU case — the so-called Odessa Case . After 10 years of imprisonment and a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling acknowledging Ukraine’s violations, he returned to Russia, where he was arrested again. The reason — the explosion of a firecracker that investigators called “preparation for a terrorist act.”
In 2015, Ilya was sentenced to 9 years in prison, and later another 5.5 years for “promoting terrorism” — over online publications made under his name while he was already imprisoned.
In 2019, while in a punishment cell, Ilya suffered a stroke and fell into a coma. He was released only after appeals by lawyers and human rights activists to the ECHR. Since then, he has lived with severe consequences — right-side paralysis and amputation of a hand — yet remains remarkably resilient and active. For example, Ilya learned to paint using a mechanical prosthesis.
How to Help
Today, Ilya needs financial assistance to live as full a life as possible.
Every transfer is not just help for one person.
It is an act of solidarity with someone who has remained faithful to the ideals of freedom and equality all his life — who fought on many fronts of resistance, endured torture, long years of imprisonment, and sacrificed his health for his beliefs.
Transfer in rubles: 4377 7278 0034 6913 (T-Bank)
PayPal: firesoffreedom@protonmail.com (mark “for Romanov”)
Cryptocurrency:
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Bitcoin: bc1qx63u6p0tlqd40hpcgeln7sksy2hgm0gekgpw8s
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Ethereum: 0xE8A926f292272391707ed1A7b55Db1466F0c0993
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Litecoin: LVxHRweSkkwkNHxY432U2swpEUAMWupsrP
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USDT (ERC20): 0xE8A926f292272391707ed1A7b55Db1466F0c0993
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Monero: 47AqYo1kkbWYeypvDTrNtcBAKPJaHXRNjQsdRhrBm6SNVffeRLfadrqXoQ2FHgPiud6T3vLB5VjS2QKJM9MnZVJJJ8cV9tw
If you send cryptocurrency to support Ilya Romanov, please email firesoffreedom@protonmail.com to confirm your donation.
Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow
You can find the contact addresses of all prisoners in Russia supported by Anarchist Black Cross Moscow here (and instructions how to donate here). If you want to make a donation to a particular prisoner or case, please contact us beforehand via e-mail to make sure that the supporters of the prisoner or case are currently gathering donations, our e-mail is the same as the listed PayPal account. We are present in Telegram and Facebook, you may sign up to our e-mail newsletter here.
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