Irkutsk

Anton is currently being held at Detention Center No. 1 (SIZO-1) in Irkutsk. He needs qualified legal assistance in order to challenge the verdict of the Second District Military Court, which in October sentenced him to six years in prison over two comments posted on Telegram.

Anton left the first comment in the Telegram channel “Irkutsk Blog” in July 2024. Under a post about Governor Igor Kobzev, who considers spending on the war to be a higher priority than repairing schools, Anton wrote:

According to the support group, Irina Viktorovna's date with Anton took place on December 3. According to her, his condition is "more or less ok" and much better than during the last meeting. In November, when she first visited Anton after his sentence, he did not smiled once.

Anton Kalakin is known as Anton 69 in the Irkutsk punk community. He works odd jobs: most recently, he worked as a security guard and repaired boats. He participated in solidarity events, attended punk concerts, helped homeless animals, was interested in local history, and ran a public page about the history of Irkutsk. He lived with his mother.

Ruslan Zinin’s mother Marina Zinina has reported that on March 21 [her son] was transferred to a solitary confinement cell without explanation.

“They came and took him away, saying, ‘Let’s go to another place.’ They put him in the basement in a solitary confinement cell. […] The conditions are terrible. It’s damp and cold and reeks of sewage, and rats are running around, and there’s nothing in the cell at all, except for a cot. There’s nowhere to store food, nowhere to get water, there’s no kettle, there’s nothing.”

Eastern Siberia is a harsh and inhospitable region, which was a place of imprisonment and exile for socialists and anarchists under the tsarist regime. As you can see, history repeats itself.

Here is how the Anarchist Black Cross of Irkutsk sums up the year of its work. It actually coincided with the anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine:

Logging truck driver Ruslan Zinin grabbed a sawed-off shotgun when, in the wake of the “partial” mobilization’s annoucement, a summons arrived for his brother. On September 26, Zinin went to the military enlistment office in Ust-Ilimsk (Irkutsk Region). Military commissar Alexander Yeliseyev was giving a speech as he dispatched dozens of people to the slaughter.

Hi everyone! Today is Sunday, 20 of November and we continue our weekly podcast “Trends of order and chaos” This is episode 81. These are the main topics on past week’s agenda.

On the morning of September 1st, 34-year-old anarchist Alexey ”Socrates” Sutuga died, due to severe head injuries, in the intensive care unit of the Sklifosovsky Institute. For more than a week, doctors fought for his life, but the injuries were too serious.