Third Political Prisoner Dies in Russia This Month – Report

A Russian television production designer arrested after returning from Kyiv to renew his passport has died in a Moscow hospital, the rights group First Department reported Monday, Oct. 26.Aleksandr Kondratov, 52, was transferred from a pretrial detention center to Botkin Hospital on Oct. 23, the group said in a Telegram post⁠.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.The cause of death has not been disclosed. First Department said his death was at least the 11th this year among defendants in cases it considers politically motivated.Kondratov had lived in Kyiv since 2012 and returned to Russia to replace his passport, according to rights monitors. He was subsequently held through repeated administrative arrests before authorities opened a treason investigation.Passport trip leads to months in detentionKondratov was detained at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on May 5.Before the criminal case was opened, he spent more than 70 days under successive administrative arrests for alleged petty hooliganism, OVD-Info said. Such repeated short sentences are commonly described by Russian rights monitors as carousel arrests.The treason case was opened Aug. 5 and investigated by the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) directorate for Moscow and the Moscow region.Mediazona reported⁠ from a Moscow City Court hearing in September that his lawyer, Natalia Tikhonova, said the case concerned “at least six publications” online. She did not disclose their contents.The court rejected an appeal against his detention. The publicly reported details do not establish what the posts said or how investigators argued they constituted treason. Other Topics of Interest 12-Year-Old Boy Dies After Weeklong Fight for Life Following Russian Strike on Nova Vodolaha Park Artem Koval was critically wounded during a Russian drone strike on a crowded park in Nova Vodolaha on Oct. 19. His eight-year-old sister, Arina, died at the scene. Kondratov was best known for his work as production designer on “Likvidatsiya” (“Liquidation”), a 2007 crime drama set in postwar Odesa. He received Golden Eagle and TEFI awards for his work on the series. His other credits included Odesa-Mama and Return My Love.Rights group records at least 11 deaths this yearFirst Department’s death count covers those among individuals prosecuted in politically motivated cases. It is a rights-monitoring assessment, rather than an official Russian category or a finding that all the deaths had the same cause.The Moscow Times reported⁠ that Kondratov was the third such defendant whose death became known in October.The other two were Igor Yakovenko, 52, who died in a Krasnodar detention center, and Rustam Khalikov, 49, who died in a penal colony in the Penza region. Both had been convicted on terrorism-related charges that their defense teams disputed, according to the outlet.The newspaper said that eight of the 11 people in its tally had entered custody aged 50 or older. It described complaints about detention conditions, pressure from prison administrations, and difficulties obtaining medical treatment.Those broader allegations do not establish the circumstances of Kondratov’s death. The reports announcing it did not identify a medical cause.Campaigners warn prisoners may not survive their sentencesKondratov’s death follows renewed appeals by Russian human rights campaigners for international attention to those imprisoned in politically motivated cases.Earlier in October, Memorial estimated that more than 1,800 people in Russia were recognized as political prisoners. Its broader estimate of individuals imprisoned or facing politically motivated prosecution was approximately 5,700.At an event in the French National Assembly on Oct. 7, Memorial co-chair Oleg Orlov urged European lawmakers⁠ to prioritize prisoners whose health and circumstances put them at particular risk.“While there is still a chance, we must save at least some of those who will not survive imprisonment,” he said.Orlov asked lawmakers to follow individual prisoners’ cases, speak about them publicly and maintain scrutiny of their treatment. His appeal focused on securing releases while prisoners could still benefit from them, warning that some might otherwise die before completing their sentences. Kyiv Post is Ukraine’s first and oldest English news organization, reporting since 1995. Its international reach – 90% of readers are outside of Ukraine – make it truly Ukraine’s global voice.