“She’s Practically Blind Already!”

• Irina Khalip
• 12.06.2026, 13:41

"Terrorists" are the most vulnerable political prisoners.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Crimean Tatar partisans who are active in the occupied territories and, more recently, throughout Russia. These are fearless people, including both Ukrainians and Russians, but it was the Crimean Tatars who laid the foundation for their partisan struggle. Their movement is called “ATESH”—“fire” in the Crimean Tatar language.

Of course, the movement is recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia. Two years ago, I wrote in “Novaya Gazeta Europe” about a military veteran from the Nizhny Novgorod region who received an 18-year sentence for treason after being accused of distributing “ATESH” leaflets. By the way, those leaflets read: “Let’s stop the war together!” A very terrorist-like call, straight out of Bin Laden’s playbook.
And I immediately thought of our “terrorists”—with the same sentences and charges. For example, Olga Mayorova. A former political prisoner from the Rechitsa colony recently told me how a guard once asked her: “Why don’t you talk to Mayorova? You’re both political prisoners.” She replied: “Well, Mayorova doesn’t say hello to me—she probably doesn’t recognize me.” The guard burst out laughing: “Oh, she’s just almost blind—she can’t see a damn thing!”

Olga Mayorova lost her sight there, behind bars. Her sentence in the Avtukhovich “terrorism” case is 21 years and six months. The gist of the charge is that she ran Nikolai Avtukhovich’s Telegram channel . Olga has been in prison for five and a half years now. If she doesn’t receive medical care, she risks losing her sight completely. But what kind of help is there, when Olga, with her “terrorist” status, isn’t even allowed to receive medical care packages?

In the Gomel colony, there is another “terrorist,” Irina Melcher. Irina turned 70 last year. And her sentence is 17 years for “terrorism.” Irina and her son Anton were arrested when they began searching for Nikolai Avtukhovich’s acquaintances. At the time, they were rounding up everyone in sight to portray him in court not as a romantic revolutionary, but as the leader of a terrorist gang. They fabricated the “gang” themselves. The Melcher family was friends with the family of priest Rezanovich—he had already been detained along with his wife and son. Perhaps they found correspondence or photos on a phone—and went after the Melchers. And since the Rezanovichs, in turn, were friends with Avtukhovich, the security forces simply followed the chain without further ado.

Irina was sent to solitary confinement even before the trial, in the pretrial detention center, for refusing to confess on camera. In court, by the way, the only thing they could charge her with was participating in a protest march in Brest in August 2020. That’s all. 17 years. Last year, in the penal colony, Irina—who was already in her eighties and had no fewer health problems than Olga Mayorova—was sent to solitary confinement.

Railway partisan Sergei Konovalov, who worked in an office on the Vitebsk railway, was imprisoned based on a tip-off from a colleague. The colleague simply reported “to the appropriate authorities” that Konovalov was allegedly planning a sabotage operation. The result: a 15-year sentence for a “terrorist act” that never happened. And recently I learned that, as it turns out, Sergei Konovalov has already had two two-year extensions added under Article 411, and now his total sentence is 19 years. The media didn’t cover this much—I read about it on the Viasna website.
Those “railway partisans” who disabled the equipment on the railroad are serving their twenty-year sentences, and we’re even forgetting their names. They didn’t kill anyone, didn’t injure anyone, didn’t cause any harm—they simply slowed down the movement of Russian military cargo on the Belarusian railway. And they put a stop to the Kremlin’s desire to haul its weapons through Belarus—it’s dangerous. These heroes are serving massive sentences; their portraits aren’t paraded through Western offices, and Cole won’t fly in from America to visit them. But it is precisely they—with their long prison terms, their “terrorist” status, and the ban on money transfers and even medical care packages from their families—who are the most vulnerable political prisoners. And we must all fight for them together—speak out, write, shout, demand, and remind. Repeat their names so they aren’t overshadowed by news from the front lines.

Incidentally, it was precisely after our rail sabotage actions that spontaneous, self-organized groups also emerged in Russia, which began setting fire to military registration offices and disabling relay cabinets. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Crimean Tatar movement was also partly inspired by them. We used to read about the rail war in Belarus in history textbooks. We’ll read about the second rail war someday.

Irina Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org