As he was transferred through various jails of Russia’s vast prison system, Oleg Orlov had a mission: to find out how many political prisoners there were in each facility.

The veteran dissident, freed in August in the biggest Russia-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, knew the lists.

His Nobel Prize-winning rights organisation Memorial has painstakingly recorded the names of people jailed for denouncing Moscow’s Ukraine invasion.

The 71-year-old was one of them: sentenced to 2.5 years for speaking out in an article against the military offensive.

But what he found left him in no doubt: Russia has “a lot more” political prisoners than rights groups know of.

On top of the known cases, “in each jail, I found there were just as many people for whom there is a basis to count them as being in prison for politics,” he said.

“We knew nothing about them.”

Now free and living in Berlin, his life aim is to get them out.

Forced into exile after never planning to leave Russia, Orlov has struggled with his freedom, his mind focused on those left behind.

He often thinks of one cell mate: 29-year-old Alexei Malyarevsky, imprisoned for putting up posters condemning late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s sentence.

“He got seven years. A young man…,” Orlov said.

“The feeling is numbing: I am here and he is there.”

Hopelessness

Orlov managed to avoid “all conflicts” in prison and tried to speak to everyone, intent on finding the people he thought could be considered political detainees.

“There is contact between cells, even if they try to limit it,” he said.

He witnessed how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has transformed its massive penitentiary network, with prison authorities trying to “recruit literally everyone” to fight in the war.

He laughed as he recalled how guards tried to recruit him, too.

“I told them: do you understand how old I am and why I am here?”

The issue divided prisoners and Orlov took part in convict discussions on whether it was worth fighting in return for their freedom — if they survive.

The vast majority of those who joined up, did so wanting a “clean biography and money”, he said, rather than out of patriotism.

He also met jailed deserters: three men who told him most of their unit had been killed and that, facing almost certain death, they had decided to run.

Orlov said they were “traumatised psychologically” and, facing a massive sentence, one considered returning to the front to try to regain his freedom.

“It’s (out of) total hopelessness,” he sighed.

Wish to go to Ukraine

Now that he is free, Orlov also has another wish: to travel to Ukraine to see the war that he denounced with his own eyes and document war crimes.

“I hope it will be possible,” he said.

He has chronicled war crimes before, dedicating a large part of his work to the Chechnya wars.

“I would like Russian rights defenders to be able to visit Ukraine,” he said.

“I think it’s very important to get involved in the work of recording the crimes of this war and for it to be done by Russian rights defenders, too.”

He did not say at which stage the plans are and it is unclear whether Ukraine would allow it.

Orlov has condemned the invasion since the day the President Vladimir Putin sent in troops in 2022.

He dismissed the notion of huge popular support for the war in Russia, but also said it is not just “Putin’s war” and many Russians are enriching themselves on the back of the invasion.

“It cannot be denied that a significant part (of society) — not the majority but a noticeable part — are beneficiaries of the war,” he said.

Stunned

As he travels through European cities, Orlov often blinks and thinks he sees a Moscow street — still barely believing what has happened to him.

Around 10 days before his release, guards told him to sign a request for presidential pardon, which he refused.

Then he was woken at dawn, told he was being transferred and put in a prison van.

“The doors opened. I was stunned. I thought I would see a penal colony but I saw Samara Airport,” Orlov said, referring to the southern city of Volga.

On the flight to Moscow, he was escorted by guards in plain clothes.

“It just looked like they were my friends: I was unshaven, with these big men around me.”

Held in isolation in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison for days, he became convinced there was a new case against him and wrote a complaint about not being allowed to shower.

He waited for days to hand it to someone, until a prison official came in.

“I ran to him, so happy I could hand in my complaint,” Orlov said, but he was instead told his sentence had been cancelled.

Soon afterwards, he was on a bus headed to the airport with other political prisoners.

Despite his jail ordeal, if he could go back in time, he would still speak out from within Russia, Orlov said.

“I would do the same.”

Russian Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov inspects the construction of apartment blocks in Mariupol, Russian-controlled Ukraine, in this still image from video released on October 15, 2022. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A Russian Deputy Defence Minister exposed in an investigation by late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s team was remanded in custody on April 24 on suspicion of taking large bribes.

The arrest of Timur Ivanov, a long-time ally of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, is the most dramatic corruption case in Russia in recent years. It comes as spending on the military has ballooned amid its offensive on Ukraine.

Mr. Ivanov, 48, oversaw construction and procurement for the armed forces, and was linked to Russia’s high-profile rebuilding of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, occupied by Moscow’s forces.

“The Deputy Defence Minister of the Russian Federation was sent to a pre-trial detention centre,” the press service for Moscow courthouses said in a statement on social media.

He faces up to 15 years in prison for bribe-taking “on a particularly large scale”, it added.

Mr. Ivanov denies the charges, his lawyer told the state-run TASS news agency.

Several independent Russian media outlets have alleged that Mr. Ivanov and his family acquired vast wealth through kick-backs on contracts he agreed at the Ministry.

Lavish lifestyle

In December 2022, Navalny’s team said they had obtained thousands of leaked emails from Mr. Ivanov’s wife, Svetlana Maniovich, that showed a lavish lifestyle well beyond what his official salary could cover.

They said she had spent hundreds of thousands of euros on luxury cars, jewellery, clothes, parties, and renting premium property and yachts in the south of France.

Some of the transactions were routed through third parties, including Defence Ministry contractors, they alleged.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin was in “constant” contact with Mr. Shoigu but refused to comment directly on Mr. Ivanov’s arrest.

“There will be an investigation,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, cautioning against “speculation”.

In court on Wednesday, Mr. Ivanov, 48, stood in a glass dock for defendants in military uniform.

The court said investigators believe he was part of a “criminal conspiracy” to take a “bribe on a particularly large scale in the form of property services, during the course of contracting and subcontracting work for the Defence Ministry.”

It did not provide further details.

The judge sent him to pre-trial detention until at least June 23. He will be held at the notorious Lefortovo jail in Moscow, TASS reported.

‘Shoigu’s deputy’

Campaigners, including Navalny, have long argued that corruption is endemic in Putin’s Russia.

Arrests of high-profile government figures are rare, usually the result of political infighting, analysts say.

Activists say the vast sums being poured into the Ukraine offensive has given officials new opportunities to enrich themselves through secretive procurement deals.

Russian military bloggers, who have long criticised Mr. Shoigu’s handling of the offensive, quickly linked Mr. Ivanov to the Defence Minister on social media.

In a post criticising Mr. Ivanov, Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone repeatedly referred to him as “Shoigu’s Deputy”.

“He, like Shoigu, comes from the family clan,” it said.

Former Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had accused Mr. Shoigu and other Defence Ministry officials of corruption and incompetence before his mysterious death last year.

The Defence Ministry has not commented on Mr. Ivanov’s arrest.

Just hours before investigators announced they had arrested Mr. Ivanov on Tuesday he had appeared in video footage published by the Ministry in which Mr. Shoigu addressed top military brass about the state of the Ukraine offensive.