Aleksandra Yurevna Skochilenko, known as Sasha, was born on September 13, 1990, in Saint Petersburg. Since childhood, she has had a highly developed artistic streak and a particular sensitivity to human events in the world. From a young age, Aleksandra Skochilenko has drawn and written stories and poems in which she expresses her discomfort and pain. Having had to deal early on with the topic of mental health, in 2014 Aleksandra wrote a book entitled Книга о депрессии, which translates to Book about Depression. The work was first distributed in Russia and Ukraine, and later translated into English to tell everyone what it means to suffer from psychological and psychiatric problems in Russia.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Aleksandra Skochilenko joined the first protest demonstrations, and on March 3, 2022, she was arrested in central Saint Petersburg along with other participants. The young woman was detained for one night and released only after paying a fine of 10,000 rubles, the equivalent of just over 107 euros. Despite the experience in prison, Aleksandra was not afraid; on the contrary, she was even more determined than before to carry forward a movement that was not only pacifist but also aimed at exposing the Kremlin’s propaganda.
While the war in Ukraine raged on and war crimes were being committed in Bucha and Mariupol, Aleksandra Skochilenko carried out actions aimed at spreading the truth about the war. It was during one of these actions that she was arrested, after a customer noticed her and alerted the police. But what had she done? In line with the boycott campaign launched by the Feminist Anti-War Resistance, Aleksandra replaced the price tags of some food products in a supermarket, sticking small notes on the packages with information about the war.
“The Russian army has bombed a school in Mariupol. There were 400 people inside.”
“Stop the war! In the first three days, 4,300 Russian soldiers were killed. Why doesn’t TV talk about it?”
“The Russian armed forces have bombed the drama theatre in Mariupol, where about 400 people were sheltering from artillery fire.”
“Russian troops prevented 14 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid from entering the Kherson region. Civilians need water and food.”
“My grandfather did not fight for four years in the Second World War so that Russia would become a fascist and invading state.”
While Aleksandra was still in the supermarket, the police arrived and arrested her, taking her to the station where she was interrogated for many hours in a row. The charge was “public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”, a crime introduced in Russia specifically to criminalize those who criticize the invasion of Ukraine. Aleksandra was taken to prison, and during the first months of detention she was harassed and deprived both of the medicines needed to manage her bipolar disorder and of gluten-free food, as she suffers from celiac disease. She was also denied visits from her partner Sonia and, in fact, precisely because she is a lesbian and part of the LGBTQIA+ movement, she suffered multiple instances of harassment. Finally, after numerous postponements, on November 16, 2023, Aleksandra Skochilenko was sentenced by the Saint Petersburg court to seven years in prison under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code for “discrediting the armed forces.”
“It happened because I represent everything that Putin’s regime is so intolerant of: creativity, pacifism, LGBT, psycho-enlightenment, feminism, humanism, and love for everything that is bright, ambiguous, and unusual,” said Skochilenko.
Aleksandra was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, while the human rights organization Memorial recognized her as a political prisoner. Her story, both absurd and emblematic, spread around the world to the point that the BBC included her in its list of the 100 most influential women of 2022. In prison, Aleksandra faced many health problems and developed a mild heart condition. During her detention, she was repeatedly sent to the hospital, but her condition was never disclosed to anyone — not even to her mother, Nadezhda Skochilenko.
It was Nadezhda who, over the years, managed to bring her daughter’s story beyond Russia’s borders and involved activists worldwide to put pressure on authorities for Aleksandra’s release. Nadezhda even spoke before the Human Rights Committee of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, led by Laura Boldrini. Indeed, many international organizations, including Amnesty International, protested for Aleksandra’s liberation — which suddenly came on August 1, 2024, as part of an international prisoner exchange with Turkey. Without any notice to Aleksandra or her family, the young woman was transferred from Saint Petersburg prison along with other detainees and released at Ankara airport.
Once free, within a few hours Aleksandra managed to take a flight to Cologne, Germany, where she was immediately admitted to a hospital for medical examinations. “Aleksandra continues to believe that miracles are possible. She has shown that if you are kind and stand for peace, good things can happen,” said her mother after embracing her again.
Once she recovered, Aleksandra Skochilenko began to travel to tell her story and to denounce the presence of numerous minors in Russian prisons.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Avvenire, Aleksandra said:
“I know I’m very lucky and I feel indebted for the attention I’ve received, and now I have to share this luck. People die in prison. I never thought I would be part of a prisoner exchange. I am an ordinary person. I’m not Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, or Bukovsky. It was a dream, but I never believed it would come true. It happened thanks to all those who worked to support me. Again, thank you to everyone who stood by me. You gave me back my life.”
Her story has inspired two PBS documentaries: Putin’s War at Home (2022) and Sasha & Sonia: A Russian Love Story (2023). Moreover, her case has become a symbol of the authoritarianism of the Russian government and the increasingly repressive turn of the Kremlin. CNN journalist Nathan Hodge also stated that Aleksandra Skochilenko’s story “laid bare the absurdity of Russia’s draconian wartime media laws.”
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Foto in copertina di Karen Veldkamp, CC BY-SA 4.0
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