October 2024

• 819 calls handled;
• 19 hours, 57 seconds of phone consultations;
• 199,933 active users of our Telegram bot;
• 14,817 views of legal instructions. The most popular guide was “There is a Search in My Home. What Should I Do?”, read 1,822 times.

Hotline legal assistance in October:

• Provided 28 consultations by phone;
• Responded to 68 e-mails sent to legal@ovdinfo.org;
• Reviewed 2 appeal drafts and 1 cassation appeal draft submitted through “Generaptor” — our judicial appeal generator;
• Held a YouTube live stream with lawyer Elena Makarova on “Military Training Camps for Schoolchildren” for an audience of over 146 viewers.

Administrative Cases and Assistance in Police Stations

In October, our attorneys and defenders:

• Made 10 visits to police stations, helping 16 people in Moscow, Khabarovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, and Kazan;
• Assisted 24 people in 31 administrative court hearings across 8 cities;
• 7 appeal submissions, 4 cassation appeals to cassation courts, and 1 cassation appeal to the Supreme Court.

Criminal Cases

In October, OVD-Info legal professionals and attorneys:

• Attended 1 search in Moscow;
• Took on 3 new criminal cases involving 3 defendants;
• helped lower down 3 sentences, including 1 conversion of imprisonment to a fine;
• took part in 3 appeal hearings, one of which led to the client’s release from punishment, and 2 cassation hearings;
• Defended a total of 93 defendants in 83 criminal cases across 44 cities.

Sentences in cases involving OVD-Info attorneys:

• Olga Menshikh, nurse and civil activist, sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment in a penal colony for anti-war posts on VKontakte.
• Vyacheslav Malakhov, author of the “Pre-Revolutionary Advisor” meme page, sentenced to 2 years’ imprisonment in a penal colony for “discrediting the army”.
• Vasily Bolshakov, fined 250,000 rubles for a war-related joke.

New Cases:

• Ilnur Khaziev, a new defendant in the “Baymak case”, arrested for participating in a protest.
• Solim Kamina, charged with “anti-war fakes” in Moscow, reportedly subjected to torture by means of a tazer during his arrest.
• Radmila Ryabtseva, prosecuted for “discrediting the army” after criticising a local deputy’s initiative.

All charges and criminal cases are considered politically motivated.

News and Media

In October, we prepared and released:

• 218 express news articles on political persecution;
• 51 publications on detentions, trials, and repression;
• 7 in-depth articles, including monologues, reports, and feature pieces.

Articles you might find interesting:

• OVD-Info explains: Transnational repressions. The first one of the short explainers designed by OVD-Info. Written by Dan Storyev and Irina Bondarenko.
• “Reverse rehabilitation of mass repression victims”: Examining the Russian Prosecutor’s Office’s new initiative.

International Advocacy

• We submitted a detailed report on the work of human rights defenders in Russia working in rural and remote areas. Full report is available on our website.
• We submitted another report on the persecution of human rights defenders to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. You can read the full report here.

Financial Report

How Much We Raised

• 15,570 donations totaling 119,791 EUR;
• Median one-time donation: 8,56 EUR;
• Median monthly donation: 4,94 EUR;
• Average one-time donation: 22,69 EUR;
• Average monthly donation: 7,23 EUR.

How Much We Spent

Total expenses: 306,842 EUR

• 82,122 EUR: Legal assistance;
• 7,188 EUR: Support for new initiatives;
• 32,285 EUR: Hotline and news monitoring;
• 39,107 EUR: Media team operations;
• 15,965 EUR: Data projects, reports, and research;
• 11,357 EUR: International advocacy;
• 36,854 EUR: IT team support;
• 10,647 EUR: Volunteer coordination;
• 20,626 EUR: Team well-being and security;
• 37,370 EUR: Operational support;
• 13,322 EUR: Infrastructure costs.

Thank you for staying with us!