Sasha Skotjilenko will not return to Russia after prison release

Russian artist and activist Sasha Skotjilenko is living in exile in Berlin and says she will not return to Russia after serving two and a half years of a seven-year prison sentence, mbl.is reports.

Skotjilenko, whose full name is Aleksandra Yuryevna Skotjilenko, was arrested in 2022 for distributing what Russian authorities deemed propaganda against President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. She was sentenced under Russia’s false news laws. Amnesty International later designated her a prisoner of conscience.

She was released on 1 August 2024 in a prisoner exchange with Western countries. Others freed included opposition politicians Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, and US journalist Evan Gershkovich. The exchange included Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB intelligence officer and contract killer whom Germany had arrested for the 2019 murder in Berlin of Selimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian Chechen.

Skotjilenko is in Reykjavík with her wife and representative, Sofia Subbotina, at the invitation of Amnesty International’s Icelandic section. Her case featured in the organisation’s Write for Rights campaign in 2022. The campaign is marking its 25th anniversary with an event at Harpa in Reykjavík, featuring an artistic performance by Pussy Riot member Diana Burkot. Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard is also due to attend. This year’s campaign focuses on eight people facing serious human rights violations around the world.

Skotjilenko grew up in Saint Petersburg, which was called Leningrad until 1991. She says her parents moved there from Sakhalin as young people to study and become artists, but had children soon after and had to support their family instead of pursuing their dreams.

“In my last years in Russia, I was an underground musician and underground artist,” she told Morgunblaðið. “My family was extremely poor. We lived in a communal apartment with about ten other families.”