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The lonely death of a jailed Russian pianist who opposed war
Pavel Kushnir had protested repeatedly against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and began a hunger strike soon after his arrest in May, later refusing water too. He died, slowly and without publicity, on 28 July - four days before a group of better-known dissidents were swapped for Kremlin spies, sleeper agents and killers imprisoned in the West. After his lonely death, at a pre-trial detention centre in Birobidzhan in Russia’s Far East, the 39-year-old was mourned by only 11 people at his cremation. Svetlana Kaverzina, an independent politician in Siberia, said no-one had tried to talk him out of sacrificing himself because they hadn’t been aware what was happening. "We couldn’t chip in and send him a lawyer - we didn’t know," she wrote on the Telegram messaging app. "He was alone." Posted by: Besoeker 2024-08-25 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=707731 |