Olga Avdeyeva is a surgeon and mother of five from Izhevsk, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Udmurtia.
After the events of 2014 Olga had at first believed Russia’s propagandists’ stories about Ukrainian “aggression” in the Donbas. In 2014, she even tried to send her husband there to “protect Russians.”
It was only in 2019, when she watched some of the documentaries released by opposition politician Alexey Navalny, that she realized she had fallen victim to disinformation, she said.
Olga was first fined by the authorities in 2021, after she was arrested for taking part in an unauthorized rally in support of Navalny.
On March 13, 2022, she took part in an anti-war rally, where she held a sign with the Ukrainian flag on Izhevsk’s Central Square. By that time, Russia’s new wartime laws against “disinformation” had come into effect. Olga was charged with “discrediting” the military and fined 15,000 rubles ($165).
In August 2022, she left an anti-war message beneath a large Z symbol on the side of the local theater that she passed every day on her way to work. Her graffiti was quickly removed.
A few weeks later she decided to put the graffiti “fascists” again under that Z symbol, but when she had just started to write it she was arrested. After her first graffiti, the police had stationed somebody in the bushes outside the theater to keep watch. The police took her to the station and tried to talk her out of her opposition to the war. They demanded from her not to go on another demonstration, then they would let her go without further prosecution. She agreed for fear of losing her job.
In late June 2023, Olga attended an anti-war protest with a sign that read “Russia is doing evil.” She wore a Ukrainian flower crown on her head.
The police arrested her immediately.
“I was mentally prepared to be prosecuted again. But in the past, they never shared my details publicly; they just wrote that I was a 47-year-old woman. This time, as soon as they opened the case, the media was sharing my name and photograph. I assume it was leaked intentionally. Evidently, they decided to publicize the process,” she said.
Olga acknowledged that things would have been easier without the publicity, but she said she understood it was a risk when she decided to protest.
“My goal is to stop the war. One thing that helps achieve that goal is to get people talking about it. Hopefully my case can be the impetus for that. At least people are talking about it, as opposed to the deathly silence that happens when everybody’s afraid. I decided long ago that I’d rather die than live in a totalitarian society. I’ve made my choice. I won’t be silent. If I stay silent, my heart will burst,” she explained.
Story shared first in Russian on 7×7 media – see here. (English: Better to die than to live in a totalitarian society)