“I am using this trial as a tribune from which to denounce the war publicly”, Dmitry Ivanov told a Moscow court, just before it sentenced him to eight-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for circulating “fakes” about the Russian army.

Ivanov was a maths student at Moscow State University. His “crime” was to write 12 anti-war posts on a student Telegram channel that he helped to set up.

Any Russian person with a conscience feels guilty about the war, he told the court in March 2023. “We love our country, and so it is especially sickening and shameful that this inhuman war is being waged in its name.”

Ivanov was not the only anti-war protester to use a Russian court as a platform to address his fellow citizens. Dozens of others did the same.

With support from the European Network for Solidarity With Ukraine, some of these speeches will be published in English in a new book, Voices Against Putin’s War: Protesters’ Defiant Speeches in Russian Courts. I am the book’s editor, and this article is based on a talk I gave about it, by video, to a session at the Socialism 2025 event in the USA this month.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     *… Simon Pirani*

When the full-scale war broke out in February 2022, I got involved in efforts to support comrades and friends in Ukraine and Russia. In the summer of 2022, we learned of a new group, Solidarity Zone, which had been formed to support those arrested for taking direct action against the war, mainly by fire-bombing military recruitment centres. A group of us in the UK started translating their fundraising appeals and other material.

The firebombings are done when the offices are closed: they are aimed at damaging property, not persons. This became a comparatively common form of protest. There were more than 100 such actions in the first year after the invasion of Ukraine. Solidarity Zone saw that those who were detained, and their families, needed support, and particularly lawyers.

Following this at a distance, I was especially struck by some of the courageous statements made by these young people when they were brought to trial. Similar speeches were also made in court by people who had not engaged in such dramatic protests, but had simply denounced the war out loud — at a political event, online, etc — and then been arrested.

These people are victims of a general clampdown on democratic rights in Russia.

More than 30 Russians have made anti-war speeches in court all together. These, together with hundreds of others, made in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states since the 1960s – from pro-democracy dissidents to Crimean Tatar activists and other resisters against colonialism – are gathered on the “Poslednee Slovo” (“Last Word”) site, a wonderful new resource.

Earlier this year, with our friends in the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, we decided to publish a collection of the anti-war speeches in English.

There are ten speeches in our book, as well as two statements from people who appeared in court but made their statements elsewhere: from Kirill Butylin, who (as far as we know) was the first person to carry out a fire-bombing protest and put out a social media message; and from Savelii Morozov, a young man from southern Russia who was eligible for conscription but who denounced the war at the conscription commission.

The first thing that struck me about these speeches was the deeply moral tone of many of these protesters, who have obviously been prepared to sacrifice an enormous amount just to make these speeches. Igor Paskar, for example, firebombed the office of the Federal Security Services (FSB) where he lived, and then stood there waiting to be arrested. He was detained and badly tortured. When he got to court, he said:

Do I regret what has happened? Yes, perhaps I’d wanted my life to turn out differently – but I acted according to my conscience, and my conscience remains clear.

He is now serving an eight-and-a-half years jail sentence.

The second thing that struck me is that they were addressed to the population, not to the government. Alexei Rozhkov firebombed a military recruitment centre where he lives. He was released from detention after an initial hearing — the unusual result of good work by his lawyers. Rozhkov then fled to Kyrgyzstan but was kidnapped, presumably by security forces, and returned to Russia for trial. He said:

I also have no doubt that millions of my fellow Russians, women and men, young and old, are opposed to the war too, and, like me, are convinced that the war is not a solution, but a dead end. But they have no way – without risking ending up behind bars – to do anything to be heard, to ensure their opinion was listened to.

Ukrainian artist Bohdan Ziza splashed blue and yellow paint — the colours of the Ukrainian flag — on government offices in Crimea, which has been occupied since 2014. He filmed himself doing it and saying: “I address myself above all to Crimeans and to Russians.” In court, he said his action “was a cry from the heart, from my conscience, to those who were and are afraid — just as I was afraid — but who also did not want, and do not want, this war.”