Gulagu.net, the Russian prisoner rights group, announces it is shutting down

A prominent Russian prisoner rights group is closing its doors. Meduza reports that Gulagu.net, a project founded to help inmates, announced on Monday that it is suspending its activities, citing frozen bank accounts, relentless pressure, and open discrimination. In its message, the group warned that the most effective opponents of the Kremlin can even be killed. Its founder, Vladimir Osechkin, a former entrepreneur who left Russia in 2015 and now lives in France, says an assassination attempt was made against him in Biarritz in 2022. According to Meduza, a Russian court sentenced Osechkin in absentia to eight years in prison last year for spreading so-called fakes about the military, and several people inside Russia have received prison terms simply for cooperating with the group.

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