#kira yarmysh

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3" by Kira Yarmysh

9. A book written in Russia: The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 by Kira Yarmysh

List Progress: 12/30

When we as a society hold someone captive in a prison, jail or detention center, what are we trying to achieve? The main character of Kira Yarmysh’s The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 is sentenced to ten days in a detention center in Moscow after she participated in an anti-corruption rally. Is society safer without her in public life for ten days? No, because she was never violent. Will she learn a lesson from her time in prison? No, because she was protesting corruption in the first place, and exposure to the prison system certainly won’t change her mind. Will anyone’s lives be better because of her ten day imprisonment? No, and yet carceral systems all over the world are based around holding people for various lengths of time for no real purpose. The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 is at its strongest when it is investigating this system and the assumptions built into it. Unfortunately, these messages get buried in a lot of lackluster character work and some underdeveloped attempts at magical realism, making the novel as a whole a bit of a jumble.

Kira Yarmysh is the press secretary and assistant of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and The Incredible Events is her first novel. While it is a piece of fiction, Yarmysh shares a lot of backstory with Anya, and has spent time in detention centers after protests and political actions. The novel shines when it is just about Anya navigating the absurdity of the detention center. She is held in the titular Cell Number 3, the only women’s cell in an otherwise male facility, with five other women from various walks of life, each serving similarly short sentences for petty crimes. The inmates serve as a cross-section of contemporary Russian culture, from an older woman who has spent time in an actual prison camp and considers the center a cake-walk, to a young sugar baby who wants to get back to her life of thinly-veiled sex work with rich men. They are all tossed in together, but no one is around long enough to develop a real prison culture, so it is just an odd break from the rest of their lives. 

Unfortunately, Anya ends up being the least interesting of the inmates, and the novel spends long periods of time flashing back to formative parts of her life. It is notable that she is a queer woman in Russia, and she navigates some difficult situations throughout her life, but none that feel especially worthy of close study. She also starts seeing visions while in the detention center, the supposed incredible events, and it is unclear whether there are supernatural elements at play or if some latent mental illness is coming to the surface in the face of the stress of incarceration. But the book keeps with this ambiguity far too late into the run, making the final conclusion feel very abrupt and tacked on. Moving some of the revelations earlier and cutting some of Anya’s story would make for a tighter, more powerful book, rather than the slightly bloated final product.

Yarmysh has a good sense for atmosphere and dialogue, which will hopefully be honed in later works, but The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 still needs a fair amount of tweaking in the plot and character departments. But the parts that are powerful still work, which all adds up to a bit of a shrug.

Would I Recommend It: Soft yes.

#straydog's reading resolution #the incredible events in women's cell number 3 #kira yarmysh #i am behind on posting these here so get ready for a few

[higherentity]

#kira yarmysh #writer #activist #political activist #good russian #kira #press secretary

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

The late Alexei Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, confirmed the death of her boss via Navalny's official YouTube channel. The title says, Alexei Navalny was killed. Putin killed him. English subtitles are available. My condolences to Alexei Navalny's team and supporters for this devastating loss.

#alexei navalny #rest in peace #kira yarmysh #russia #free russia #russia without putin #putin is a terrorist #Youtube

[sophiebernadotte]

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district prison service announced Friday. [...] Navalny’s exiled spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said she could not confirm the prison service’s announcement until his lawyer visits the IK-3 prison colony in the settlement of Kharp. [...] Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, announced "a set of investigative and operative measures" to establish the circumstances surrounding Navalny’s death.

#russia #russia politics #alexei navalny #alexey navalny

[shattered-pieces]

The former head of Navalny's campaign headquarters, Leonid Volkov, was attacked in his ego at home in Vilnius. This was reported by the ex-press secretary of Alexei Navalny, Kira Yarmysh. "They broke the window in his car with a hammer and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, after which the attacker began to beat Leonid with a hammer. Now Leonid is at home, the police and an ambulance are on their way to him," she wrote. After that, doctors arrived and decided to hospitalize the victim. "The news about the attack on Leonid Volkov is shocking," said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania. "Relevant bodies are working. The guilty will have to answer for their crime," added the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Gabrielus Landsbergis. "The key risk now is that we will all be killed. Well, it's quite an obvious thing," Leonid Volkov told the publication on the evening of March 12, a few hours before the attack. In the photo: Volkov is taken to the hospital by ambulance. It is obvious that Putin and his agency have moved on from state terrorism and consider it possible to organize attacks and murders of undesirables in the countries of the European Union. We wish Leonid a speedy recovery and appropriate protection and safety measures! European law enforcement agencies should take comprehensive measures to detain and arrest all Putin agents, killers and their accomplices. The time has come to put an end to this resolutely and universally. No Putin's terror! We are not afraid and they will not intimidate us!✊🏻 UPD "The great terror of a small dictator has begun" - this is how Khristo Grozev commented on the attack on Volkov. "Activists, journalists and just free-thinking people - be careful. Do not be afraid, but be careful. Don't make it easier for brainless bandits," Grozev added on X social networks.

#russia #navalny #leonid Volkov #attack #Lithuania

[mariacallous]

Alexey Navalny’s mother was shown a medical report about his death, which said that he “died from natural causes,” reports Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh.

Speaking to independent outlet Agenstvo, Yarmysh said that an autopsy had been performed and that there was “a medical certificate with the cause.” She added that the investigators want “to handle it themselves, want the burial to be done in secret, in a remote location, without a public farewell.”

Navalny’s mother Lyudmila recorded a video, in which she said that investigators showed her Navalny’s body. She added that investigators are demanding that Navalny be buried in secret and are threatening to “do something” with his body if she refuses.

The investigators claim to know the cause of death. They have all the medical and legal documents ready, which I saw, and I signed the death certificate. By law, they were supposed to hand over Alexey’s body to me immediately, but they haven’t done so yet. Instead, they are blackmailing me and imposing conditions on where, when, and how Alexey should be buried.

Alexey Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, says that investigators have shown her the body of her son.

The investigators claim to know the cause of death. They have all the medical and legal documents ready, which I saw, and I signed the death certificate. By law, they were supposed to hand over Alexey’s body to me immediately, but they haven’t done so yet. Instead, they are blackmailing me and imposing conditions on where, when, and how Alexey should be buried.

According to her, investigators are demanding that Navalny be buried in secret and are threatening to “do something” with his body if she refuses.

Inspector Voropaev told me openly: ‘Time is not on your side, the corpse is decomposing.’ I don’t want any special treatment, I just want everything to be done according to the law. I demand that my son’s body be handed over to me immediately.

Navalny’s mother said she spent 24 hours in the Salekhard Investigative Committee’s building with investigators and criminologists, but noted that lawyers were only allowed in later.

Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, wrote that the medical examiner’s report, which was shown to Navalny’s mother, says that he “died of natural causes.”

[the-real-zhora-salome]

Aleksei A. Navalny portrayed himself as invincible, consistently using his hallmark humor to suggest that President Vladimir V. Putin couldn’t break him, no matter how dire his conditions became in prison.

But behind the brave face, the reality was plain to see. Since his incarceration in early 2021, Mr. Navalny, Russia’s most formidable opposition figure, and his staff regularly suggested his conditions were so grim that he was being put to death in slow motion.

Now his aides believe their fears have come true.

The cause of Mr. Navalny’s death in prison at 47 has not been established — in fact his family has not yet even been allowed to see his body — but Russia’s harshest penal colonies are known for hazardous conditions, and Mr. Navalny was singled out for particularly brutal treatment.

“Aleksei Navalny was subjected to torment and torture for three years,” the Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitri A. Muratov wrote in a column after his death was announced on Friday. “As Navalny’s doctor told me: the body cannot withstand this.”

More than a quarter of Mr. Navalny’s incarceration since 2021 was spent in freezing “punishment cells” and he was often denied access to medical care. He was transferred to ever crueler prisons. And at one point, he said he was being given injections but was prevented from finding out what was in the syringes. His team worried he was again being poisoned.

What specifically led to Mr. Navalny’s death on Friday at a remote prison above the Arctic Circle may remain a mystery. The Russian prison service released a statement Friday afternoon saying that Mr. Navalny felt sick and suddenly lost consciousness after being outside.

Russian state media reported that he had suffered a blood clot. But the story changed on Saturday, when Mr. Navalny’s mother and lawyer arrived at the prison. They were told he had suffered from “sudden death syndrome,” which appeared to indicate sudden cardiac arrest, according to Ivan Zhdanov, director of Mr. Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation.

Investigators told a lawyer for Mr. Navalny that a repeat examination was being conducted and the results would be released next week. Mr. Navalny’s staff called for the body to be released immediately so that his family could order an independent analysis, accusing Russian authorities of lying to conceal the body.

According to his aides, Mr. Navalny had been put in a punishment cell at the Arctic prison in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region on Wednesday, two days before Russian authorities announced his death.

His spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said that marked his 27th time in such an inhumane space, usually a roughly 7-feet-by-10-feet concrete cell with unbearable conditions — cold, damp and poorly ventilated. His latest round of punishment, had he survived, would have taken his total period in such a cell to 308 days, more than a quarter of his time in incarceration, according to Ms. Yarmysh.

Once a day at 6:30 a.m., prisoners in the punishment cells at the Arctic facility are allowed into a coffin-like concrete enclosure open to the sky through a metal grate, Mr. Navalny said in a message from the facility earlier this year. It appeared to be after such a session on Friday that Mr. Navalny lost consciousness, according to the Russian prison service’s account. It was about -20 Fahrenheit outside.

In a letter from prison last month, Mr. Navalny described how he could walk a total of 11 steps from one end of the open-air space to the other, noting that the coldest it had been so far on one of his walks was -26 Fahrenheit.

“Even at this temperature, you can walk for more than half an hour, so long as you have time to grow a new nose, ears and fingers,” he wrote. “There are few things as invigorating as a walk in Yamal at 6:30 in the morning. And what a wonderful fresh breeze blows into the yard, despite the concrete enclosure, wow!”

While walking there on a recent day, he said he was freezing and thinking about how Leonardo DiCaprio climbed into a dead horse to escape the cold in the wilderness survival movie “The Revenant.” A dead horse would freeze in that part of Russia within 15 minutes, Mr. Navalny surmised.

“Here we need an elephant — a hot, fried elephant,” he said.

Mr. Navalny often employed such wit in the face of his inhumane treatment. But it had become increasingly clear, over his three years of incarceration, that he might not survive.

“The cumulative treatment of Navalny over several years in prison — in a way you could say it was driving him close to death,” Mariana Katzarova, the United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia, said in an interview Saturday. “We don’t know yet. We need an investigation.”

For a time, Mr. Navalny did seem almost invincible.

In August 2020, he fell ill on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow, after being poisoned with a nerve agent from the Russian-made Novichok family. He was put into a medically induced coma for two weeks during treatment in Germany — and survived.

The U.S. government later attributed the poisoning to Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the F.S.B.

Despite the assassination attempt, Mr. Navalny returned to Russia in early 2021 to continue his fight against Mr. Putin, who denied Russia’s involvement in the poisoning, and quickly found himself imprisoned. His health began to deteriorate almost immediately.

In March 2021, he complained about severe back pain that later turned into a problem with his leg.

He demanded that prison authorities provide him with proper medical care and give him medication. Instead, they subjected him to sleep deprivation, he said. At the end of March 2021, he declared a hunger strike over his treatment, and Russian doctors and Hollywood stars took up his cause in open letters to Mr. Putin.

About three weeks later, Mr. Navalny was examined by an independent panel of doctors. The tests by the doctors found that, “soon enough, there won’t be anyone to treat,” Mr. Navalny said in a message posted to Instagram.

Last year, Mr. Navalny wrote from prison that his jokes about the punishment cell shouldn’t normalize the environment. He lamented that a fellow political prisoner, who had spoken out against the war in Ukraine, had been put in a punishment cell, despite being disabled and missing part of his lung.

Mr. Navalny described dire health conditions in prison, where he said many inmates suffered from tuberculosis. He also complained early last year about the administration in his former prison placing a mentally unwell person in a cell opposite his, as a form of torment, and an ill prisoner in his small cell.

At the time, his lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, said the prison deliberately infected him with a respiratory illness, refused to give him medicine and then “treated” him with huge doses of contraindicated antibiotics. Mr. Navalny suffered severe stomach pain and lost more than 15 pounds as a result, Mr. Kobzev said.

“These actions can’t be regarded as anything other than an open strategy to destroy Navalny’s health by any and all means,” Mr. Kobzev said in a statement at the time. “Obviously, the prison wouldn’t risk engaging in this level of demonstrative unlawfulness without approval from Moscow.”

Mr. Kobzev has since been arrested on extremism charges for associating with Mr. Navalny — part of a broader roundup of the opposition leader’s attorneys late last year.

Mr. Navalny suffered a dizzy spell and was put on an IV drip in an unexplained medical episode in early December. But Russian authorities still transferred him later that month from a prison in the Vladimir region, about 130 miles east of Moscow, to the “special regime” penal colony in the Arctic where he died.

Several doctors contacted after his death, including one who was involved in his initial treatment in the Siberian city of Omsk, said his death was likely unrelated to his poisoning more than three years earlier, given his robust recovery.

But he faced many other health hazards since then.

“A Russian prison is a place where you have to be prepared to die every day,” Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a Russian tycoon who spent a decade in prison after challenging Mr. Putin, said on Friday.

In the interview, Mr. Khodorkovsky, who was released in 2013, said a prisoner must find a way to treat the burden as a test in order to survive mentally, and Mr. Navalny had done that. But even then, he added, “this will not protect you from being killed.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I said, you put someone in a penal colony like this, and then single him out for additional cruel treatment, with the expectation that they will not be able to withstand the conditions and die soon.

It's a tactic that Hitler has employed, Stalin, Mao, Xi, Pinochet, Marcos, Franco, Assad, Gaddafi, Pots, every tyrant and dictator you can think of. And Putin does too.

Navalny's suffering is over now. But Putin must be opposed at all costs, in every way.

[vague-humanoid]

[panelki]

Yulia Navalnaya joins the line outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin. Video: Kira Yarmysh / Twitter More live updates here.

https://www.nn.org.ru

[andronetalks]

'Greetings from Putin's henchmen': Alexei Navalny aide attacked with hammer and tear gas

USA Today By Kim Hjelmgaard March 13, 2024 A long-time ally of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was attacked with a hammer and tear gas while in his car outside his home near Lithuania’s capital Vilnius, Navalny spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said late Tuesday. The assailant’s identity and the motive for the assault on Leonid Volkov were not clear, but it came about a month after…

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#Crime #News #Politics #World

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Утро. Ковровский суд. Камера с решеткой, видеосвязь. Адвокат говорит Алексею, что фильм выиграл Оскар. Думаю, это будет самое поразительное объявление о победе в истории. Morning. Kovrov Court. A camera with a grille, video communication. The lawyer tells Alexey that the film won an Oscar. I think this will be the most amazing victory announcement in history.

Alexei Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, responding to the ‘Navalny’ documentary winning an Oscar. Incredible that Navalny has been told already!

#alexei navalny #free navalny #navalny #kira yarmysh #oscar #navalny documentary #daniel roher #dictatorship #stop putin #free russia #free political prisoners

[delectablywaywardbeard-blog]

In Lituania aggredito a martellate Volkov, il braccio destro di Navalny | "Non ci arrenderemo"

13 marzo 2024 07:50 “Qualcuno ha sfondato il finestrino dell’auto, gli ha spruzzato liquido urticante negli occhi e poi ha iniziato a colpirlo”, ha scritto Kira Yarmysh, portavoce del dissidente russo morto in carcere Tgcom24 L’ultima intervista prima dell’aggressione  Poche ore prima di essere aggredito, Volkov aveva detto al quotidiano indipendente russo Meduza di essere preoccupato della sua…

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[deadlinecom]

[mariacallous]

Alexey Navalny’s death

The fight for answers

More than three days after Alexey Navalny’s death, the Russian authorities have yet to hand his body over to his relatives or disclose an official cause of death. Below is a timeline of the main developments in his family’s fight to recover Navalny’s body and determine the truth about what happened to him.

Friday: Almost immediately after Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service announces Alexey Navalny’s death, Russian propaganda network RT claims that Navalny died of a “detached blood clot.” However, a doctor who advised Navalny’s associates tells Meduza that this is an “unlikely” cause of death and would be impossible to confirm without an independent autopsy.

Saturday: An employee of the prison where Alexey Navalny died says his body has been sent to a morgue in the nearby town of Salekhard. When Navalny’s mother and lawyer travel to the Salekhard morgue, however, they find it is closed. When the lawyer calls the phone number on the door, he’s told that the body isn’t there. Another one of Navalny’s lawyers is told by an official from the local branch of the Russian Investigative Committee that the cause of Navalny’s death has “not been determined” and that his body will not be given to his family until the investigation is complete.

Meanwhile, a source tells Novaya Gazeta Europe that Alexey Navalny’s body has been in the Salekhard morgue since Friday evening but that no autopsy has been performed yet. A city paramedic tells the publication that Navalny’s body has bruises consistent with a seizure or outside restraint during convulsions and with CPR.

In the evening, human rights activists at the OVD-Info project call on Russians to contact the Federal Investigative Committee and demand that the authorities hand over Alexey Navalny’s body to his relatives.

Sunday: Journalists from Mediazona share traffic cam footage from Friday night that shows a convoy of official vehicles traveling towards Salekhard from a town near the prison where Navalny died.

By the early afternoon, more than 12,000 people have sent appeals to Russia’s Investigative Committee demanding that Alexey Navalny’s body be released.

Monday: In the morning, Alexey Navalny’s mother and his lawyers are turned away from the morgue in Salekhard. One of the lawyers is “literally pushed out,” Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh reports.

Later in the day, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells journalist that the issue of returning Navalny’s body is not being handled by the Kremlin because it’s “not a function of the presidential administration.”

In the evening, Kira Yarmysh says that according to the Russian Investigative Committee, Navalny’s body has been sent for a “chemical examination” that will take 14 days.

By Monday night, more than 65,000 people have contacted the Investigative Committee to demand Navalny’s body be given to his family.

[cyberbenb]

Navalny's ex-chief of staff reportedly attacked near his home in Lithuania

Leonid Volkov, who worked as the chief of staff of late Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny, was physically assaulted near his home in Lithuania, Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on March 12. Source : kyivindependent.com/navalnys-…

[swldx]

BBC 0423 1 Mar 2024

12095Khz 0359 1 MAR 2024 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 55445. English, ID@0359z pips and newsroom preview. @0401z World News anchored by Chris Berrow. At least 112 Palestinians are said to have been killed and 760 injured trying to get desperately needed aid in Gaza. Crowds descended on a convoy of lorries on the coastal road south-west of Gaza City, in the presence of Israeli tanks. Israel's military say tanks fired warning shots but did not strike the convoy. Some Palestinians say troops fired directly at them. A Palestinian witness told the BBC most of those who died had been run over as lorry drivers tried to move forward. The UN Security Council has scheduled a closed-door emergency meeting to discuss the incident. France said "fire by Israeli soldiers against civilians trying to access food" was "unjustifiable" and US President Joe Biden expressed concern the incident would complicate efforts by mediators to broker a temporary ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. More than a billion people are living with obesity around the world, global estimates published in The Lancet show, published by the World Health Organization. This includes about 880 million adults and 159 million children, according to 2022 data. With hours to go until Alexei Navalny's funeral, his team has said they continue to face difficulties in organising the farewell ceremony. His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said they had been unable to find a hearse to drive the body to church. "Unknown people are calling mortuaries and threatening them if they accept to take Alexei's body," Ms Yarmysh said. The funeral is scheduled to take place on Friday in Maryino, on the outskirts of Moscow. President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have made competing visits to the US border in Texas, each seeking to stress they can tackle illegal immigration. Mr Biden accused his Republican rival - who spoke of the "very dangerous" situation at the border - of hindering his efforts to crackdown on crossings. Republicans in the House of Representatives have blocked bipartisan border reforms, in what Democrats say is an effort masterminded by Mr Trump to deny them a win before the election. Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking highly classified military documents on the social media platform "Discord", is expected to plead guilty in his federal case. The government of President Bernardo Arévalo filed a criminal complaint on Thursday for “breach of duties” against the controversial Guatemalan Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, who in 2023 launched a judicial crusade that jeopardized the presidential transition. Workers Party of GB candidate George Galloway wins the Rochdale by-election by almost 6,000 votes. The former Labour and Respect Party MP, whose campaign focused heavily on Gaza, overturns a Labour majority with 12,335 votes. Galloway addresses the Labour leader in his victory speech by saying: "Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza". David Tully, an independent, comes second with 6,638 votes. Turnout in the by-election was 39.7%. Voters went to the polls on Thursday to choose a new MP to represent the Greater Manchester town following the death of Sir Tony Lloyd last month. A New Zealand court has ordered NZ$10m (£4.8m; $6m) in compensation to the victims of the White Island volcano disaster, where 22 people died. In December 2019, 47 people were touring the volcano when it erupted, killing nearly half of the group and gravely injuring everyone else. The firms which owned the island and operated tours were found guilty last year of negligence and safety breaches. @0406z "The Newsroom" begins. Backyard fence antenna w/MFJ-1020C active antenna (used as a preamplifier/preselector), Etón e1XM. 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63°. Received at Plymouth, MN, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2159.