Press Release, 25.02.2026

Photo: Vasily Neustroyev /Photo by Petersburg Observers

On 24 February, the prosecution requested a 12-year prison colony sentence and a fine of one million roubles for political prisoner Vasily Neustroyev, St. Petersburg Yabloko member, historian and elections observer, on charges of leading an “extremist organisation,” spreading “fakes about the army,” and “rehabilitating Nazism.” Today Vasily delivered his final statement in court. The full text of his speech is here.

“First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone who has supported me over the past two and a half years and more — throughout the entire duration of this absurd, demonstratively farcical case. I thank my family for their fortitude and understanding. I thank my defence lawyers for their persistence and courage. I thank my fellow party members, my colleagues in Yabloko, for the solidarity they have shown. I thank my friends and colleagues, as well as people who I have not known before — all those who sent words of support, helped in whatever way they could, or were simply with me in their thoughts. I thank all those who know on whose side the truth lies!”, Vasily Neustroyev said in the beginning of his speech.

He also stressed that historical process can be viewed from different angles, including that as a gradual and progressive struggle for freedom, where the fundamental values of European civilisation are a powerful ally of all forces standing on the side of freedom and humanism.

“But authoritarianism never sleeps, and time and again it subjects all these values to doubt and distortion. Thus aesthetics is transformed into exclusivity, love into fanaticism, rationalism into expediency. Ethics yields to unprincipledness, compassion retreats before cruelty. Healthy individualism — that foundation of human rights — is rhetorically rejected in favour of hardened collectivism, while in practice it is replaced by the narrow personal interests of autocrats. This contradiction, this dichotomy, this struggle between freedom and unfreedom will always be with us. And one must be able to make the right choice,” Neustroyev said.

He also emphasised that “Russia is unquestionably part of European civilisation, part of Greater Europe. We are well acquainted with all its humanist values, and know all too well the consequences of their complete perversion. It is another such period of perversion, another period of freedom’s retreat and authoritarianism’s rise, that we are living through right now. But the entire course of history is proof that freedom will prevail. It cannot but prevail.

And each of us has the power to contribute to that victory — by not remaining indifferent, by resisting temptation, and by making that most difficult yet necessary choice within our own hearts. And the sooner we become free within ourselves, the sooner we shall attain true political freedom.”

“Russia is strong. Russia will outlast all tyrants and dictators, as it has done before. I know that Russia will be peaceful, Russia will be happy, Russia will be free. And all of us together with Russia,” Vasily Neustroyev concluded.