A Russian artist Alevtina Yelsukova has sewn a quilt resembling the TV signal screen and sold it at auction. The money will be used to buy blankets for Ukrainian refugees. This quilt could cover the largest TV screen and stop anyone watching it again

Russia today is a dictatorial regime with strict censorship. Yet as a protestor from a small village in Central Russia wrote of recent attempts to bribe men into joining the army, “You can’t cure death with money. There’s always a choice”.

It is exactly eight years since Russia’s FSB abducted Valentin Vyhivsky from occupied Crimea and took him to Moscow, where he was held incommunicado for around eight months and savagely tortured

Denis Ivashin played an important role in exposing the Russian fighters who first took part in Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas and were later deployed to prop up the regime of Aleksander Lukashenka

New investigations into acts “discrediting” the Russian army were opened in Elista (Kalmykia, South Russia), in Buinaksk (Dagestan) and Ingushetia in the North Caucasus, and in Petrozavodsk (Karelia), St Petersburg and Krasnodar (South Russia).

St Petersburg priest Father Ioann Kurmoyarov has been held in custody since 9 June. “The blessed peace-makers will end up in Heaven,” he said. “you understand what I’m saying? The peace-makers. Those who unleashed this aggression will not be going there.”

“No to the War”, “Putin is a war criminal!”, or just a placard bearing eight asterisks—with such posters people in Russia hold solitary anti-war protests ending up on the dock.

Since the beginning of March, the police have charged more than 3,000 Russian citizens with “discrediting” the army (Article 20.3.3, Administrative Offences). The Net Freedoms project calculates that courts have issued fines in 92% of cases.

Hardly any anti-war protest takes place in Russia today without harassment or prosecution by the country’s law-enforcement agencies. Protestors are fined under Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code; they are charged under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code (up to 15 years imprisonment); or they may be sent, like Maria Ponomarenko of Barnaul (south Siberia), for psychiatric assessment.

One can be arrested for saying “No to the War'' or “Peace will triumph!” in Russia. Even the words “special operation” in inverted commas is a crime.

A major event of the past week was the Moscow trial of Alexei Gorinov. Accused of circulating “fake news” about the Russian military, he was sentenced on 8 July to seven years imprisonment.

During the past week Ilya Yashin, a well-known opposition politician, was arrested in Moscow; Russia’s feminists, the “railroad partisans” and school-leavers showed their opposition to the war in a variety of ways; while Vesna activists in several cities responded to the Russian shelling of the KremenchukShopping Centre [on 27 June] with a ‘Last Purchase’ protest.

Alexei Gorinov has become the first Russian to receive a long prison sentence for telling the truth about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Three Belarusians are about to go on trial, with the Belarusian Investigative Committee having already labelled them ‘traitors’ and threatened the death penalty

Russia’s State Duma has adopted a draft bill allowing the prosecutor general to close media in Russia or occupied Crimea for so-called ‘fakes’, ‘discrediting the army’; ‘disrespect for the authorities’ or for calls to impose sanctions

During the past week public protests seemed to be waning in Russia. In fact, the anti-war movement was regrouping and adopting new forms of action.

Advice to conscripts on refusing military service; a secret Peace Forum in Petersburg; bracelets for those who donate towards the fines for protesting: people in Russia continued to express opposition to the war and the regime responded with new punishments, criminal charges and violence. Agents beat up a man in front of his seven-year-old son because the boy was wearing a yellow hat and blue jacket.

12 June was a public holiday in Russia. It marks the date in 1990 when the Russian Federation declared its independence. In Russian towns and cities filled with police and the pro-war symbol Z, activists used the occasion to hold anti-war protests. Many were arrested, and facial-recognition technology was used to detain over sixty men and women in the Moscow Metro. Hackers, street artists and musicians took part in the protests.

The judgement might have been hailed as a victory for civil society in Russia and occupied Crimea, had it not been so hopelessly belated.

Anna Perova and Ludmila Annenkova made an action «We can't clean ourselves from the blood»: barefoot, in dresses with red stains, they stood out near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Moscow. Both were detained. Activists are printing newspapers, preparing instructions for anti-war protests and even creating poetry in exchange for donations for Ukrainian refugees.