"There were about 30 of them. There were a lot of them. With guns. And they were wearing these balaclavas. Special Forces. And what's amazing and true - I was absolutely not afraid. They came in, and obviously I had some kind of adrenaline rush, a defensive reaction. Because I became afraid when I left the isolation center two days later and broke the restrictions: because there were restrictions that could not be followed. And I was constantly living and feeling my own criminality. Because literally everything I did was illegal. I lived like that for two years before I left."
"It was after the action in support of the New Greatness figures, after their conviction. It was a nightmare sentence. And what scared me the most was not even the verdict, but the public reaction. Everyone said, 'Well, yeah, that's to be expected, it happens, but let's go and picket'. I was shocked: what pickets?! That's just brutal. It's a nightmare. I felt that if I didn't do something very loudly, I would never be able to justify myself. So I went and painted posters for New Greatness. I mixed paint and water. It was a water-based paint that washes off easily. It was deliberate, so I wouldn't be prosecuted, so there would be no damage. And I pasted the posters and the paint on the prosecutor's office building of the Lublin court that convicted the New Greatness boys." And so it happened.
"Well, of course I was indignant and angry. Well, of course, at the time it was hard for me to imagine the extent of what was going on, now I understand it much more, and so I became much more radical. Before, I thought that there were adequate people among the police and we needed to treat them better and try to change their thinking. But now I realize that they are people with some gangster tendencies from the beginning and it is impossible to change their minds and re-educate them. Because they chose their side a long time ago. Especially after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine - everything is absolutely clear: if they didn't leave after that, they are lost people."
Olga Misik was a frequent participant in Moscow protest rallies. She was born on 17 January 2002 in Voskresensk, Moscow Region,
where she graduated. During her school years she wrote fantasy stories. In 2018, she accidentally got to a rally against pension reform in Moscow, where she learned the truth about Russian political prisoners, and from that moment she became politically active. As a minor, she was beaten, arrested and put on the police register. At a rally on 27 July 2019, she read aloud the constitution to law enforcers and became recognizable in the media as „the girl with the constitution“. In 2019, she joined the journalism department of Moscow State University. Alongside her studies, she went almost every day to picket the presidential administration in support of political prisoners, she broadcasted from courts and participated in training sessions for activists. On 8 August 2020, in protest against the verdict against the defendants in the „New Greatness“ case, she poured paint on a booth in front of the Prosecutor General‘s Office and put up posters in support of political prisoners. She was arrested the following day. The evidence in her criminal proceedings for property damage was falsified by the prosecutor‘s office. In May 2021, she received a sentence: two years‘ imprisonment. In her last words, she expressed her contempt for the judges and the prosecutor for lying and hypocrisy. In 2022, she fled Russia across the green border, lived in Georgia and Turkey for six months, and later received a humanitarian visa in Germany.
