“I’m still euphorically joyful!” Three weeks after being released from a Russian penal colony in a major prisoner swap with the West, Russian artist Alexandra (Sasha) Skochilenko, 33, says she relishes each day’s new moments that bring her joy.
“Yesterday I was in a forest,” she tells Duty from Germany where she found refuge. A real forest! I had dreamed of it during my two and a half years of detention. I had not been able to touch such pleasant things [depuis longtemps]so I do embarrassing things like hugging trees and lying in the grass!”
In a turnaround as incredible as it was unexpected, Sasha’s name was included in the list of 16 political prisoners imprisoned in Russia and Belarus — most of them well-known figures of the Russian opposition or dual nationals — who were exchanged on 1er August against 8 Russian nationals imprisoned in the West, notably for espionage and murder.
“I had the luckiest moment on Earth,” says the radiant young woman, during a video interview in a park during which she quickly lay down, this time, in the grass. A chance propelled, she believes, by the media coverage she received. “My story touched the hearts of many people. What happened is the strength of people who want very badly for something to happen.”
Sasha was arrested in April 2022, weeks after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, for replacing five price tags in a St. Petersburg supermarket with anti-war messages. A nonviolent act — but prohibited by the law criminalizing the dissemination of “false information” about the Russian military — that earned him a seven-year sentence in a penal colony.
Appreciate the simple things
Her time in prison was tough “physically and mentally,” says the young woman who suffers from bipolar disorder, celiac disease and is part of the LGBTQ+ community, which is ostracized in Russia. “But on the other hand, it was the adventure of my life,” she says. “I learned to love simple things and to get joy from them.”
Like touching blades of grass that had managed to grow, almost miraculously, in a crack in the courtyard of the prison where she was and observing a few ants there. “I learned to appreciate these little details [que je ne voyais pas avant] and to draw joy from it. Every day [en prison]I was trying to find something positive in my life.”
Not for a moment, she says, has she regretted her act of resistance to the Putin regime. The question was often asked of her in prison: was it worth it? “Fellow prisoners told me several times that I was stupid to sacrifice several years of my life for the sake of exchanging five price tags, an act that will not stop the war.” But her conviction has never wavered.
Succession of moments
Since she was released, journalists have been asking her the same question over and over again: When did you realize you were being exchanged? A question that leaves Sasha doubtful. “There wasn’t a specific moment,” she says. “Nothing in life happens so suddenly. It’s a process, one I still have to get used to, like walking without my hands tied behind my back.”
However, at one point, Sasha was placed, under threat, in a bus with other political prisoners. “When the soldier who accompanied us told us that we would be exchanged, he told us to stay seated and enjoy the view through the bus windows,” she recalls, with amazement.
Together with Oleg Orlov, another political prisoner exchanged that day, Sasha looked up outside in a kind of intoxication. “It was as if I was seeing the sky for the first time. I saw the clouds, no longer as a banal image, but as if I was seeing them through 3D glasses. Oleg, too, had the same impression.”
Later, on the plane to freedom, fellow detainee German Moyzhes handed out peanuts and dried fruit he had managed to find to his comrades. “He even asked some soldiers to pass them to us,” she recalls, laughing.
For Sasha, her release is not a single moment when everything changed — and that journalists would so much like her to talk about — but rather this succession of extremely human moments that have gradually brought her back to her freedom. “I am relearning to live as a free person.”
Reunion
On August 2, the day after the exchange, Sasha was finally reunited with his partner, Sonia Subbotina, his mother and his older sister. “Sonia told me she thought the hospital would be flooded [où Sasha se trouvait en observation] of our tears of joy, but it didn’t happen like that, she reports under her white straw hat. It was a warm and calm ocean of love for me to find myself in his arms. It was this simple, but extremely strong feeling of unconditional love.”
To end her “toxic relationship” with Russia, Sasha plans to stay in Germany for good. “This country chose me and my ex, Russia, chased me away,” she sums up. She does not fear for her safety, however. “It’s true that the Kremlin can have a long arm [en commettant des assassinats à l’étranger]but not for someone like me. I’m just an artist.”
It is to her art that the young woman intends to devote herself in the coming months. Sasha plans to create a series of paintings on the prisoner exchange in which she took part and to write a book on political repression. She also plans to marry Sonia — something that was forbidden to them in Russia. As well as preventing the crash that could happen. “I know that my euphoric state will end at some point. It will take me time to understand everything that has happened to me. But there are a lot of people who care about me right now and who are helping me.”