There are those who write long letters, A4 sheets carefully folded into an envelope. And those who prefer quantity – the same few words scribbled on a postcard. In the space of an hour since her arrival, Yulia Averina has already written 10 of them. "Tonight, I was a little short of inspiration," she said with a sigh. "And then, I ended up telling them about the flowers I'd planted for autumn at the bottom of my building – peonies and lilacs. Since they're cut off from the outside world, I also give them the latest information. I tell them that [Sergey] Sobyanin has been re-elected mayor of Moscow. I don't have to tell them under what conditions. They know, and the censors wouldn't let it through."

"They" are political prisoners whom Averina, a 49-year-old nurse, has never met and probably never will, but to whom, every month, she devotes three hours of her time. She stops only to chat with the fellow writers at her table or to replenish her supplies of tea and cupcakes.

There are always around 60 writers, squeezed around a dozen tables, elbows almost touching. Some leave, only to be replaced by new arrivals – and the merry-go-round is repeated the last Thursday of every month, from 6pm to 9pm. On the tables are ballpoint pens, postcards depicting inoffensive Russian landscapes and factsheets detailing the cases and incarceration conditions of some of the prisoners.

With the war in Ukraine, their number has risen sharply – to 1,500, said organizer Lilia Manikhina, who also works in the medical sector. Such initiatives existed before but the 55-year-old has given them a new outlet by organizing these Thursday meetings for almost a year, with the logistical support of the old liberal party Yabloko. Volunteers meet in the party's offices to write 500 to 600 letters at each session, which are then sent to prisons all over the country the following day.

On September 28, Manikhina opted for a simple solution, to ensure that the most well-known prisoners would not be favored. On the tables, she placed the factsheets of prisoners whose names began with an "S," as in "September." There's Pavel Stepanov, a 29-year-old blogger whose writings, according to the courts, "have had a negative influence on society's opinion of the armed forces." And 33-year-old Alexandra Skochilenko, who is sick and has been in pre-trial detention since March 2022 for replacing price tags in a store with short notes on the "crimes" of the Russian army.

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