Warsaw, 12.11.2014

Vladimir Kozlov has replied to a message from the Open Dialog Foundation (ODF). In his letter, he thanks the ODF team for their support and remembrance. He has also described the fate of his family which has been divided by Russian propaganda.

The package sent to Kozlov on 23^rd October, 2014 included reports and analyses drafted by the Foundation on the violations of human rights in Kazakhstan and the conflict in the east of Ukraine. Kozlov thanked us for the documents and assured us that he keeps the reports in his cell and shows them to anyone who is interested. He praised the analysts for their objectivism which is particularly clear against the backdrop of propaganda spread in Russia and Kazakhstan.

He also described how the propaganda is dividing his family - his brother lives in St. Petersburg, his son in Ukraine, whilst he remains a Kazakh prison. In Kozlov's view, it was within only a few months that his brother came to be a follower of Putin. All the while, he serves a prison sentence in a penal colony for criticising the state which is only a "poor copy of the Russian regime". His brother's support for Putin's authoritarian regime - which is what Kozlov calls the Russian system - puts the brothers on both sides of the barricade.

Thanks to his son Maksim, who provides him with information from the press on a weekly basis, Kozlov is well informed about the course of the conflict in the east of Ukraine, and therefore has no doubts about who was responsible for its outbreak. Signing off, he praises journalists of Novaya Gazeta (Новая Газета), hailing them as heroes.