Einen schönen guten Abend, herzlich willkommen hier im Kunstverein Raumschiff am Linzer Pfarrplatz zur bereits sechsten Ausgabe der Talkreihe Einspruch-Wiederrede, einer kulturpolitischen Diskursreihe, die insbesondere den Fokus richtet auf internationale Zusammenhänge. Und wir hatten zuletzt Sherry Avraham hier im November zu Gast bei dieser Saison. Heute freue ich mich ganz besonders, Lolian Nordik willkommen heißen zu können. Lolian Nordik ist aus St. Petersburg, ist hier auf Basis eines EU-Asyls. Sie ist Dissidentin, russische Dissidentin, hat schon unmittelbar infolge des russischen Aggressionskrieges gegen die Ukraine sich organisiert mit vielen anderen in einer sehr stark feministisch konnotierten Antikriegsbewegung. sehr stark feministisch konnotierten Antikriegsbewegung. Und sie ist sehr vielseitig, ist auch mittlerweile sehr bekannt, war auch schon auf Arte zu sehen und in der Zeit gab es ein großes Interview mit ihr. Umso mehr freue ich mich, dass Lollia heute meiner Einladung nach Linz gefolgt ist. Ich kenne Lollia seit ungefähr eineinhalb Jahren. Ich habe sie damals im Presseclub Concordia bei einer sehr wichtigen Diskussionsveranstaltung kennengelernt. Damals ging es vor allem um Russland und unabhängige Medien. Lollia hat damals als Vortragende gesprochen und ja, heute ist sie hier. Ich freue mich sehr. Wir werden das Gespräch, das genau eine Stunde dauern wird, auf Englisch halten. Mir ist natürlich wichtig, dass dann das Publikum schon auch eingebunden wird mit Fragen, mit Ergänzungen, mit Kritik, mit Stellungnahmen, was auch immer. Natürlich besteht die Möglichkeit, das Englisch zu machen, wenn irgendwie sich jemand unsicher fühlt auf Englisch. Wir werden das dann auf alle Fälle übersetzen. Wir werden es übersetzen. Und jetzt schalten wir das Ganze an. Nein, ich habe noch etwas Wichtiges vergessen. Ein großes Dankeschön natürlich an unsere Gastgeberinnen vom Raumschiff, die Kerstin und die Teresa, dass wir heute wieder hier sein dürfen. Eine tolle Möglichkeit. Und ja, jetzt verpasst wir nicht mehr viel Zeit. Laurie, es ist toll, dich hier zu haben. Es ist ein großes Vergnügen. Vielen Dank, dass ich hier bin. It's great to have you here. It's a great pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And I already introduced you as an artistic person, a feminist person, and it's very, very complicated how to open up this evening because we're going to talk about Russia, the war, anti-war movement, liberty and freedom and of a better world. movement, liberty and freedom and of a better world. And I decided to start with you with probably the biggest questions of all questions. It's that when we look into the world, the picture we get is very, very disappointing. It makes all of us afraid. We see the Russian war against Ukraine already in its third year. We have to live with Donald Trump as the re-elected president of the United States. We have Elon Musk going to be the owner of our mindsets. We have a toxic information landscape and that all must be considered that we cannot remain calm. The first question for you is, it's really huge, how to resist? Yeah, it's a very heavy question and if i had the perfect answer probably we would be all or you had the perfect answer for this we would probably live in different world but i think it's really important first of all to be realistic and understand that the imbalance of power and this fight against authoritarianism, against capitalism, against corporations, against these authoritarian leaders is just super imbalanced. And they have so much resources, they have all the money, they have all the technology, and we are just people who have to resist in a certain way. So I think it's important to be realistic about the lack of resources that we have as just like grassroots movements, regular people, but at the same time, not to lose hope and continue to be resilient and to continue not to agree with the things that are happening in the world, locally, globally, and not to let all these guys feel comfortable in what they're doing because actually they really want us all to be depressed they want us all to be desperate they want us all to feel weak and not feel any power not feel any empowerment and they was they want us all to be silent. Actually, they are very afraid of any action, of any voices being heard, even though if they understand that these people are really weak and small. I think it really makes sense to remember that and continue speaking up, continue being uncomfortable, continue to do, at least on a smaller scale some resistance and when i'm talking about resistance i'm not talking about street demos which is also i mean not i mean in austria it's still possible to do that without being oppressed but if you are not comfortable with this there are many other things that you can do and i I think most important thing, if we're talking about informational wars that are going on right now, is to talk with people around you, in your workplace, in your families. Sometimes it's really hard, I know, because I witnessed so many people of my age who have very serious political clashes with their parents, with their grandparents, with different relatives. And I think it's, I mean, if we are losing the fight inside our communities, inside our families, what to say about like the global situation? I think we really need to talk to people. We need to talk to people who have different views than we do. Maybe it's like from what I learned from my own research, they say it makes sense not to talk to the super right-wing people, but to focus on the people who are kind of in the middle, who like not to be only talking in your bubble with people who understand you and have the same political values as you, but talk to the people who are kind of you know in the middle between right and left who are not really aware of the political situation or don't have enough resources to get deep into this because actually it takes a lot of resources to understand all the military aggression situation all the economical situation all the election situation, all the election situation. So just talking to the people who don't understand what's going on and who trust you and with whom you can build certain connection, I think it's really crucial. And it's like the first step, like the easiest step that you can do. But I mean, getting organized on the grassroots level with your neighbors, with your people from your neighborhood, from your building, because sometimes we don't, I mean, we're talking about democracy, we're talking about how we want to build communities, but sometimes we don't even know people that live in the same building that we live in, like in the same staircase that we live in. And I think it's really important to build certain networks of support to build these communities on the grassroots level. Because I feel that it's really getting more and more hard to rely on the government in terms of getting some support in any way and getting protection. I think we should really, in these really dark times, rely more on our communities. And to do that, we need to build these communities in the first place and i think government really doesn't want us to build any communities government wants us to sit in our own apartments not talk to anyone not be connected in any way and yeah i think it's a big problem also like the demo thing right now and we talked about this earlier, Thursday demos in Vienna are coming back again. And I think it's also a kind of easy step to do just to bring at least one person that never planned to go to the Thursday demo to the Thursday demo. You don't need to bring like the whole neighborhood there. You don't need to like make barricades or become a revolutionary. Just bring one person that never planned to go anywhere and start there. I think it's really important because if every person did that, we would have a completely different scale of resistance. Anyway, we will get a bit into more details. But the first question which came up in my mind now is nobody of us wants to be weak and depressive. But I invited you as some sort of a role model. Where do you find your energy? Where do you find your confidence in what you can do? Where can you find your confidence in in what you can do where can you find your optimism i mean to be honest i'm also very depressed and you know i'm feeling a lot of as we all are a lot of pressure and there's not many things to be happy about but actually i since things are getting worse i find my personal motivation in doing a lot of things in spite of what's going on. So, I mean, Russian government and other governments, they are making my life and the life of other people really sad. And they are depriving us from happiness from ability to build our future and here it maybe makes sense to talk about climate crisis and everything apart from this more local political situations and I really feel that I have a lot of anger inside me because people in power they're taking all the opportunities from us and they're just not letting us live our life because I would prefer not to do activism and not to do political work I would prefer to just live my life and I don't make arts make new friends being happy build relationships but I am I have to do this because otherwise, if I don't do anything, government comes into my apartment in their dirty boots. They come into my bedroom in their dirty boots. They just don't let us live lives. And I learned really well in Russia that silence doesn't protect you. You can call yourself a political person as long as you want, but they will come after you at some point. And that's what we witnessed in Russia. A lot of people that I knew from art scenes, from, I don't know, some students, young people, activists, not activists, but artists, those people who said, okay, we just want to live our life. We just want to make our art. We're not political. And we don't think that everything that's happening is that critical. We just want to stay away from it. And then they couldn't because then the war came into our country. And then everything fell apart. And then people were mobilized by force from the streets and then they realized they couldn't post anything they couldn't call the war war on social media because they can be persecuted for that so it's it really this strategy doesn't work it fails if you're staying apolitical if you're staying out of this they will still come for after you but maybe you will be the last on the list probably so i mean being worried and being angry and not letting the governments you know just doing their evil stuff and being an obstacle towards it i think that what motivates me i don't want them to be happy i don't want them to be happy. I don't want them to do their evil stuff easily. I want to be an obstacle. And if I can't do something that makes them feel uncomfortable, and I know that even me, a tiny person and tiny activist who doesn't have any power, I constantly get targeted by Russian propaganda. I constantly receive threats from people who work for Russian government, for police and everything. It means that I irritate them. It means that they don't want me to speak up. They want me to be scared and silent. And if they want that, I want to do the opposite thing. And I also am very motivated to live to the moment when all of these authoritarian regimes will fall apart. Not only Putin's regime, but I mean, Trump is not that young already. He probably will come to his end at some point. And I really want to see that. And I really want to celebrate that. It might sound evil, but I think we deserve to see the fall, the destruction of these systems that were built by these people. And we really deserve to see the end of their reign. And I'm really motivated by this. Maybe it doesn't sound very romantic and optimistic, but this is what keeps me going. And I think anger can be a really nice fuel to continue because they want people like us to, I don't know, unalive ourselves and die from depression and be silent. And I don't want to give them this pleasure. If they want me not to exist, I will continue to exist as long as possible, regardless of how sad and frustrated I feel, because I don't want to give them this present. And if they want me to stop doing my activism, I won't stop just because they want me to stop. So that's how I found this for myself. I guess I can share with the audience here that you've already been imprisoned in Russia and you told me even with Pussy Riot and you're very close to them. Can you tell us a bit more how did you get in touch together and a bit more about your artistic way of resistance how did you learn it to get an activist yeah first of all it's important to say that i wasn't imprisoned i was detained so i spent a few times i was detained on the street, temporarily arrested, and spent a few nights in the detention center. It's basically prison or a prison cell at the police station, but it's not a real prison where you're sent after the court decision. So it makes a difference. And with Pussy Riot, I have known them for years because I am a feminist activist and they are a big part of feminist movement in Russia. Unfortunately, internationally, they are, I think, most well-known feminist activists from Russia. Because when they were imprisoned more than 10 years ago for singing in church, the world knew about this and it was all over the news. Because they were famous. Yeah, they become really famous and they got a lot of international support so everybody knows them but in fact russian feminist movement is very large and we have a lot of groups a lot of activists it's very inter-regional so it's like a network of collectives small, big groups spread all over the country from far east to the north and to the west. So we were all a part of this network. And of course, we knew each other. I wasn't detained with them. But the last time we met in Russia, we were filming video for Naida Telakonikova and for Pussy Riot on Lenfilm in St. Petersburg, which is the oldest film studio in Russia. And we got busted by police. So police came and disrupted the making of the video, the filming of the video. And then a lot of people were arrested the next day. I wasn't, but I was filming what was happening and I went to support them in prison. And actually then Nadia had to leave Russia and she never came back. And I stayed for like one and a half years longer and then I already had to flee. And actually funny that first time after this, we met in Linz this summer because Nadia had her personal exhibition here in Offene Skulpturhaus yeah yes yes but I mean Pussy Riot is also it's important to say that Pussy Riot is not only Nadia it's not only Maria Alekhina it's not only these four people who got arrested 10 years ago it's also a horizontal international group of activists. And as they always say, everybody can become a pussy riot. Everybody from you can become a pussy riot. You don't need to sign anything. You don't need to do any specific things. You don't even need to wear balaclava on your head. You can just become a part of this feminist movement. And I think it's really great. And I think that actually I met so many people in different countries who never met Nadia or Maria or other famous participants, but they are considering themselves a part of the movement. So I think it's really nice. When exactly did you become a feminist activist with all your personal background growing up in Russia and you consider yourself it's very underlined in your biography eco eco-feminist activist how does this eco in feminism come about well i started more as a civil activist civil rights activist so i was protesting different environmental injustice in my city for example against cutting off the trees for separate waste and for recycle systems in my city, I also was trying to challenge the transportational system and make it more environmentally friendly. So, starting from these kind of local things, I was also participating in big oppositional protests in Russia against Putin's regime and for fair elections against the corruption. and again like for fair elections against the corruption but very soon I realized that this whole oppositional liberal community is there's a lot of sexism in it there's a lot of um misogyny and it's um often it's like very male dominated scene where women are not seen as like equals sometimes so I very soon understood that I was a feminist and I share feminist values because I want to be seen as equal. I don't want men in opposition telling me what to do and seeing me as like some kind of assistant in this movement and just being silent and hearing them talking all the time on the meetings. So I very quickly leaned into the local feminist community. I started going to feminist reading clubs, reading feminist philosophy together with other women and queer people and started building our own protest groups where we as feminists were not only participating in general protests against the Putin's regime and against injustice, but also focusing on women's rights and queer rights. Because, for example, in Russia, the problem of gender-based violence is very huge. We are one of the countries who have the highest level of domestic violence in Russia. And actually, every year it gets worse. And war in Ukraine year it gets worse and war in Ukraine made it even worse because with the gender-based violence any crisis any military situation even environmental crisis always affects the problem of gender-based violence in the baddest way possible so the amount of violence against women increases in any crisis. And that's what happened in Russia. Also, we were fighting for years, for almost a decade, with women's rights defenders, lawyers, and activist groups from all over the country to have a proper law protecting women and children, any person from domestic violence. And it was a very intense fight. And actually, the project of the law was written. It was a great project. And we were this close to passing this because already the parliament was saying, yes, we took this document, we are going to work through it. Because there was a great mobilization about regular people because feminists started pushing this subject that there is a problem of domestic violence. There are independent centers, NGOs who provide help for domestic violence survivors and sexual-based violence survivors because government never did this kind of work. So all of the work to support victims was on the shoulders of NGOs, independence centers, which were mostly all of them were run by feminist activists whatsoever. So it was never like governmental job to do this work. And then we made this law, not me, but like the activists and human rights defenders. not me but like the the activists and human rights defenders and then the government was feeling this pressure of you know the society who were talking about this more and more and then they said yes we're working through this and it was a very interesting thing because they uh like it was autumn 2021 and they government the parliament's plan to work through this project law project and then they said oh we are pushing this to spring 2022 and then it was february 2022 where the war full scale invasion in ukraine happened and it was very clear for us that they did this on purpose they pushed this to the spring because they knew that nothing is going to happen after february and of course that what happens so no talks about this law are happening right now and it is very bad because it's just like the decades of work were just you know destroyed and probably we won't see a law like this happening while Putin is in charge, because also this normalization of violence against women and domestic violence is actually really connected to justify military violence that is happening. And this is a really, you know, I would say traditional feminist perspective to point on these intersections, to point of this connection, because when you have violence normalized in your country, inside your country, inside families, shows you with their actions that if you are a weak person and you are being violated by your family member by your husband by your father and you get no support and government said that oh what happens in the family stays in the family and church says that oh it's okay to beat your your wife sometimes, you know, it all, I mean, helps to justify violence against the enemy. Because if it's okay to commit violence towards your close one, why wouldn't it be okay to commit violence towards the enemy, the evil person, the stranger, somebody from a different country. And I think this is what is really connected. That's why Putin's government never wanted to pass this law against gender-based violence, against domestic violence, because it will become, you know, a statement that violence will not be justified on this level. It will teach people that this is not okay to commit violence to your loved one, to your neighbor, to a person in other country. And that is, I mean, interesting thing that we saw this normalization of violence, not only in the Institute of Family, but we saw it during Putin's regime in all the other systems. For example, prison violence, violence in prisons was super escalated and normalized during 20 years of Putin's reign. Because for now it's just a regular normal thing, normal thing that it's really hard to survive in russian prison people face torture sexual based violence people face very critical living condition in russian prisons and this is just what happened it's not some you know extreme rare cases is just the system the system of prisons is based on severe violence and torture also police violence escalated during the last 20 years, like to the highest level. What happened 10 years ago and how police brutality is not compared to the level of police brutality that's happening right now. For example, 10 years ago, we used to say that, oh, at least they don't torture women. But now they torture women, and now they torture children because we have cases when police were arresting teenagers and schoolchildren who were participating in protests. Also, we have violence in the medical sphere. For example, mentally ill people and people with disabilities are facing violence in medical institutions. And this was a part of the system. So normalization of violence is one of the strategies of Putin's regime to actually justify his military ambitions of conquering and occupying other countries. And also when violence is normalized on so many different levels, it's really way easier to build this authoritarian violent state, to build this vertical governmental system in your country and to justify at the end this governmental structure, violent governmental structure as well. So this is a very deep-rooted project problem and i am very worried that even if putin dies tomorrow even if the war ends tomorrow this normalization of violence is so deeply set up systematic yeah and it's so deeply in the mindset of people, that it will take so many years and decades to unlearn this norma and to deconstruct this norma. You already mentioned it, I guess, that a lot of international human rights organizations are highly alerted regarding the situation in Russia. What I'm asking myself is, how can you as an activist abroad, feminist activist abroad, get any influences? We're regarding the society of fear, there is no freedom of expression, people are experiencing a lot of oppression. How can you achieve just any of your goals? I mean, I'm in exile now. I was lucky to get out of the country and not to get imprisoned. But a lot of people actually are staying inside the country, the majority of people, because we have 140 million people living in Russia. That's a lot. It's impossible to flee for all the people who are disagreeing with the regime. Also, I think the last numbers show that around 2 million people left Russia after the full-scale invasion by now. So it's a lot of people, actually. And some of them fled because they didn't want to get mobilized. Some of them fled because they just were working for different organizations or were having risk of facing repressions for their political activism or just their political beliefs. Some just had possibility to leave financially. But for me, it's always important to say that, okay, I am outside of Russia and I can do activism in exile. I can speak here with you publicly. But at the same time, a lot of my colleagues, a lot of my comrades, a lot of people from feminist anti-war resistance, from other oppositional grassroots movements, they are still in Russia and they be done underground, undercover, in a very secret partisan way because you can get in prison for just posting anything, very mild statements against the war or against the regime on social media. And you can get a very serious sentence for that. So it's impossible to organize on the streets. It's impossible to do street protests right now in Russia. It's just technically, physically impossible to sustain it. Because apart from the army that we're having in Ukraine right now, we have our internal so-called army of the police who is ready in any big city to destroy any street protest activity. That's why protests didn't work out after February 22, because a lot of people were protesting. In many cities, there were thousands and thousands of people on the street. But the amount of armed police who is ready to beat you to death and torture you and it's just insane it's impossible when you have thousands of unarmed untrained people to fight basically soldiers who are who who have the rights to torture you and beat you is just technically impossible. And what happened in 2022, by March, by April, we had thousands and thousands of people arrested from the street protests and hundreds of people who faced tortures and who faced really serious abuse from the police. And we realized, when I say we, I mean people who are protesting, Russian opposition, grassroots activist organization, that this is not sustainable. We can continue going out of the streets, but more and more people will get imprisoned. We just need to switch this work to the different format, to work underground, to fight Russian propaganda, to spread news among the people in a partisan way, because all the media, independent media, was blocked in Russia. For many people, it was impossible to reach truthful news about what is happening in the country. So this work had to be done. Also, people had to spread information on how to escape mobilization, because there are ways to not to get mobilized into to escape it to run away from this military conscription offices. And there are organizations who are working all over the country to help people do this. And but this information is also illegal. So it has to be spread in a certain way and it's also the resistance because the our main task is not to let putin get more soldiers in the army our task of resisting the war and the regime is to help people to escape mobilization so this work uh is people do this work as well. Also we... Does it work? Yes, it works actually. I mean, a lot of people were able to flee the country and to escape forced mobilization with the help of these networks of volunteers and human rights defenders who just were teaching people how to do that. And also thousands, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, not refugees, displaced people, those people who were stuck in the occupied territories and then they were by force moved to Russian territory by Russian military, they also needed help because all these people, they also wanted to flee Russia. They weren't properly taken care of by Russian government. So Russian citizens build this inter-regional network of grassroots groups that were hosting these Ukrainian people. They were feeding them. They were buying them tickets. They were transporting them to the border so they can leave Russia. And it was the whole system and this is again the the resistance also there is a radical wing of the resistance in russia and this here we are talking more about like anarchist partisans like anti-fascists who are who were trying to uh break the rail railways to stop military trains with military weapons going to the war zone. And we had hundreds of these cases around the country where they blew up the railways so these trains went off the rails. Also, we had hundreds of cases where people were setting military offices on fire, throwing molotov cocktails in the offices to slower the work of the military bureaucracy. Because fortunately, Russian military is not very digitalized. So when it comes to mobilization, a lot of these offices have everything just in paper. So burning these offices makes sense because then you slower the work and it's harder for them to conscript people. So this is all like the different dimensions of the resistance that is happening inside the country. And people are really risking their lives while doing this because you can get in prison for years for this, you can get tortured and you can sometimes get murdered or just not survive the prison condition because it it's so harsh and in exile it's completely different situation our job here is to support people who are staying inside the country uh provide information to the outside world what is happening. And also, for me, the most important thing is to fight local governments and local politicians who are allies of Putin, such as FPO party, such as identitarian movements in Austria, such as all of these neo-Nazis, right-wing, traditionalist conservatives that are really supporting Putin's regime. And what's the most awful thing is that Putin's regime supports them and finances them. You already mentioned in the early beginning of our talk the so-called Thursday demonstrations. I remember quite well, I was part of the first Donnerstag demos in February 2000. I'm really that old. But how do you personally perceive this sort of protest of Austrian civil society? What can they do better? I was actually really surprised even before the election results, because everybody knew there is election coming and FPO party might win, so we probably have to do something. And I participated in many demos in Vienna that were happening all over the year. You were often talking. Yeah, sometimes I was giving a speech where I was addressing the connections, the very criminal and dangerous connection between Putin's regime and FPO and neo-Nazi groups in Austria. I was there. Some of Russian activists who are also in exile in Vienna were there. Austrian activists were there, anarchists, anti-fascists, feminists, queer people, students, but there were not enough of regular citizens there. And there were so many demos and they were not that big, considering the risk of FPO coming to power. And I mean, I was very worried and i was trying to talk to people but it felt like a lot of people they somehow don't feel that the risk is that high they don't maybe see that it's important to go go out on the street and be active because again talking about the protest that happens in 2000 i was really surprised to learn that back then there were hundreds of thousands of people on the street and here we only had tens of thousands and the situation is way worse right now and more dangerous right now in Austria as it was in 2000s why there are not enough people on the streets why there are not enough people speaking out about this thing and also i mean we had this protest um two weeks ago when there was 25k or 50k people 50 000 people on the streets there's a lot for austrian a lot but still i think not enough considering the neo-Nazis coming to power. But what surprised me is that when the official timing of the demo was over, 90% of the people just immediately went off home to sleep. Even though we basically surrounded the building where the chancellor was sitting, and it was really intense. And I was really surprised because that's not what you do resistance doesn't mean that oh we have two hours to protest and then we're going to have some nice dinner it may be like in different times but when the risk is so high I think it's not what maybe something should be pushed further and I think there are a lot of tools of resistances can be done you can occupy the streets you can make a camp near the parliament i mean there's so much examples of resistances history i was just surprised that people are really easily just leave the streets when they're being asked to leave the streets. And yeah, I would just... Do you think that our country, Austria, is not enough familiar with what we call disobedience? I don't know. I think, I mean, it's hard for me as a Ausländer to talk about your heritage and what you're familiar with and whatnot i'm just i i think what i can do is just to really show the example of what i've been through in russia because we had similar situation that it wasn't that harsh we didn't have this like straightforward fascist regime very openly fascist regime like 15 years ago or 10 years ago but it really escalates quickly you it's just like one moment you think oh it may be not that bad yeah putin is harsh but we're we're not like it's not that bad there's not going to be a full-scale war and the next day is a full-scale war and you one day you think that oh they're not they won't torture women in prison and they will not arrest me for doing peaceful protest on the streets because i'm not hurting anyone and the next day they're putting you in for 10 years in prison for a post on social media and i am really afraid that with fpo party is what, this escalation is something that Austrians are going to witness. It's really not. And I mean, again, they are allies of Putin's regime. FPO party, they are looking up to Putin's regime. They are looking to all of these repressions of women, of queer people, of migrants, of people who have different ethnicity from what they find the best ones. And they're really looking up to it. They want the same legislations. They want the same power to oppress people. They want the same tools to silence people. And Putin really, you know, ready to offer them the knowledge, the money money the influence to make this country more authoritarian less democratical and to take away your freedom your happiness your democracy and i think it's it's time to be worried now it's time to be angry now it's time to be really active now because then it's going to be too late and it will be just technically physically more difficult to to resist i have the feeling now that's the right moment to open up the discussion to the audience are there any remarks questions is there critique is there anything to say to intervene i guess I guess we are all impressed. Yeah, please. Yeah, thank you very much. It was really interesting. You said that it's very dangerous for the people in Russia, which I completely understand and know also. But I would like to know if you are an activist here in Austria and you are broadcasted and everybody knows what you are doing, is there any danger with your family? I mean, luckily to my family, they are kind of conservative people and they don't support me in my activism. So when I started getting arrests and when i was accused of terrorism in russia i had a fabricated criminal case of me accusing me of terrorism just for my activism my i'm not a terrorist just to let you know um didn't do anything against the society but they just fabricated this case for me being against the war, against the regime, for my feminist activism as well. But my family, unfortunately, didn't support me in this. Nobody from my family reached out to me. And actually, I mean, they are kind of tolerant to the government, which is sad, but it's interesting that my family is basically an example of people who were brainwashed by Russian propaganda to this enormous, crazy extent that even the oppression of their own child, even political repression against their own child doesn't change their mindset. So and they think you're wrong. Yeah. And they think the government is right and they believe all the propaganda and they don't feel any empathy. They probably think I'm a real deal terrorist and the enemy of the States. And it's really awful, but a lot of activists are, you know, experiencing the same thing. So I think since my family is not on this side of the political spectrum as i am uh i don't think they will face any any danger but the problem is that russian activists in exile are facing danger in europe and we witness several cases of activists and human rights defenders, oppositional politicians being attacked in Europe. For example, a year ago, several activists in Berlin, and some of them I personally know, they were poisoned by unknown chemical weapon in Berlin, in the middle of Europe. And it was a big investigation about this. It's still going on. Also, some people were physically attacked in different countries yeah this they all survived luckily but they had like their health was affected also uh for example i received threats uh i mean not every day but every week because i'm being targeted by russian neoNazis, by Russian trolls, and they keep texting me every day that we know where you are, we're going to visit you, and there's death threats, rape threats, everything. It's just like the pressure that they try to do. And also Austria and Vienna is not the best place to be because it's like the biggest hub of Russian spies. Historically. Historically, and now, and because it's like the biggest hub of russian spies and historically historically and now and also it's like the neutral vienna where they feel comfortable and also in 2023 i think there was a case when one very prominent journalist investigator christo groziv who lived in vienna for decades. He had to flee Vienna because local authorities told him that he is going to be attacked by Russia. And he, like, there was an order by Russia to assassinate him. So Austria said that we can't protect you anymore. And the person who lived here for years had to flee Vienna. So, I mean, it's never... Actually, there's no safe place anywhere in the world if you are an enemy of Putin's regime. As we all know, the arms of Austria are not very open towards migrants and people seeking refuge here. So what is your experience concerning this? First question and the second one, as far as I know, people fleeing from Russia, men fleeing from Russia, don't have any chance here. People fleeing for what? Russian refugees. Fleeing from the army. Escaping the army forces. Yes, actually Austria doesn't really provide a lot of help to people who want to flee Russia for political reasons or to escape being a soldier in Russia. But they're coming here as asylum seeker. I know that I was talking to local NGOs that are working with this and they said that there's not that much people who try to apply here because the chances are really low. And I think it's also a very hypocritical thing with Austria being neutral and saying that they are supporting Ukraine and that saying that they are actually not supporting Putin but what do you do for like to to weaken the Putin regime why are you not welcoming people who want to flee this mobilization situation I mean I when I arrived here I couldn't find any opportunities here to get a humanitarian visa, for example, because applying for asylum is a very difficult and terrible, hard process that none of the activists want to go through. So I chose different paths. I decided to go to study and become a student and get a student's visa. Only motivation to go to study for me was not to apply for asylum, but to be able to stay here. But there was no option for me to get humanitarian visa here. There was no option for me to get any financial support as an activist in exile here from Austrian government. And I find this also very hypocritical because even for ukrainian people there are not much uh you know support here even though austria has been buying russian gas for so many years and paying this huge amount of money to putin's pocket with this money putin was was able to sustain his political regime putin was able to finance war in Ukraine. And, you know, I mean, when you have this background of paying so much money directly to the Putin's pocket, why are you not even... Okay, one question, why you keep doing this. Another question, why are you, on the other hand, have no budget, no programs, no visa, asylum project to support people from Russia if you really want not only to reinforce this regime with your money, but to kind of weaken it somehow? Austria because I think it's like its relationship to Russia is so hypocritical in many ways and the gas is like a big pink elephant in the room. Okay so yeah please take the mic please. Thank you very much for your, for telling your story here. I have a question about Russia, namely, do you think the authoritarian regime in Russia can be toppled from inside still? Or just do you need pressure from outside? And if that's the case, how do we supply the pressure as individuals, as NGOs, as states? I think, I mean, again, I'm not a political expert. Sometimes I feel weird that I need to, you know, propose my idea of how the regime should fall apart but at the same time i don't think that um and i get very irritated when people are saying people just have to go out on the streets and you know go on to the kremlin and with their bare hands fight the police and putin and make a revolution that's not going to happen this is not realistic and this is crazy that people in europe are saying this i mean go try and fight your police maybe on Thursday and see how it goes. I would really like to see what you will say after this to Russian people and your suggestion to fight Putin with bare hands. But I mean, there might be certain events that will happen inside the country, like a coup or different fight inside of the elites. That's what political analysts are telling us. But the problem that I have is that, I mean, it will be great if Putin could die, but the problem is that he's really healthy. So probably he won't die for a long time. If he will get assassinated, I don't know what, like some, as we mentioned, something very serious might happen inside the elites, but also it's a rare option, I guess. They didn't put enough pressure on Russia still, and they didn't give enough support to Ukraine. Because, I mean, Ukraine needed a certain amount of weapons, and all the time during this whole three years, weapons were always laid. I think never even once Ukraine got the supplies that they needed to really strategically switch in time. Never happened. Never happened. strategically switch in time never happened never happened at the same time russia kept receiving fossil fuels money very on time all the time all these three years right now russia is still one of the top providers of gas in europe no problem with the money Money is still floating with a very fat float right to Putin's pocket. And sanctions are not working. And business as usual keeps happening. And so I think there's a lot of hypocrisy in what European Union governments are saying about sanctions, about their pressure on Russia, about how they hate Putin's regime, because they're saying these things. But when it comes to business, when it comes to fossil fuel money, when it comes to a Russian gray zone fleet that still brings gas, Russian gas and Russian fossils to different countries. They are just, you know, this is just a hypocrisy. And also US that, you know, said that they're going to support Ukraine and they failed. This is very sad and this is very frustrating. And I think certain things might have happened. The switch in the war situation might have happened if the help for Ukraine were in time and if they were not bullshitting us with the sanctions that actually do not work and with like Russian oligarchs and their projects feeling comfortable still in Europe and children and wives of Russian oligarchs just like traveling all over the world and just living their lives using this all stolen money. It's just like, it's, I think, international community failed in fighting Putin's regime. They failed in supporting Ukraine, because they only care about their money and their profits and yeah I think also to to answer second part of your question I think it's not and it never was about separate fights so for example I am fighting Putin in Russia and it's only about Russia you're happening Nazis in Austria and it's only about Austria it's never like this it's very interconnected when you are fighting FPO and neo-nazis in Austria you are automatically fighting Putin's regime because Putin regime wants to have as many right wing governments as possible so when you're fighting Nazis here, you are bringing your input into fighting Putin's regime and making it weaker. Also, when I am fighting Putin's regime, I am making weaker your local right-winger. So this fight against conservative right-wing neo-Nazi political powers, it's our international fight because they are very connected with each other. They're supporting each other financially. They're interfering in the elections of each other to make each other win. And the bad thing is that we are not that well connected internationally as they are. They're way more bonded and way more structured in working together to oppress us and to come to power and also i think it's important while fighting them here in europe also not to get in this trap of saying oh well but we need to remember that the results of the election is like a democratic result. It's not. Because what happened in Austria in the election happened with the interference of Russia. Because a lot of people who vote for FPO, they are also brainwashed by conservative populist propaganda, by fake news, but by all these social media accounts and posts that are feeding these narratives, populist right-wing, anti-migrant, anti-LGBT, you know, scary narrative to the people. And we know very well, it's not like some suggestion, it's just like a fact that putin's regime has huge departments to finance these propaganda machines in europe and in austria specifically and then they win because they like this propaganda reaches people and then people made their choice but it's not about the democracy when people are being brainwashed by this constructed media campaigns, which are not real. And so many bots and trolls, fake accounts are involved in it. It's not even real people. It's just like generated content. And I think we should really remember this because when people saying to me, oh, but this is democracy. No, it's not. It's all fabricated. And this is a very big threat. Yeah, Lolia, unfortunately our time is over, but I would like to end up with a personal dream. Probably you can not really close your eyes, but just try to dream where do you see yourself in 20 years? In which sort of world do you want to live? Briefly, pray i i'm really actually trying to be optimistic here because coming back to environmental subject i don't know what are we going to witness in 20 years have you do you remember the last summer and the temperatures here in Vienna and in Linz? I mean, I was here in July, it was 34 degrees. It's insane. All the climate emergency, all the extreme weather situation, the flooding that we had in Vienna this autumn, everything all over the world is just too much. And I mean, in five years, will be terrifying it will be in five years it will be unbearable to live in certain regions and I mean we have this huge problem but we don't have enough of resources and time and possibilities to fight this problem because we have all these right-wing governments that are completely denying the issue and the trump just said that they are going to drill and drill oil and trump just said that they are going to leave paris agreement and this is like the major political power in the world is like the most powerful state and they are leaving paris agreement and they're saying that climate crisis is a hoax and they're saying that going to they are going to pump oil even more. So I am very concerned about that. But I mean, if we're talking about dreaming, I of course really dream that we can stop this whole fossil fuel business and start our turn to the different types of energy. Because I mean, at at the end if we don't do that even Nazis won't be able to survive you know so it's about all of us but I also really dream that I will see the fall of Putin's regime I really dream that we will see the fall of FPO and right-wingers in Austria and actually all over the world. I would like to see the fall of Elon Musk and Trump. And I actually would really like to see the rise of people who are maybe not calling themselves activists, maybe not ready to do political work, but the rise of them uniting with each other, building communities, building networks of support, and seeing themselves as an opposition to the structures, to the government, and understanding that governments are not our friends, corporations are not our friends, police is not our friends, because they're only interested in gaining more power because they're only interested in gaining more power. They're only interested in gaining more money. And they want us to be very, very unhappy. And I want people to really separate themselves from this structure and try to, you know, build really sustainable, grassroots, local communities as an opposition to these systems. That's what I call a final word. Many thanks for this talk, Lolia. Thanks a lot to you, the audience. And I guess there are a lot of opportunities to continue in small further talks. We have the bar here, it's open. And so enjoy this evening. Ja, vielen herzlichen Dank. Auf Wiedersehen und bis zum nächsten Mal. Dankeschön.