Fundraising has become the only way to support Victoria Goncharova in the penal colony.

Animal rights activist Victoria Goncharova from Adygea is unable to receive assistance from relatives living in Ukraine in prison. Volunteers are collecting funds for food and hygiene products. Lawyers have indicated that collecting aid for prisoners, even those convicted of terrorism offenses, is safe under current laws.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," on June 2, 2023, it was announced that the Maykop Court sentenced Adygea resident Victoria Goncharova to six and a half years in prison, finding her a member of the Right Sector* and guilty of knowingly disseminating false information about the Russian military. The Supreme Court of Adygea upheld the sentence. Human rights activists have recognized her as a political prisoner.

Volunteers are helping Victoria Goncharova

The "At the Same Time" platform is raising funds for Victoria Goncharova, a political prisoner from Adygea. By 6:58 PM Moscow time, 1,201 rubles out of the 16,000 rubles raised for food and personal hygiene products had been collected.

Victoria Goncharova is in Federal Penitentiary Institution Correctional Colony No. 15 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Samara Region, Valeria Greyskop, a specialist with the "Bureau of Permissions" mutual aid platform, which is collecting aid for her, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Victoria's closest relatives are in Ukraine, and sending parcels from abroad to the Russian penal colony is prohibited, so they are turning to us for help.

"This is a general regime penal colony for women serving their first sentence. They live in dormitories there and work during the day in a sewing factory. "Bureau of Permissions" has been coordinating parcels for Victoria Goncharova for a year and a half. This is Victoria's tenth food collection. We deliver parcels to her in two ways: either we order them online from the FSIN store or we find a volunteer to assemble them for her and deliver them in person to the penal colony. Victoria's closest relatives are in Ukraine, and sending parcels from abroad to a Russian penal colony is prohibited, so they turn to us for help," she said. According to her, Victoria most often asks for the most mundane things. Grocery items, meat and dairy products, tea, coffee, sweets, nuts, personal hygiene products, and household cleaning products. In early May, our volunteer assembled a birthday parcel for Victoria—it included fruits and vegetables—and it took three attempts to deliver them: first, the delivery window was moved, and the volunteer couldn't find it before it closed, and then, because of new packaging regulations imposed by the administration. "One interesting thing is that we once gave Victoria a cosmetics set at her request: mascara, lipstick, eyeliner," said Valeria Greyskop.

Victoria loves animals and continues to help them even in prison.

"In October 2024, Victoria reported that the administration of the penal colony where she was serving her sentence was planning to poison Beatrice, a cat she had adopted. She managed to negotiate with an FSIN officer not to kill the cat, and we at the "Pereks Bureau" launched an entire rescue operation: we found a new owner for the cat in Germany among OVD-Info** supporters, and several volunteers participated in the rescue: some took her from the penal colony checkpoint, others took her into foster care, and still others performed medical procedures and completed the paperwork to send the cat to her new owner in Germany," she noted. She.

All prisoners, without exception, have the right to receive packages, regardless of the charge or related status.

As for the collection itself, all donations for packages for Victoria Goncharova are organized through the "Zaodno" platform.

"There, you can transfer a donation directly to the card of a trusted person. Before doing so, a check is always conducted to ensure that the cardholder is not listed as an "extremist" by Rosfinmonitoring. This means that the payment does not go to OVD-Info** or other organizations, nor to Victoria Goncharova's personal account – and is essentially no different from a money transfer to a friend's card. All proceeds then go toward paying for packages for Victoria. All prisoners, without exception, have the right to receive packages, regardless of the charge or related status. "We don't know of a single case where someone has been persecuted for handing over a political prisoner," Greyskop concluded.

Victoria's family is unable to help her

Victoria's sister, Natalia, told the Caucasian Knot that she is in Ukraine and therefore cannot visit her.

"It so happened that my father and I live in Ukraine, and Victoria moved to our mother's homeland of Adygea in 1990 when she got married and has lived there ever since. Her daughter was born there, then grandchildren. Then, on February 14, 2022, her husband died, and then the "special military operation" began. Then, in April 2022, she was arrested and held in pretrial detention until September 2023. Until then, her daughter spoke to her by phone. Then my sister was given a six-and-a-half-year sentence and sent to a penal colony in Zelenokumsk, Stavropol Krai. Since then, my daughter hasn't spoken to her or us, and she's changed her phone number. So, her daughter isn't even thinking about seeing her mother. Her husband died, and my dad and I can't come for obvious reasons. Our mother died almost three years ago, when my sister was sentenced. She couldn't take it anymore; she had a stroke. And she has no close relatives left in Russia," she said.

She's holding up; she's always been strong-willed.

The only contact with her is occasional phone calls.

"Victoria is currently in a penal colony in Samara. Phone calls are problematic here; they only allow calls once a month, unless, of course, they lose her application; there was a precedent for that. I can tell from her voice that she's holding up; she's always been strong-willed. She hasn't complained about the conditions of her detention, the pressure, or the violation of her rights, but I don't think she has the opportunity to talk about much. And thankfully, she doesn't have any major health issues. Of course, there's some blood pressure, weakness, and joint pain, but that's all part of her age. She accepts parcels, but not all of them. Sometimes the fruit isn't in its original packaging, although I've never seen fruit in its original packaging, or there are other issues. The volunteer girls who have taken Victoria's guardianship order the parcels and online stores, mostly with their own money. I can't transfer money to them; in Ukraine, we have a ban on transfers to Russian cards. She receives letters and replies, although not all of them arrive, and she understands this in subsequent correspondence. "The letters are a huge support for her; they're writing to her from all over the world," Natalia said.

A volunteer who helps Victoria told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that Victoria hasn't called for several months.

"She just called yesterday for the first time in several months. This is her second prison colony. First, she was in a pretrial detention center, then in a prison colony in the south, in Zelenokumsk. There, she was able to call, with agents listening in, of course. Then she was sent to a prison colony in Samara. And then the day before yesterday, she called me, and we talked. We mostly talked about cats. The censors were listening in, so we couldn't tell anything. She wants to know how her family is doing in Ukraine, whether they're being bombed heavily. That's impossible to say. She just said the family is holding up." "She's cheerful, happy, smart, and a good girl," said Maria Bovenko.

According to her, at first it was very difficult for Victoria; she wrote that she could only hate.

"One day, a priest wrote to her, and they somehow managed to communicate through letters. Besides all that, she's simply a beauty and a joy, a very strong woman. She holds up well. She rescues cats from prison. "In my previous prison, I wanted to help another political prisoner, but the administration abruptly stopped me," Bovenko said.

Donations to support prisoners are legal

Lawyer Maria Spasibukhova, who represented Victoria during the cassation appeal, said that donating money to support a prisoner is not illegal.

"It's illegal to donate to an extremist organization, but donating money to support a prisoner is not yet prohibited," she told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

She also reported that an appeal of the verdict had been unsuccessful.

"We appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, but they all refused," she noted.

Providing financial assistance to such a person does not amount to participation in the commission of crimes, since this money is not used to assist him in committing any crimes.

Lawyer Timur Filippov also believes that collecting assistance cannot be considered a violation of the law.

"As far as I understand, there is no punishment for such actions yet. Providing financial assistance to such a person does not amount to participation in the commission of crimes, since this money is not used to assist him in committing any crimes," he told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

He emphasized that the assistance will not be given in cash, but in the form of necessary food and other items.

"I believe it is safe for now," he noted.

* The organization is designated as terrorist, and its activities are banned in Russia.

** It is listed as a foreign agent.

*** Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.