When her country invaded Ukraine , Aleksandra Skochilenko knew she had to protest. Street demonstrations were being ruthlessly suppressed in Russian cities, yet the 31-year-old artist and musician decided to make a small act of defiance. It would change her life for ever.
Skochilenko replaced price labels in a supermarket with anti-war statements – and for that, she spent years in harsh Russian jails, worrying she might never get out. “Thoughts about death were visiting my head,” she tells i . “We have this fear of our ancestors, fear of jail in Russia,” she explains, because of “Stalin’s repressions” in the 1930s.
Back then, going to jail was effectively a “death sentence almost all times”. “This fear was gifted to other generations because we heard our parents or grandparents talking about this stuff.” Their accounts included “people being shot in the forest.
” Her own horrific experience finally ended this month when she was suddenly released in the landmark prisoner exchange between Russia and the US. She was freed alongside the American journalist Evan Gershkovich , and other Russian dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza and Oleg Orlov . Skochilenko is now in Germany, trying to overcome mental trauma while rebuilding her physical health.
Speaking on a video call from a Berlin park where she’s enjoying her new-found freedom – lying flat on the lush grass, wearing a white cowboy hat, while dappled sunlight drifts across her face – she te.