Lilia Chanysheva
From 3 August to 28 September 2026

The Russian human rights advocate, opposition politician, activist, and writer Lilia Chanysheva was born in Ufa (in the former Bashkir ASSR of the Soviet Union), in 1982. She was the former regional coordinator of Alexei Navalny’s team in Ufa. Arrested in 2021 and sentenced to nine and a half years for peaceful activism, she spent almost three years in prison before being released in the 2024 Ankara prisoner exchange, the largest such exchange in post-Cold War history. Her writing, done with Almaz Gatin, her husband and cowriter, explores repression, resilience, and the power of love in the darkest times.