Helping family and prisoners from abroad

• Help through lawful channels: pay a lawyer under a contract, send letters and parcels. Mediazona knows of no case opened over parcels or paying a lawyer for a relative in pre-trial detention. Transfers are dangerous if the sender understood the money would go to terrorism: in 2024 the Constitutional Court refused to hear the complaint of a woman sentenced to 8 years for transfers to her daughter, who had gone to join IS in Syria, and found the law clear.
• Rights groups advise helping through organisations: Solidarity Zone, Freedom Zone, Memorial Political Prisoners Support. Check the designation before donating. Since April 2026 Memorial has been designated 'extremist' in Russia. A donation to an 'extremist' organisation can be treated as financing extremism (art. 282.3 CC). This also applies to people living abroad who travel to Russia or pay with a Russian card.
• Banks can see transfers to relatives. Don't send money to 'banned' organisations or their fundraisers: the risk also falls on the recipient in Russia.
• In letters to pre-trial detention or a colony, don't write about politics, the case or third parties: censors read everything. You can send a letter by ordinary post or via FSIN-Pismo; the prison service sees the letter and the sender's name.
• If you are put on the 284-FZ register, dependent relatives can receive a payment from your frozen funds.
• A lawyer. The law allows you to pay for a relative's lawyer: other people may engage defence counsel with the accused's consent (art. 50 CPC), and a wife or daughter can sign the contract. We found no cases in Russia over paying a lawyer or sending parcels to a relative. Pay the lawyer directly under a contract, not into a frozen account. Don't run a defence fundraiser under the FBK brand.
• Do not donate to FBK yourself. The US entity of FBK has been 'terrorist' since 12 February 2026; new donations may be treated as financing terrorism (from 8 years). Any such transfer is a risk on a trip: an émigré who came back to visit his mother got 15 years for a 2022 donation to a Ukrainian army fund.
• Publicity. First Department advises asking the prisoner and the lawyer first: silence is sometimes a defence strategy too. Before visiting family, read 'I want to visit Russia': phones are checked at the border, and relatives of the accused may be called as witnesses.

Designations of organisations in this guide: Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre (extremist, on Rosfinmonitoring list); Memorial Political Prisoners Support (extremist, on Rosfinmonitoring list). Contacting them carries a risk: do not write from a phone that may be seized, and do not repost their materials.

current as of 26 September 2026. More: Advokatskaya Gazeta: Constitutional Court on transfers; Mediazona: cases over donations to FBK (foreign agent); Criminal Procedure Code art. 50 (ConsultantPlus, in Russian); Mediazona: no known cases of aid to prisoners treated as terrorism (02.09.2025, in Russian) (foreign agent); First Department: transfers to listed individuals not yet criminalised (13.11.2025, in Russian) (foreign agent); Mediazona: 15 years for a 2022 donation, arrested visiting his mother (26.08.2025, in Russian) (foreign agent); First Department: support groups and publicity (18.09.2024, in Russian) (foreign agent); OVD-Info: FBK's US entity, ruling in force from 12.02.2026 (in Russian) (foreign agent, extremist, on the Rosfinmonitoring list)