✉️ Don't use swear words in your letters. They won't be delivered and we'll never know about this. Money paid for letter delivery will be wasted, and we'll need to figure out what else was written in there and try to resend. If you cannot help but express your emotions, at least use the asterix.


✉️ Don't write anything that concerns the case itself. "They showed me evidence", "...but you told me", "Masha told me that she saw..." and so on. All private (non public) conversations with relatives or lawyers. This is very important! You can damage their legal cases with such letters. Or put someone else in danger. If you really need to communicate something similar, do it through the lawyers!

✉️ Don't write anything that could compromise the receiver or yourself, or anything related to any crime. For example, it's not wise to talk about how you took drugs one day or who you had bought it from. Or to recall how much fun it was to break the law with someone. Remember that absolutely all letters are read and passed on "you know where". Also among other prisoners.

✉️ Don't write about a "fascist government", a "Nazi junta", "pigs", calls for illegal activity and other things of the like. They may not be received in the same vein as you had meant them. The letters will be stopped, the receiver will be noted and you may be charged with "extremist activity".

✉️ Try not to use excerpts from novels, poems, songs, media articles and the like. This point really depends on the censor reading your letter, but often such content is not allowed. Try not to abbreviate, in a way that the censor may not understand the meaning of what you're writing. We've had such letters stopped in the past.

✉️ Don't write in foreign languages. The censor will not bother themselves with translating it. We sometimes translate letters into Russian, and answers to the sender back into English, but if you can write in Russian, please do so.

✉️ And please, don't send the same text to all of the prisoners in our list. Pick one or two. Better yet, pick someone who is likely to receive the least amount of letters and send them something personalized.

Always remember that your letters are censored and who these people reading your letter are. Information you are including will be read by the prosecutor, witnesses, lawyers and their nazi-prison room mate. Forget about secrets and private communications. Use your common sense, you are writing to a political prisoner.