Russia's political prisoners – Voices that defy the Kremlin | DW Documentary
In Russia, criticizing President Putin has become a criminal offense. Thousands have been imprisoned. Such political prisoners are called Politzek. This documentary delves deep into this system of repression and gives the Politzek a voice.
Arseny Turbin was arrested in 2023 and sentenced to five years. His crime, at just 14 years old? Criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin – in the classroom, on his YouTube channel, and in conversations with friends. His teachers reported him to Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the FSB.
Now 17, Arseny is Russia’s youngest political prisoner. His mother, Irina, is fighting for his release — terrified he may not make it out of the penal colony alive.
Nadezhda Skochilenko also fought for years to secure the release of her daughter, Sasha. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion into Ukraine, Sasha placed price tags in a grocery store with messages of protest against Putin’s war. A court in St. Petersburg sentenced her to seven years in a penal colony. After more than two years of imprisonment, she was finally freed in a prisoner exchange.
Another released prisoner was Oleg Orlov — co-founder of the human rights organization Memorial, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
This film gives a voice to all those still enduring Russia’s prisons and penal colonies.
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Video “Russia's political prisoners – Voices that defy the Kremlin | DW Documentary” was uploaded on 12/06/2025 by DW Documentary Youtube channel.





































The documentary is very important on the backdrop of gangs of pro-Kremlin propagandists in many countries littering online spaces with pure ideological vomit to excuse what is shown here. Thank you to producers, and obviously thank you to all the political prisoners both in Russia and in countries around Russia where governments are inspired by the Kremlin. Especially the story of the 14-year-old boy in this film, his bravery and principles are just incredible.
The only minor gripe I have is with the annoying constant melodramatic violin following the footage throughout almost all of it. Kind of detracts from the current relevance of these ongoing events, making it seem like we are watching a documentary about something 80 years ago.
Zelensky has locked up or killed anyone that has spoke out about him or his government…. As an American I would like you to do a story you can start with Gonzalo Lira and American killed by Zelensky!
Like the Russian /Putin propaganda, DW is a German (similar to Dr Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda) propaganda. Will not watch because the story is predictable.
'STEP UP EUROPE' | 'STEP UP USA'
BETRAY NOT YOURSELVES FOR TRUMP:
PEACE MUST BE WON;
NEGOTIATIONS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ACHIEVABLE WAR-WON VICTORY.
A JUST AND LASTING PEACE IS MANIFESTED THROUGH WAR-WON UKRAINIAN VICTORY[🇺🇦]
WAR-WON VICTORY IS SYNONYMOUS WITH WAR-WON PEACE.
Zhenya Berkovich is a racist who on numerous occasions wrote of Russia's Asiatic minorities in condescending tones. Russian imperialism chauvinisim, whether by pro-Putini or pseudo liberals, is all the same and the two sides of the same coin.
Long Live Ukraine 🇺🇦💪⚔️🇺🇸🙏.
I understand. The gov't keeps people poor and subjugated, so that it can maintain its power and wealth.
Power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely 🆘🤑💰💵🔥 annihilation rules 😎
Thank you very much, DW, for remembering our political prisoners and that not everyone in Russia is for Putin's war! ( I'm slowly learning English. 🙁 )
😂😂😂
When will the Russians realize that they have twice as much land and vastly more resources than any other country?
When there are only 125 million of them.
They should be the wealthiest people on the planet by far.
And, their leader has been in power for 25 years.
Why are they so afraid to stand up and demand better leadership? Why are they so cowardly except for a handful like these?
DW you`re Great. Thanks for your work
This is the third time I've posted this comment, and for some reason the channel owner keeps deleting it. The question remains: why, and since when has YouTube/DW started censoring opinions?
"There is No russian opposition. There is just latent putin, simply imprisoned by another putin.
This video is a terrible attempt to humanize the beasts that ALL russians are. I emphasize – ALL"
i don't understand why these Russians protested against the war. it was a neccessary step for their country if it is to have a future
Why are you deleting comments, dear DW? Several times you did it
Blessed Be! I wish you a productive day. Be careful out there.
Guantanamo vai bem?
the US is on its way to becoming just like russia
Slava 🇺🇦 Ukrani💫
Blessings from Asia
I would've hoped that after Putin, the Russian people would take control of their country and join the EU. With Russia in the union our combined power could match or even surpass both the US and China. Now with the invasion of Ukraine that scenario is completely out of the picture, and Russia is looking increasingly dependent on China. How sad.
Slava Ukraini 💛💙🇺🇦
Watch how the russian bots will take over the comment section😂😂
I miss the voice overs. 😅
Пожалуйста, продолжайте говорить! В базах политически мотивированных дел более 9 тыс.человек! Не дайте им погибнуть в тишине и темноте! Рассказывайте!
China > Russia
The Cult of Certainty: How Scientism Mistakes Symbols for Reality
Abstract
This essay dismantles the illusion of scientific and mathematical authority over reality. It argues that physics, mathematics, and cosmology have become modern priesthoods—fluent in symbols, blind to their own assumptions, and convinced that their linguistic constructions constitute the world itself. Beneath their precision lies an unacknowledged act of faith: the belief that their frameworks, born of human limitation, can speak for the infinite complexity of Nature.
1. Introduction: The Rise of a New Dogma
Where religion once claimed the cosmos, scientism now reigns. Its prophets wear lab coats instead of robes, its scriptures are peer-reviewed, and its miracles are equations. It promises salvation through measurement, yet forgets that every instrument was built by fallible hands, every metric chosen by fallible minds.
Science is not the problem; its humility is. Scientism—the conviction that empirical method alone exhausts reality—is philosophy dressed in the armor of precision, mistaking its own reflection for the world.
2. The Frame That Sees Only Itself
Every experiment begins with a premise: what to measure, how to measure, what counts as real. Instruments do not reveal Nature; they negotiate with it, returning answers framed by the questions we taught them to ask.
To believe otherwise is to mistake a telescope for the stars. The data that scientists prize as “objective” already arrive pre-filtered through design, expectation, and interpretation. What emerges as “fact” is not a message from Nature but a conversation among humans—mediated by language, technology, and theory.
Scientism hides this circularity behind jargon and precision. Its practitioners forget that a system cannot justify its own axioms; the framework that defines observation cannot step outside itself to claim omniscience.
3. Mathematics: The Most Beautiful Pretend Game Ever Played
Mathematics is sublime—but it is also make-believe. Its truths are conditional: if these axioms, then those conclusions. When physicists write the cosmos in equations, they are translating mystery into grammar. The translation is elegant, but it is not the thing itself.
To claim that “the universe is mathematical” is to commit linguistic idolatry. Numbers describe patterns; they do not explain being. The formula E=mc² predicts the behavior of matter and energy—it does not tell us what matter or energy are. The certainty of mathematics is the certainty of definition, not of reality.
Einstein himself warned against this confusion: the moment mathematics becomes certain, it ceases to refer to the world. The moment it refers to the world, it ceases to be certain.
4. The Mirage of Empirical Authority
Modern physics and cosmology are cathedrals built on inference. Dark matter, dark energy, singularities, strings—none of these have been seen. They are invoked to preserve the internal coherence of equations that cannot account for observed phenomena. These invisible entities are not discoveries but placeholders for ignorance, named and worshipped as though naming made them real.
The irony is exquisite: in fleeing metaphysics, science reinvented it. It simply changed the vocabulary. Where theologians spoke of the divine, cosmologists now speak of the singularity; both point to something unobservable that explains everything else.
5. Consciousness: The One Fact That Cannot Be Denied
All observation presupposes an observer. Before there is data, there is awareness. Before there is theory, there is experience. To reduce consciousness to neural noise or quantum computation is to saw off the branch upon which knowledge sits.
Science studies phenomena within consciousness while pretending to stand outside it. But consciousness is the condition of the entire enterprise—the light by which all “facts” are seen. Without it, there is no experiment, no equation, no universe as such.
Thus, consciousness is not an afterthought of matter but its precondition. Every attempt to explain awareness as an emergent property of blind particles is a failure to recognize that “blind particles” are themselves ideas appearing in awareness.
6. The Human Element: Experts, Priests, and Pretenders
The “expert” class often claims to speak for reality itself, as though a PhD confers divine insight. Yet their authority rests on consensus, not revelation. Peer review replaces peer thinking; specialization rewards obedience over insight.
Academia has become a hierarchy of sanctioned ignorance—brilliant minds confined to narrow tunnels, mistaking the light at the end for the sun. Their jargon is a fortress built to defend not truth but prestige. To question them is to be labeled “unscientific,” a modern form of heresy.
But no title or theorem exempts a human from the same fleshly frailty that binds us all. Every calculation, every cosmological model, is written by a primate briefly conscious on a tiny planet, staring into an abyss and mistaking its own reflection for the infinite.
7. Conclusion: The Return to Wonder
Science is a method. Reality is an experience. To confuse the two is to turn curiosity into creed. The universe does not speak in equations; it speaks in being.
The humility proper to inquiry is not the arrogance of certainty but the recognition that the map will never become the territory. Our instruments may refine the contours of what is measurable, but the immeasurable remains—the mystery that births both observer and observation.
The task is not to abolish science, but to restore perspective: to remember that the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon, and that the most perfect formula will always fall short of describing the fact that anything exists at all.
Reality cannot be owned by a discipline, only encountered by a consciousness.
Why It Is Impossible to Produce Indisputable Evidence That Nature Is Not Infinite
1. You cannot prove non-existence beyond observational horizons.
Physics is bounded by observational limits:
Cosmic horizon
Particle horizon
Measurement precision
Quantum decoherence boundaries
Anything outside these horizons is not empirically accessible even in theory.
Thus, any claim of a “finite Nature” requires absolute knowledge of what lies beyond all possible observation — which is impossible.
You cannot prove a boundary you cannot detect.