In September, 37-year-old Anastasia took her two children and left Brest for Lithuania. The reason was a call from the police: come in as a witness. A year earlier she had already been tried in an administrative “extremism” case. She did not want to go through it again. This is her account to Zerkalo. The paper does not give her surname.

It did not start as politics

In 2020 she was pregnant with the younger child and did not go to the protests. She volunteered near the Akrestsina detention centre and saw the state people were in when they came out. Then her husband left. She was raising the children in Brest and did not think anyone would come for her. Until March 2025.

The first summons, she says, began with a complaint. On a gaming stream she refused to raise money for a hairstyle for a woman with an illness, and she told viewers why that woman could not work. The woman filed a complaint for insult. At the station she was told there was no offence, and she was asked to leave a statement so they could let her go. Then another man came in. He threatened her: the children to an orphanage, she to prison. The children were four and eight and had been left at home alone. The station was in the next yard; she had counted on half an hour. She was told about bedbugs and that she would “come out a different person.” They put handcuffs on her and took her to a cell at the district station.

She gave up the phone password when they reminded her the children were home alone: they promised a “small charge” and release. They looked through Telegram chats and Instagram likes. Then they let her call a friend. She locked the screen and would not give the password again. Someone in uniform offered to “be friends” and said they would clean everything up. She was released with no papers. She still does not know what it was.

August: grabbed outside a shop

For several months it was quiet. In August 2025 they called again: the owner of a house she used to rent had supposedly written a statement about missing equipment, and she had to come in at once. She could not. The answer was threats. She was frightened by the spring and posted a TikTok: the police were pressuring her and threatening to jail her. The next day she was told to appear. In the morning, outside a shop, they called her by name and surname, grabbed her arms and pushed her into a car with no markings. The men were not in uniform. Asked to identify themselves, they said they were obliged to do nothing. They handcuffed her. She leaned out of the window and shouted. A woman from a vegetable stall came over. They showed her an identity card.

At the station she was not allowed a lawyer. A man she took for a chief said: “This is not America. That will not happen here.” The summons had been about the landlady’s statement. On the spot they said the case was the video posted the day before. An officer shouted that because of her “some minister” had called him at four in the morning. Anastasia does not know whether that is true. They made her record a second video: the police behave wonderfully, no one is pressuring her, there were no threats. Again they talked about the children and “good orphanages.” She agreed, because the children were at home and she had been on her way to the shop. After the video they did not let her go. On the phone they found a video from an “extremist” channel that she had forwarded to an acquaintance. That was enough for “distributing extremist materials.”

They took her on a Tuesday. Until Friday she was in the detention centre: cold, they kept waking her, no calls. She cried and thought the children would end up in an orphanage. On Friday a court found her guilty under article 19.11 of the administrative code. The fine was 420 rubles. The phone was confiscated as the “means of the offence.” She called her friend from a convoy officer’s phone and learned the friend had taken the children. The children were told where their mother had been only after the family left the country.

About three weeks later enforcement called: with “an article like that” she could not pay in small amounts, or her accounts would be blocked. She was moving out of a rented flat, paying the fine and the “stay” in the detention centre, and the school year was starting.

This summer, a third call

After August, a person in uniform in a shop made her shake. A van marked 102 stood by the entrance, and she was afraid to go out. This summer they called again: supposedly she was a witness in a case of cruelty to an animal. She had seen nothing of the kind. She said she was not in Brest, and she began to prepare. She was afraid to search online for how to leave and which papers she needed. She asked friends abroad and deleted what they sent. She took almost no belongings, so there would be fewer questions at the border. She gathered the documents. In mid-September she crossed with the two children. In Lithuania, she says, she is still in shock: people in chats offer things, and just a coffee. Life, she says, will start when the papers are sorted.