«It dries you out and turns you into a stone». Tatiana Usmanova, the wife of Andrei Pivovarov, on getting married in prison and supporting her husband

— Why did you decide to get married before Andrei was released from prison? — As long as he was in prison,  judges, bailiffs, investigators, and prosecutors didn’t fail to remind me that I was a nobody to him. As if  they  weren’t aware of notions like «partner» or «girlfriend». The judge even hurled me out of the courtroom because, as she saw it, I was smiling at Andrei, and he was smiling  back at me.He was detained in May 2021, sentenced in the summer of 2022, and a year later, in the summer of 2023, we had our wedding. Throughout  these two years, all this time, we hadn’t seen each other once, except for  in court, and even there from afar — Andrei was in a dock, and I, if they let me, sat among the audience. We had no meetings, not a single phone call. At that time he was not officially convicted, so we were barred from having extended visits by law — only short ones were permitted, but even those were not granted.When Andrei was admitted to the colony in Segezha (a town in the Republic of Karelia, northern Russia — OVD-Info), we entered a new level of fighting this system and realised we were  entitled to demand extended visits. We had two issues with this. The first was that Andrei was placed in a single cell-type room, and those held there were not allowed any visits. The second was that we were not registered as married officially. Technically, the law says people are entitled to a visit even if they’re not registered as married, but it was plain as day that there would be no leniency in our case.