“Day and night I am tormented by my own powerlessness”. Human rights activist Nina Litvinova, 80, has taken her own life over the war and the plight of political prisoners

The full extract from the note, published by Slonim, reads: “Life has become unbearable for me. Ever since Putin attacked Ukraine and began killing innocent people [there], whilst here at home he ceaselessly imprisons thousands of people who suffer and die because they, like me, are against the war and against the killing. I cannot do anything to help them. […] I tried to help them, but my strength has run out, and day and night I am tormented by my own powerlessness. I am ashamed, but I have given up. Please forgive me.”

Litvinova’s death on the afternoon of May 13 was reported by RIA Novosti. The state news agency mentioned that she had left a note but said nothing of its contents.

“No one, of course, is going to publish the note […]. The reasons for her departure are laid out far too starkly there, and we decided to show the real reasons: she was killed by Putin!” Slonim wrote on Facebook.

Litvinova worked at the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and, from the 1960s onwards, helped Soviet political prisoners. In recent years she had attended court hearings in the cases of the historian Yury Dmitriev, the Memorial co-chair Oleg Orlov, and the theatre director Evgenia Berkovich.

“Nina Litvinova embodied a quiet but unbending courage and decency. She was always there where the pain was greatest,” reads an obituary posted on Memorial’s social media.