‘I hope this project has no future’: Grigory Sverdlin on helping Russian soldiers desert and building an organization he hopes will one day be unnecessary

In fall 2026, the Prague Book Tower, a fair for Russian-language tamizdat, presented Grigory Sverdlin’s book Punkt obogreva: Kak ya zanimalsya blagotvoritelnostyu v Rossii i stal vragom gosudarstva (“Warming Station: How I Did Charity Work in Russia and Became an Enemy of the State”), published by Meduza’s publishing house. Sverdlin previously headed Nochlezhka, Russia’s oldest organization helping homeless people. In 2022, he stepped down as director, left the country, and, once in exile, launched the project Idite Lesom (“Get Lost”), which helps Russians desert the army and flee the country.