KOBLENZ, Germany — COBLENZ, Germany (AP) — Sasha Skochilenko and Sofya Subbotina plan to get married. That wasn’t an option in her native Russia, but it’s possible now that they live in Germany, which recognizes same-sex weddings.
“We don’t know how or in what city we’ll do it, but that’s the plan,” Skochilenko, 33, told The Associated Press, looking fondly at Subbotina, who radiated happiness.
They met earlier this month in Germany, shortly after Skochilenko and other Russian prisoners were exchanged in a Historic East-West Exchange – a happy, if unlikely, ending to a more than two-year ordeal.
Skochilenko, an artist and musician, was jailed for speaking out against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Subbotina campaigned for the release of his partner and at the same time tried to make his life behind bars as tolerable as possible.
They also talked about marriage in Russia, but same-sex weddings are effectively banned there. Laws restricting LGBTQ+ rights have been in place for more than a decade and have intensified since the war began as part of the Kremlin’s campaign for “traditional values,” driven by its anti-Western views and close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Now “I feel like I’m in a really free country,” Subbotina said, as they make plans for a life together in the quiet western German city of Koblenz.
Skochilenko was arrested in her native St. Petersburg in 2022, just weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, for replacing price tags in a supermarket with anti-war messages such as saying Russia bombed civilian targets. She was accused of making false statements about the military, part of the massive repression against all dissent about the invasion.
He struggled during his pretrial detention because he suffered from a chronic illness, including celiac disease, which prevented him from eating gluten-free. Subbotina traveled to Skochilenko prison at least twice a week, bringing food, medicine and other necessities. She and her friends made sure the case, which sparked public outrage, remained in the headlines.
Last year, Subbotina was diagnosed with cancer. “I felt like she was giving up on me and, honestly, I was ready to die,” she said.
The couple did not see each other for a year. Because they were not married, investigators named Subbotina as a witness in the case and refused to allow him visits or receive phone calls from Skochilenko.
“It is no small thing that a loved one cannot visit you,” Skochilenko said.
Subbotina added that it was “very painful,” noting that she knows many women who married imprisoned men, often with the weddings taking place in pre-trial detention centers or penal colonies.
“It gives them the right to long visits, it gives them the right to receive phone calls, short visits, because they have a certain status in the eyes of the authorities,” he said. “We’ve never had this opportunity.”
Subbotina says he was eventually allowed brief visits.
They were always very open about their relationship, despite laws prohibiting any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ Activitiesfueled by President Vladimir Putin’s close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Skochilenko said that in the early 2010s it was clear that the Kremlin was going in a “homophobic direction,” and some of the laws that authorities were adopting led her to protest back then. In recent years, she said her openness was a form of activism.
People “often have distorted opinions about the LGBTQ+ community because they don’t know anyone” who loves someone of the same sex, and their views often change once they do, she said.
In November 2023, Skochilenko was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison, an unusually harsh verdict.
This summer, while waiting for an appeal hearing in a detention center in St. Petersburg, he said there was a moment when he reached a particular point of despair over his long sentence. She said she was traumatized by the lack of freedom and privacy, the constant body searches and persistent hunger from not being able to eat prison food.
Subbotina visited her in July, and Skochilenko remembers breaking down in tears for the first time in months.
“I said, ‘Sonya, I’m tired of wanting to go home. Please tell me that I won’t have to serve the whole sentence, that some miracle will happen.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, why don’t you hope for a miracle?'” Skochilenko said.
That same day, a prison official told Skochilenko to “urgently” apply for a presidential pardon, he said. The artist did not want to admit her guilt, but the official said that she could simply explain her health problems. He wrote down her application and forgot about it, thinking it would take too long to even process it.
Several days later, she was transferred to Moscow without explanation. In the same van was Andrei Pivovarov, an imprisoned opposition politician whom she had known years before. There was almost no reason for both of them to be transferred at the same time, so she was suggesting that maybe something good was happening.
Skochilenko spent several long days in the infamous Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where he was cold and hungry, unable to eat much of the food he was given.
Subbotina learned of the transfer and rushed to Moscow with an aid package, visiting every detention center she could imagine, to no avail.
The rest became what many Russian critics of the Kremlin describe as the first good news since the start of the war. On August 1, Skochilenko and 15 others were put on a bus, driven to an airport and flown to Ankara, Turkey, where they were exchanged for eight Russians imprisoned in the West.
From Ankara, the former prisoners were flown to Germany, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz met them on the tarmac. The next day, Skochilenko was finally able to hug Subbotina, who flew to Germany when he heard the news.
The days since then have been “euphoric,” Skochilenko said, filled with small pleasures like walking and buying the food he wants, but also spending time with the woman he loves.
Subbotina especially likes being able to hold Skochilenko’s hand and kiss it in public without worry. In Germany, he says, it is something that “is simply in the nature of things.”
For now they have settled in Koblenz, but they want to visit other cities in Germany before deciding where to live permanently. They are eager to learn German and start a new life.
Skochilenko plans to make art again, showing sketches she drew about the prisoner exchange, a moment in history in which she became an unlikely participant. She also said that she intends to seek treatment for the post-traumatic stress disorder she suffered during her time in prison.
Subbotina, a nurse and pharmacist whose cancer treatment was successful in Russia, hopes to work in the field of human rights and help the hundreds of political prisoners in her former country.
Both admit that they never expected to leave Russia the way they did.
“I don’t feel stressed about moving, because I’m very happy. “I’m very happy that Sasha is with me,” Subbotina said with a smile.
Skochilenko added: “My relationship with Russia is over. I need to accept that. “I’m glad there is a new life.”
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