Maria Moskalyova

Maria Moskalyova was just 12 years old when she drew an anti-war picture at school shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

The drawing showed Russian missiles flying towards Ukraine beside a frightened mother shielding her child while attempting to stop the attack with her outstretched hand.

The school administration reported the drawing to the police.

Soon after, the Russian security service, the FSB, began targeting Maria and her single father, Alksei Moskalyov. Officers monitored his social media, where they found anti-war posts, leading to fines, interrogations, raids, detention, and eventually imprisonment. Maria herself was questioned repeatedly by security services before being removed from her home and placed into an orphanage. While Alksei faced violence and torture during the raid and detention.

The court continued to charge Alksei with ‘repeatedly discrediting the Russian military’ and placed him under house arrest, but with the help of Russian activists, he attempted to escape and flee the country, but was caught in Belarus, brought back and sentenced to one year in 10 months in prison.

Maria‘s mother left the Family a long time ago and refused to take care of Maria, but after a public outreach, she agreed to take her daughter out of the orphanage.

After his sentence, Alksei was released from prison, and he and Maria were finally united. However, they continued to be threatened by the authorities and had to flee Russia.

In 2025, Maria and her father were waiting for a German humanitarian visa, but it was denied because Germany had suddenly decided to freeze the program for people from Russia and Belarus who were facing political repression.

They cannot return to Russia due to the serious risk to their freedom and safety.

“The teacher asked the class to draw something to support our soldiers. My classmates started drawing things like tanks. I just drew what I thought was necessary. How could I support the killing of people? I drew the truth because I couldn’t think of anything else to draw on the topic. When the police raided our apartment, my father had to let our cat out onto the street because they knew that if he was arrested and I was taken into care, the cat would die of hunger in the apartment. The cat was really a member of our family. In the orphanage, they isolated me from the outside world. They didn’t allow volunteers or activists to visit me. They didn’t let me use my phone, and they didn’t give me the packages that had been sent to me. I don’t know where my dad was. What was happening to him, or whether I would ever be released.”

Maria Moskalyova .