Guinness World Record holder Elena Guseva held an action in Batumi in support of political prisoners
Updated: Oct 3
Civil activist and Guinness World Record holder Elena Guseva held an action in Batumi in support of political prisoners Daria Egereva and Natalia Leongardt. She attempted to swim along the Black Sea coast from Batumi toward Chakvi to draw attention to the fate of the two women held in detention in Russia.
According to Guseva, the action was organized by residents of a local shelter, along with their friends and colleagues who had previously worked on environmental issues and the protection of the rights of Indigenous small-numbered peoples. Initially, the plan was to cover about 10 kilometers, but the swim had to be interrupted after the Georgian coast guard intervened. Despite this, Guseva spent more than an hour in the water and managed to swim about four kilometers.
“I myself know what it’s like to end up in prison for nothing… I think about them every minute,” she said.
Guseva noted that the Georgian officers treated the participants kindly and explained how to officially coordinate such an event in the future, and she intends to repeat the action next weekend.
Elena Guseva is a resident of Perm Krai, a mother of three, and a member of the international team that swam across the Bering Strait in 2013. In January 2026, she was fined 300,000 rubles in a case concerning the financing of “extremist” activity for donations to FBK; before that, she spent several months in pre-trial detention and under house arrest.
Daria Egereva and Natalia Leongardt were arrested in December 2025 after a series of searches of activists in various regions of Russia. Both are linked to the Aborigen Forum, an association of experts and activists dealing with issues of Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East, which in 2024 was designated first as an “extremist” and later as a “terrorist” organization. They are currently charged under Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Russian Criminal Code, which carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison. Both human rights defenders remain in a Moscow pre-trial detention center.
Free Daria and Natalia!
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