As Valeriya herself used to say, her main talent is to gather a bunch of people smarter than herself. She is a brilliant organiser, she knows how to maintain the spirit of the community. Professionally she is a strong analyst and manager, the soul of the expert community, one of its leaders acquainted with everyone.

I would like to highlight Valeriya's analytical skills. She is talented in combinatorial, multi-factor analysis. When the pandemic outbroke Valeriya told me it was the beginning of an apocalypse of a kind, that there would be protests and that the lockdown would cause tensions in the society and may result in a large war in the region, probably with Ukraine. It was important that this position was not an intuitive one, but a weighted and informed one: Valeriya explained to me the reasons for such events in detail.

She is a far-sighted editor, no doubt. She can provide each author with key trends to pay attention to, things to highlight in their texts. Valeriya's colleagues who are more professional in their respective fields than she have always taken account of her opinion, recommendations.

In addition, her pronounced leadership qualities. Yet she is a gentle person at the same time. There's probably nothing characterizing a person as good as their social environment. Valeriya has always had a lot of friends, many of whom support her today, are her pen mates.

She has always been tolerant of other people's (and her own) vices. Life is tragic and people were created for anything but happiness – that would be Valeriya's typical position. She is a stoic and a fatalist who, nevertheless, believes in the freedom of choice and the responsibility it entails.

Clever but not cynical, generous but not a spender, cold-blood but not insensitive, gentle but nor weak, independent, friendly – all these describe her. She can remain calm in a critical situation, but it is mainly due to her butterfly mind, as she often describes herself.

Valeriya has looked after her disabled father in recent years. After she was arrested, it became clear he would not last long alone. He died on December 5, 2021 at the age of 80, but Valeria was told about it much later.

Mama's field of expertise is Belarusian-Russian relations. Many media, experts asked her for her authoritative opinion. Mama is known and respected in the expert community.

I went to her when I couldn't figure something out. Mama is my Wikipedia and Google on the political situation in the country. I asked, 'Explain to me what does this mean? What would happen next?' And she usually explained, very calmly and in detail, 'Look, this is nothing and this is actually a reason to worry. This is this and that is that.' Everything fell into place after talking to her, everything became clear.

Mama understood she would be detained and it was only the question of time. It was the case when you know the risk is high but you agree to live with it.

She decided she would not leave the country even though she had an opportunity. She said, 'It's my home, I don't see why I should leave. If they have any questions, let them come. I have nothing to hide.'

Basically, that is exactly what happened. She really has nothing to hide. I think the fact that she has been at the pre-trial detention centre for so long without a trial means they cannot find what to accuse her of. Because mama gave public commentaries to the media. She's an expert who didn't call anyone to anything, but only analysed the situation and made forecasts.

She's being accused of the things totally unrelated to her work: calls to seize power, conspiracy. It is ridiculous because conspiracy is something political elites can do and mama is not a member of it. I don't know why they decided to incriminate these things. The logic of our security services is completely incomprehensible. I assume they live by the 'check the box' principle. The more you put in prison the better you did.

They had to invent who to accuse for conspiracy and the development of the protest strategy, so they looked for political scientists, analysts. And they took those who remained in the country at the time. Those were Kuzina and my mother.

I'm impressed by mama's good temper, her self-confidence, confidence about tomorrow. Together with her cell mates they organise events, lectures, stand-up events, plays, draw something. I think after sharing a cell with them one can earn another higher education.

Mama manages to support me from prison when I'm in crisis, something bad is happening, when my spirits are down.

Yet no matter how much I want to complain I try not to load mama with my worries. She has a lot on her plate. We have a silent pact to protect each other. We write something inspiring, positive to each other. Although I understand perfectly well it's not that easy for mama: it is impossible to avoid the moments of sadness or frustration after spending such a long time in prison.

Mama predicted this war long before it started. They put propaganda on a lot in prison. And mama deconstructs the propagandist narrative. She learned to watch propaganda in a way to understand what actually happened and then translate it into a normal language. So, she continues working, analysing.

Mama and I discuss in every letter what it would be like when she is released. The first thing I'm going to do is hug her and cry a lot. And then we'll go somewhere and open a bottle of champagne at once, make wishes. That's a small tradition of ours. And then we'll lock ourselves in a room and talk, talk, talk.