Russian dissident in jail found 'many unknown' political convicts

Oleg Orlov, a freed Russian dissident, aims to expose the true number of political prisoners in Russia.

As he was transferred through various jails of Russia's vast prison system, Oleg Orlov had a mission: to find out how many political prisoners there were in each facility.

The veteran dissident, freed in August in the biggest Russia-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, knew the lists.

His Nobel Prize-winning rights organisation Memorial has painstakingly recorded the names of people jailed for denouncing Moscow's Ukraine invasion.

The 71-year-old was one of them: sentenced to 2.5 years for speaking out in an article against the military offensive.

But what he found left him in no doubt: Russia has "a lot more" political prisoners than rights groups know of.

On top of the known cases, "in each jail, I found there were just as many people for whom there is a basis to count them as being in prison for politics," he said.

"We knew nothing about them."