On a chilly morning, September 4, Elena Gorban stood outside a Russian prison. She was waiting for her husband to be released from jail after four years behind bars. Yet the mood was sour. She knew that the jailed anti-fascist Azat Miftakhov was likely to be immediately rearrested.

Azat came out wearing a prison uniform. Burly men in plain clothes, one of them masked, then made it clear to Elena, along with Azat’s mother and stepfather, that the anarchist mathematician wouldn’t be going free. They proceeded to inform the family that they would only have five minutes together. Elena, who said she already wrote everything she wanted through her letters, simply embraced her husband. She held him until he was taken back into custody — and driven away for a transfer.

As authorities continue their inhumane treatment of the soft-spoken mathematician and anti-fascist activist, Vladimir Putin’s decades-long war on human rights and the Left is ever more evident.