Russia's 'beacon' for sick children, facing jail for pro-peace message

Lida Moniava is 38 and has been working to help sick and disabled children across Russia since she was a teenager.

After Russia launched its offensive on Ukraine in 2022, she also started helping Ukrainian refugees and criticising the war, which has become Europe's biggest conflict since World War II.

Earlier this month, she was arrested, put under supervised curfew and forced to wear an ankle monitor, pending a trial on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian army.

She faces years in prison, in a case that even far into an escalating crackdown, has shocked Russian civil society.

Moniava is a respected figure and one of the country's most prominent and effective charity leaders, with her work filling a void in care for sick and disabled children left by the state.

In 2025, her foundation raised more than 1.2 billion rubles a substantial sum in Russia to provide free medication, equipment, in-home support, nurses and nannies to children in need.

"My son Lyosha survived thanks to the support of Lida's fund," Elena Babich, a 50-year-old mother to a son with disabilities.

"Today he can live a life close to ordinary," she said, attributing that to the "daily work" of Moniava.

"Lida is our symbol and our beacon, but also someone who works her heart out every single day."

Born in Moscow to a Soviet family of intellectuals, Moniava was 16 when she started helping children with cancer through an Orthodox Christian group.

She was trained in journalism, but gave that up to devote herself to helping children full-time as an adult.

After working for several foundations, in 2013 she launched Moscow's first hospice for terminally ill children, and then in 2018, her famed charity fund, "House with the Lighthouse".

In Russian society, where sick or disabled people are often shut away in institutions a practice inherited from the Soviet Union Moniava promoted destigmatisation, including through outdoor activities.

"Lida Moniava is on the side of life, and those who are trying to put her in prison are on the side of death," Nobel Peace Prize winner and veteran liberal journalist Dmitry Muratov told AFP at her court hearing in Moscow.