In her shortlisted book, Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother, and Me, Lana Estemirova tells the story of Chechnya through the eyes of a child growing up amid war, and the story of her mother, Natalia Estemirova, who gave her life to fight the human rights violations committed in Chechnya. It is a testament of courage, of dedication to truth and hope over despair, and the bond between mother and daughter.

From the starting point of Lana and Natalia’s story, this panel discussion will explore the wider legacy of the Chechen Wars, and memory and justice following the conflict; human rights, with a focus on women human rights defenders; and a comparative perspective of other conflicts involving Russia. 

Lana Estemirova will be joined by Philip Leach: professor of human rights law and former Director of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, who represented many Chechens at the European Court of Human Rights; and Sasha Koulaeva: member of Memorial and former Head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk for the International Federation for Human Rights. The panel will be moderated by Vera Tolz, Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester and a judge of this year’s Book Prize.

This event is part of the Pushkin House Book Prize Festival. Festival Passes are now sold out.

Lana Estemirova is a journalist and human rights advocate. She works for the Justice for Journalists Foundation, which fights against attacks on the media. She formerly worked as a freelance journalist for The Guardian and The Moscow Times, and is also the presenter of the Trouble with the Truth podcast. She studied International Relations at the London School of Economics. Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me (John Murray Press, 2025) is her first book.

Sasha Koulaeva is an expert on human rights and civil society, and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris and American University of Paris. She has been a member of Memorial since the 1990s. She directed the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at the International Federation for Human Rights for sixteen years. Koulaeva has contributed her expertise to numerous investigations, including the dossier “Russia: A Thousand and One Female Faces of Protest” (Femmes Ici et Ailleurs #45, 2021); she co-authored the film PolitZek with Manon Loizeau (Babel Doc/Clin d’Œil Films, 2025); and contributed to the collected work: Chechnya, Ten Keys to Understanding (La Découverte, 2003).

Philip Leach is Professor of Human Rights Law at Middlesex University, a member of Matrix Chambers, and a human rights consultant. He is the former Director of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC), also based at Middlesex University, which litigates human rights cases arising in the former Soviet region, including Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. He researches and publishes widely in the field of international human rights law and practice. He is also Co-Supervisor of the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project.

Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic is the Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester, where she researches nationalism, ethnic politics, identity-related discourses in Russian state media, and practices of disinformation. Her recent books include Russia, Disinformation, and the Liberal Order: RT as Populist Pariah (2024) and Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television (2015). She is a judge of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2026.

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