Russia jails 19-year-old activist for quoting Ukrainian poet, criticizing warfare

A court docket in St. Petersburg sentenced 19-year-old Darya Kozyreva to 2 years and eight months in a penal colony on April 18 for allegedly "discrediting" the Russian military, together with by sticking a quote from a Ukrainian poem onto a monument.

Kozyreva was arrested on Feb. 24, 2024, after she affixed a verse from Taras Shevchenko’s "My Testomony" to his statue in St. Petersburg, in accordance with the Russian human rights group OVD-Information. The excerpt learn: "Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants’ blood / The liberty you’ve got gained."

A second case was filed in opposition to her in August after she gave an interview to Radio Free Europe wherein she referred to as Russia’s warfare in Ukraine "monstrous" and "prison."

At one in all her hearings, Kozyreva defended her actions by saying she had "merely recited a poem, and pasted a quote in Ukrainian, nothing extra," the St. Petersburg courts' press service mentioned. Prosecutors reportedly sought a six-year sentence.

"The nationwide flag nonetheless flies over Kyiv, and it at all times will," Kozureva mentioned in her last assertion in court docket, in accordance with Russian impartial outlet Mediazona. "I nonetheless dream that Ukraine will reclaim each inch of its territory: Donbas, Crimea, all of it. And I imagine that someday, it should. Historical past will choose, and choose pretty. However Ukraine has already received. It has received. That’s all."

Kozyreva has been focused by authorities earlier than.

OVD-Information mentioned she was detained in December 2022 whereas nonetheless in highschool for writing, "Murderers, you bombed it. Judases," on a metropolis set up honoring the twinning of St. Petersburg and occupied Mariupol.

She was later fined for "discrediting" the military and expelled from college for a publish concerning the "imperialist nature of the warfare," in accordance with the human rights group Memorial, which has acknowledged her as a political prisoner.

"Daria Kozyreva is being punished for quoting a traditional of Nineteenth-century Ukrainian poetry, for talking out in opposition to an unjust warfare and for refusing to remain silent," Amnesty Worldwide’s Russia Director Natalia Zviagina mentioned in an announcement. "We demand the fast and unconditional launch of Daria Kozyreva and everybody imprisoned beneath 'warfare censorship legal guidelines.'"

OVD-Information studies that greater than 1,500 individuals are presently jailed in Russia on political grounds, and over 20,000 have been detained for anti-war views since February 2022.

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