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

A court in St. Petersburg sentenced 19-year-old Darya Kozyreva to two years and eight months in a penal colony on April 18 for allegedly "discrediting" the Russian army, including 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 Testament" to his statue in St. Petersburg, according to the Russian human rights group OVD-Info. The excerpt read: "Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants’ blood / The freedom you have gained."

A second case was filed against her in August after she gave an interview to Radio Free Europe in which she called Russia’s war in Ukraine "monstrous" and "criminal."

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

"The national flag still flies over Kyiv, and it always will," Kozureva said in her final statement in court, according to Russian independent outlet Mediazona. "I still dream that Ukraine will reclaim every inch of its territory: Donbas, Crimea, all of it. And I believe that one day, it will. History will judge, and judge fairly. But Ukraine has already won. It has won. That’s all."

Kozyreva has been targeted by authorities before.

OVD-Info said she was detained in December 2022 while still in high school for writing, "Murderers, you bombed it. Judases," on a city installation honoring the twinning of St. Petersburg and occupied Mariupol.

She was later fined for "discrediting" the army and expelled from university for a post about the "imperialist nature of the war," according to the human rights group Memorial, which has recognized her as a political prisoner.

"Daria Kozyreva is being punished for quoting a classic of 19th-century Ukrainian poetry, for speaking out against an unjust war and for refusing to stay silent," Amnesty International’s Russia Director Natalia Zviagina said in a statement. "We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Daria Kozyreva and everyone imprisoned under 'war censorship laws.'"

OVD-Info reports that more than 1,500 people are currently jailed in Russia on political grounds, and over 20,000 have been detained for anti-war views since February 2022.

US proposes leaving occupied areas under Russian control, easing sanctions, Bloomberg reports

One of the officials told Bloomberg that the U.S. plans, which require further discussion with Kyiv, would not be a final settlement and that European allies would not recognize the occupied territories as Russian.

The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Denisova