A Russian court has sentenced 19-year-old activist Daria Kozyreva to two years and eight months in prison for protesting the war in Ukraine through poetry and graffiti, a decision that has sparked outrage from human rights groups.
Kozyreva was convicted on Friday of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian military. The charges stemmed from her public display of a poster bearing Ukrainian poetry and her interview with Sever.Realii, a Russian-language outlet of Radio Free Europe. A Reuters correspondent at the court confirmed the ruling.
Throughout the trial, Kozyreva maintained her innocence, calling the accusations “one big fabrication.” In a statement shared by independent media outlet Mediazona, she declared: “I have no guilt. My conscience is clear. Because the truth is never guilty.”
Her protest began in December 2022 at age 17, when she spray-painted the words “Murderers, you bombed it. Judases” on a sculpture outside Saint Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. The monument symbolized the city’s solidarity with Mariupol, a Ukrainian city heavily bombarded by Russian forces.
In early 2024, after receiving a 30,000-rouble ($370) fine for social media posts about the war, Kozyreva was expelled from the medical faculty of Saint Petersburg State University. One month later, on the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she taped a poem by 19th-century Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko onto his statue in a city park. The verse read:
“Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants’ blood / The freedom you have gained.”
She was arrested shortly afterward and spent nearly a year in pre-trial detention before being placed under house arrest in February.
Amnesty International’s Russia director, Natalia Zviagina, condemned the verdict, calling it “a chilling reminder of how far the Russian authorities will go to silence peaceful opposition.”
“Daria Kozyreva is being punished for quoting a classic of Ukrainian literature, for opposing an unjust war, and for refusing to be silent,” Zviagina said, demanding her immediate and unconditional release along with others detained under Russia’s war censorship laws.
Memorial, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian human rights organization, lists Kozyreva among at least 234 individuals currently imprisoned for their antiwar views.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the government has intensified its crackdown on dissent, with increasing arrests tied to antiwar activism, alleged espionage, and information-sharing.
Kozyreva’s case, marked by her defiant use of poetry and symbolic protest, has emerged as a powerful representation of the growing risks faced by young voices challenging state narratives.
Edited by Nzubechukwu Eze
