Daria Kozyreva used 19th-century poetry and graffiti to protest Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine.<\/p>\n
A Russian court has handed down a prison sentence of nearly three years to Daria Kozyreva, a young activist who used 19th-century poetry and graffiti to protest the war<\/a> in Ukraine.<\/p>\n A Reuters news agency witness in the court on Friday said Kozyreva, 19, was found guilty of repeatedly \u201cdiscrediting\u201d the Russian army after she put up a poster with lines of Ukrainian verse on a public square and gave an interview to Sever.Realii, a Russian-language service of Radio Free Europe.<\/p>\n She has been sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.<\/p>\n On Friday, Kozyreva pleaded not guilty, calling the case against her \u201cone big fabrication\u201d, according to a trial transcript compiled by Mediazona, an independent news outlet.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no guilt. My conscience is clear,\u201d she said, according to Mediazona\u2019s transcript.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause the truth is never guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n In December 2022, aged just 17, Kozyreva sprayed the words, \u201cMurderers, you bombed it. Judases,\u201d in black paint on a sculpture of two intertwined hearts, erected outside Saint Petersburg\u2019s Hermitage Museum that represents the city\u2019s links with Mariupol, a Ukrainian city largely razed to the ground during a siege earlier that year.<\/p>\n In early 2024, after being fined 30,000 roubles ($370) for posting about Ukraine online, Kozyreva was expelled from the medical faculty of Saint Petersburg State University.<\/p>\n A month later, on the war\u2019s second anniversary, she taped a piece of paper containing a fragment of verse by Taras Shevchenko, the father of modern Ukrainian literature, onto a statue of him in a Saint Petersburg park:<\/p>\n \u201cOh bury me, then rise ye up \/ And break your heavy chains \/ And water with the tyrants\u2019 blood \/ The freedom you have gained.\u201d<\/p>\n Kozyreva was swiftly arrested and held in pre-trial detention for nearly a year, until she was released this February to house arrest.<\/p>\n \u2018Punished for quoting poetry\u2019<\/p>\n Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International\u2019s Russia director, said Friday\u2019s verdict \u201cis another chilling reminder of how far the Russian authorities will go to silence peaceful opposition to their war in Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cDaria 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,\u201d she said<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe demand the immediate and unconditional release of Daria Kozyreva and everyone imprisoned under \u2018war censorship laws\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Kozyreva is currently one of an estimated 234 people imprisoned in Russia<\/a> for their antiwar position, according to a tally by Memorial, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian human rights group.<\/p>\n Arrests on charges of spying and collecting sensitive data have also become increasingly frequent in Russia since it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n