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The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has upheld on appeal the sentence of eight years in a penal colony for film director Anastasia Berezhinskaya, who has complained about conditions in the pre-trial detention centre. This was reported on Telegram stories by her lawyer, Oskar Cherdjiev.
Berezhinskaya attended the hearing via video link. She shared that she has been held for three weeks at Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 1 in Volgograd, a regional city on the Volga River. All her books have been taken away, and she is only allowed to eat soup. She constantly suffers from headaches because of persistent smoking in the cell. In addition, she is not allowed to use the shop, allegedly because she is in a transit cell.
“At Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 1 in Volgograd, from where this speech is currently being broadcast by video conferencing, the whole building is in an emergency state. All the cells in Block Ten on the second floor are in a critical condition. The sewage pipes have rotted, the cell ceilings are covered in mould and mildew, the wooden floors have decayed, water from the showers with broken pipes leaks under the wooden planks. There is a musty stench of sewage, damp and mould in the cells, earthworms crawl across the floor. The entire building literally leaks from top to bottom,” the director complained in court.
Prior to this, she was held at a pre-trial detention centre in Saratov, another city along the Volga. There, detainees were forced to strip naked and squat, their belongings were thrown around and trodden on, and the process was filmed by body cameras. According to Berezhinskaya, fire safety regulations were not observed, the cells lacked emergency buttons, drinking tap water was forbidden but no drinking water was provided, and the windows could not be opened.
In November 2024, Berezhinskaya was found guilty on three articles of the criminal code.
The charge of spreading “fake news” motivated by political hatred (point “d” part 2 article 207.3 of the Criminal Code) was brought against the director for four posts made in 2022. According to the investigators, she published unfounded claims about the “extermination of civilians, torture and abuse, genocide of the Ukrainian nation.”
The charge of repeated “discrediting” of the Russian army (part 1 article 280.3 of the Criminal Code) was based on comments she published in April 2023. Investigators allege that the woman wrote “about the president, as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces, committing state treason, genocide and war crimes, the Russian army seizing others’ property, and the destruction of infrastructure.”
The third charge relates to justifying terrorism (part 2 article 205.2 of the Criminal Code). Berezhinskaya was accused over three comments under her own post in May 2022 that allegedly called for the killing of Vladimir Putin.
At the first-instance court, Berezhinskaya declined to testify, so the prosecutor read out the records of her interrogations. She admitted guilt on the “fake news” and “discrediting” charges, but only partially on the “justification of terrorism” charge. According to her interrogation, Berezhinskaya does not consider her comments to be “calls to action.” The prosecutor also read Berezhinskaya’s statements that she “was frustrated by the state’s military actions, concerned for the civilians of both Russia and Ukraine,” “wanted to protect herself and the Russian people from invasion by other states,” and that she made the comments “into the void,” “for personal use.”
A criminal case against Berezhinskaya was opened in May 2024. She was then placed under travel restrictions. Berezhinskaya’s case reached the court in the second half of October that year.
On 10 July Anastasia Berezhinskaya was transferred to Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 5 in Leninsk, Volgograd region, reported her lawyer Oskar Cherdjiev on his Telegram channel.
According to the director, conditions in this facility are much better than in Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 1 in Volgograd. Her cell has a television and a refrigerator.
Corrected the previously reported city location of Detention Centre No. 5