Journalist Maria Ponomarenko has been sent to solitary confinement for 15 days.

Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist for RusNews, has been placed in solitary confinement for 15 days in the PFRSI at Correctional Colony No. 9 in Altai Krai, a region in southern Siberia. Her lawyer, Dmitry Shitov, told OVD-Info about the decision.

She will remain in solitary confinement until 30 July.

The lawyer said that Ponomarenko gave a confused account of the reason for being placed in solitary. Reportedly, it was due to her refusal to put her hands behind her back when being taken out of the room in which she was participating in a video link with the Altai Krai Court. At the time, the court was hearing appeals from both Ponomarenko and the prosecution against the verdict in a case concerning violence against a colony officer (Part 2, Article 321 of the Criminal Code) and upheld the sentence.

In March, the Shipunovsky District Court sentenced Ponomarenko to one year and ten months in a general regime colony. She was accused of scratching an officer from Correctional Colony No. 6 in August 2023. Ponomarenko denied the charges, stating that prison guards had suffocated her with a pillow and slammed her head on the floor.

During her imprisonment, the journalist has repeatedly been placed in a punishment cell or solitary confinement. In March, she wrote in letters from the pre-trial detention centre that she had slit her wrists because of ongoing abuse by Federal Penitentiary Service staff.

• In February 2023, the Leninsky District Court of Barnaul, a major city in Siberia, sentenced Maria Ponomarenko to six years in a penal colony over a case concerning “fake news” about the Russian army (subsection “d,” part 2, article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). She was prosecuted for a post about the strike on the drama theatre in Mariupol, where civilians were present. Ponomarenko became one of the first in Russia to be prosecuted under the military “fake news” law.