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Oleg Belousov, a Saint Petersburg resident convicted over anti-war comments, has been sent to a punitive confinement unit (PKT) for five months. He reported this himself in a letter seen by OVD-Info.
The PKT is a separate part of the penal colony with stricter conditions of detention. Being placed in the PKT imposes a number of restrictions on prisoners, including the number of parcels and visits allowed, as well as the amount of money available for buying food and essentials.
Belousov said that he was moved to the PKT on 25 July.
“Luxury apartments: 13.8 m² and I’m here alone! So I’m moving up the political career ladder, plus to my reputation. Entering into an economy mode, next parcel in six months, but there’s still (almost) a shop and an industrial unit, ready-made food (grilled chicken, boiled eggs),” he wrote.
Belousov said that recently his blood pressure has been unstable, he’s having headaches and nausea, as well as a feeling of shortness of breath:
“It gets especially stuffy when they take you to work, all to the same 13.8 m² cell, officially meant for five people (I don’t know, that’s what the paperwork says), but it’s set up as a sewing workshop. There are five sewing machines, a small gap in the barred window. Sometimes they open the food slots if you ask.”
Belousov has third-degree disability status. He has been in detention since June 2022. In March 2023, he was sentenced to five and a half years in a standard-regime penal colony on charges of inciting extremism (part 2, article 280 of the Criminal Code) and spreading “fake news” about the Russian army (part 2, article 207.3 of the Criminal Code).
The criminal prosecution was triggered by Belousov’s comments in the “Petersburg Diggers” group on VKontakte critical of the Russian army. In these, Russian soldiers were called “Putlerite fascists” who “shoot civilians and execute people in their homes,” and reference was made to war crimes in the Ukrainian towns of Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel. In one comment, he called Vladimir Putin a war criminal. The report against Belousov was filed by a fellow treasure hunter with whom he was discussing these topics in the group.
In October 2023, Belousov was transferred to Correctional Colony No. 5 in Kirov Region, a region to the north-east of Moscow. Shortly afterwards he was placed on a preventive watchlist as “prone to escape,” but he was removed from the list after a polygraph test a year and a half later. In 2024, Belousov was sent to solitary confinement twice, and later transferred to harsher detention conditions.