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The Petrozavodsk City Court has given the head of an art school, Irina Bystrova, a five and a half year suspended sentence. This was reported by the Karelia branch of the Investigative Committee.
The prosecutor had asked for a sentence of six years’ imprisonment. In addition to the suspended sentence, the court set Bystrova a four-year probation period.
The woman was found guilty of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army out of “political hatred” (paragraph “d,” part 2, article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, in 2023 and 2024 Bystrova made three posts on her VKontakte page: about the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, about the missile strike on central Kramatorsk and about attacks on other Ukrainian cities.
“I am a pacifist, I have no intention of going to the Kremlin. I just love people, I love Kyiv. I am a humanist. I was brought up in the USSR and at school we were taught completely different things—that we should support friendship between peoples and oppose wars. My teachers instilled this in me; I cannot break my convictions. I have many good, kind deeds ahead of me. I want to teach children so that they will be bright, kind and humane. Your Honour, I have done nothing wrong. I have not taken anyone’s life, I have not raped, I have not robbed. I love my homeland! This is evident from the work of my students,” Bystrova said in court.
A case was opened against Bystrova at the end of 2024. On 11 December, the woman was detained, and the following day she was charged. After that, the artist was placed under house arrest, where she has remained until now. In June 2025, the case was submitted to the court.
Bystrova lives in a flat with her elderly mother, who has not left the house for several years. The artist looks after her mother full time while under house arrest; a social worker brings them food and medicines. Bystrova’s mother is a labour veteran and a designer-engineer specialising in river fleet vessels.
This is not the first criminal case against Bystrova over her public expression of opinions. On 27 December 2022, the artist was fined 600,000 roubles (about US$6,700 at the time) under the same article, as well as for “justifying terrorism” (art. 205.2 of the Criminal Code). The fine was set with a five-year instalment plan. Since September 2022 the artist has been included on the Rosfinmonitoring list of terrorists and extremists.
On 11 March 2024, Bystrova was fined 30,000 roubles (about US$330 at the time) in an administrative case on “discrediting the Russian army” (part 1, article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code) after four posts on VKontakte in 2023.
The information about Irina Bystrova’s sentence in this report has been corrected. Previously, it was stated here that she had been given a four-year suspended sentence instead of five and a half years. We apologise for the error.