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The St Petersburg City Court has upheld the sentence against 19-year-old Darya Kozyreva: two years and eight months in a penal colony on charges of repeated discrediting of the army (part 1, article 280.3 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by Mediazona.
Kozyreva appeared in court by video link from pre-trial detention centre No. 3 in Vyborg, a town near St Petersburg. She called the case illegal and criticised the evidence presented in it.
“The experts were cunning; they decided that I implied that Ukraine had been shackled in chains, that it was the Russian Armed Forces who did this, so it must be discrediting. I could never have imagined that I’d be saying this in court at a political trial… But that’s not what I meant! Even the television channel ‘Rossiya 24’ and the rest of the pre-trial detention centre entertainment haven’t managed to convince me that anyone has somehow managed to put Ukraine in chains!” she added.
“I know there are no acquittals. If I’d admitted guilt in court, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. My cellmates advised me to plead guilty, but I said: ‘No, I can’t.’ They called me foolish. My article is a disgrace to the law, my case is a disgrace to those who started to fabricate it against me. If I had pleaded guilty, that would have been a real disgrace, a disgrace for me,” Kozryeva is quoted as saying by Bumaga.
ZAKS.Ru writes that she criticised the work of law enforcement officers and pointed to contradictions in the two expert examinations carried out as part of the case, describing them as “homeopathy in the world of expert activity.” Kozyreva considers the internet ban too harsh, since she “will be deprived of the chance even to comment on photos of kittens online.”
“The evidence confirms I stuck up the sheet and gave the interview—I’ve never denied that,” Darya said in closing arguments, “But how could it have happened that three grown men in uniform couldn’t stop me? They just stood and watched as I struggled with the sticky tape. I hope they respond more promptly to murders.”
She added that, in her opinion, she was only arrested over Shevchenko’s work, but tried on the basis of Tvardovsky’s poems (his version of the translation was used in court and in the examinations). “So it turns out I’m not in prison for Shevchenko, but for Tvardovsky. No one would believe it if I told them,” she commented.
In her final statement, Kozyreva said she wanted “to talk about democracy” and gave a brief history lesson, recalling the shooting of the Russian parliament in 1993.
“There’s this curious philosophy, I’d call it armchair positivism. ‘How do you know about this? Did you see it with your own eyes? You didn’t? Then don’t talk about it here! ’” Darya continued her final words. “Maybe history really is cyclical, or maybe, under Putin, we have no more freedom of speech than people had under Tsar Nicholas I. But there’s a funny outcome to all this—once upon a time, they arrested and exiled Shevchenko himself for his work, and now here I am in prison.”
Kozyreva’s sentence was handed down in April. She was charged with two offences in total. The first relates to a protest on the anniversary of the start of the invasion of Ukraine, 24 February 2024. On that day, she attached a sheet of paper with a quote from a poem by Taras Shevchenko to his statue in St Petersburg: “Поховайте та вставайте /Кайдани порвіте / І вражою злою кров’ю / Волю окропіте”. That same day, Kozyreva was arrested and soon sent to the pre-trial detention centre.
The second offence came later and is connected with her interview with the publication Sever.Realii. In that interview, she described the war as “monstrous” and “criminal.”
In February 2025, after spending a year in pre-trial detention, Kozyreva had her pre-trial restrictions eased. Instead of custody, she was ordered not to leave her residence between 9pm and 7am, not to use the internet or phone, and not to communicate with the media or other parties to the case.
A criminal case for repeated discrediting was opened against Kozyreva because in December 2023 she had been fined 30,000 roubles (US$380) under an administrative protocol for discrediting the army (part 1, art. 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences). Following that court ruling, Kozyreva was expelled from St Petersburg State University.
The protocol was prompted by a VKontakte post from 4 March 2022 in which she criticised the introduction of criminal charges for so-called military “fakes.” Kozyreva wrote that “Russian imperialists are now sending troops into Ukraine to grab a new sphere of influence for themselves,” and that “soldiers, workers of their own country are being sent to die in the carnage and become killers.” She also noted that Ukrainian civilians were being killed by the shelling.
In addition, in December 2022, Kozyreva was detained over an inscription on an installation in Palace Square dedicated to the “friendship” between St Petersburg and Mariupol, which was captured by the Russian army. The inscription read: “Murderers, you bombed it. Judas.” At the time, the then 17-year-old Kozyreva was still at school. A month later, a criminal case for wilful damage to property (part 1, article 167 of the Criminal Code) was opened against her, but since then law enforcement has not undertaken any further investigative actions.
In June, Kozyreva was fined 40,500 roubles (US$510) under the article on discrediting the army (part 1, art. 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences) for her closing statement at the trial in the criminal case.