The court has imposed a stricter prison regime on a Mordovia-based human rights defender who was convicted of “discrediting the army.”

The Zubovo-Polyansky District Court in Mordovia has granted the Federal Penitentiary Service’s request to transfer 70-year-old human rights defender Sergei Maryin from an open prison colony to a general regime colony. His lawyer, Andrei Kuryatnikov, told OVD-Info about the decision.

The application was prompted by Maryin being designated a persistent violator in the colony. This followed the discovery of razor blades among his personal belongings. As a result, he was also sentenced to 14 days in a punishment cell (SHIZO).

The human rights defender says that the razor blades were planted on him. He believes what happened was a provocation.

Before this, Maryin had received five disciplinary actions. First, he was reprimanded twice for discrepancies between his personal items and the inventory list. Then, on the same basis, he was given three days in a punishment cell. He was later given another 14 days in SHIZO for not getting up when ordered to do so. He also received another reprimand for writing on his bed.

Maryin has been held at Penal Colony Settlement No. 14 in the village of Partsa, Mordovia (a region east of Moscow), since July 2025. He is due to spend another five months in custody.

In March 2025, the court found the human rights defender guilty of discrediting the army (Article 280.3, Part 1 of the Russian Criminal Code) and sentenced him to a year in an open colony. The case was initiated over a social media post and a comment on 24 February 2024, as well as a picket held the same day. These actions concerned the death of politician Alexei Navalny and the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine.

“Today is the ninth day since the death of Alexei Navalny, a foreign agent, terrorist, and extremist according to Putin. Today is the anniversary of the war with Ukraine. According to Putin, they need to denazify, meaning kill all Ukrainians,” Maryin wrote at the time in his post.

Previously, the human rights defender was fined in an administrative case over discrediting the army (Article 20.3.3, Part 1 of the Code of Administrative Offences) because of comments in which he condemned the invasion of Ukraine.

• For around 20 years, Maryin defended the rights of prisoners in Mordovia (a region east of Moscow) and represented their interests in court disputes with officials from the Federal Penitentiary Service. OVD-Info has reported on his human rights work and the persecution he faced because of his anti-war stance, which involved an informant.