Russian activist gets nearly 3 years for anti-Ukraine war poetry and graffiti

A Russian court has sentenced 19-year-old activist Daria Kozyreva to two years and eight months in prison for protesting the war in Ukraine through poetry and graffiti, in a case that has drawn sharp criticism from rights groups.

Kozyreva was found guilty of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army—an offence under the country’s wartime censorship laws—after displaying Ukrainian verse in public spaces and speaking to a foreign news outlet. A Reuters journalist present in court on Friday confirmed the sentencing.

The activist denied the charges, calling the case “one big fabrication” in a statement during her trial, according to a transcript published by independent media outlet Mediazona. “I have no guilt. My conscience is clear,” she said.

Kozyreva first came to the authorities' attention in December 2022 when, at the age of 17, she spray-painted the words “Murderers, you bombed it. Judases” on a sculpture near Saint Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. The sculpture symbolised ties between the Russian city and Mariupol, a Ukrainian city devastated during Russia’s siege earlier that year.

In early 2024, after being fined for her online posts about Ukraine, she was expelled from the medical faculty of Saint Petersburg State University. A month later, on the second anniversary of the war, she taped a line of poetry by Taras Shevchenko—revered as the father of modern Ukrainian literature—onto a statue of the poet in a local park. She was arrested shortly after and spent nearly a year in pre-trial detention before being placed under house arrest in February.

Amnesty International condemned the verdict, with its Russia Director Natalia Zviagina calling it “another chilling reminder of how far the Russian authorities will go to silence peaceful opposition.”
“Daria Kozyreva is being punished for quoting a classic of 19th-century Ukrainian poetry, for speaking out against an unjust war, and for refusing to stay silent,” she said.

Kozyreva is among an estimated 234 individuals currently imprisoned in Russia for their anti-war stance, according to Memorial, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian human rights group.

The case underscores the widening crackdown on dissent since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Journalists and activists have been increasingly targeted under espionage and censorship laws.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains in custody on espionage charges, with the U.S. government designating him as “wrongfully detained.” Similarly, Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was arrested last year and is awaiting trial under foreign agent laws. Both cases have drawn international concern over press freedom in Russia.