A St. Petersburg court sentenced anti-war activist Darya Kozyreva to nearly three years in prison after ruling she "discredited" the Russian military by gluing a poem to a monument dedicated to a Ukrainian poet.
Kozyreva, 19, also faced charges stemming from an interview she gave to RFE/RL's North Realities, where she discussed her political views, among other things.
Prosecutors had requested six years in prison for Kozyreva, who was detained on February 24, 2024, on the second anniversary of Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine.
She was arrested after she glued an excerpt of a poem by Taras Shevchenko, a poet and thinker who is widely revered in Ukraine, to a statue of Shevchenko standing in St. Petersburg.
The poem read:
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained
Prosecutors added new charges months later, based on her interview with North Realities.
At the time of her arrest, Kozyreva was known for previous anti-war demonstrations, and for public support of activists including anti-corruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny.
In her closing statement to the St. Petersburg court on April 18, Kozyreva quoted briefly from a Shevchenko poem, and then referred to Ukraine's independence.
"Ukraine is a free country, a free nation, and it will decide its own fate," she said, according to reporters from MediaZona and SotaVision, who were in the courtroom.
"Of course, I dream of Ukraine getting back every inch of its land, including Donbas and Crimea. I believe that one day my dream will come true. One day history will judge everything fairly. But Ukraine has won anyway. It has already won. That's all."
Weeks after the start of the Ukraine invasion, Russian lawmakers passed sweeping legislation that criminalized any criticism of the armed forces, or the overall conduct of the war in Ukraine.