Activist Daria Kozyreva, convicted in Russia over Shevchenko’s poetry and support for Ukraine, has been released. VIDEO
Russian activist Daria Kozyreva, convicted in Russia over Taras Shevchenko’s poetry and support for Ukraine, has been released from a penal colony in the city of Kineshma.
This was reported by Radio Svoboda’s Russian service, Censor.NET informs.
Case details
Since 2022, when she was still a minor, Kozyreva had taken part in anti-war protests. On April 18, 2025, the Petrogradsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced her to 2 years and 8 months in a penal colony in a case over the so-called repeated "discrediting of the Russian army."
The case was based on two episodes: an interview with Sever.Realii, as well as a sheet bearing poems by Taras Shevchenko that she pasted onto a monument to the Ukrainian poet on the anniversary of the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian court ruled that an excerpt from the well-known poem Testament "contained a call for resistance." Kozyreva was 19 at the time.
In her final statement in court, the activist also began with a poem by Shevchenko, after which she spoke about Ukraine and Russia’s full-scale invasion.
"Ukraine is a free country, a free nation, and it will decide its own fate. If anyone echoes the occupier’s narratives, Ukrainians will hate them. And there is no point in talking here about Ukrainian nationalists. You brought this on yourselves," she stressed. "I dream, of course, that Ukraine will regain every inch of its land, including Donbas and Crimea," the activist stated.
For these words, a Russian court additionally fined her 40,500 roubles in a case over the "discrediting of the Russian army."
On March 18, 2026, the young woman was released.
- As reported earlier, in April 2025, a Russian court sentenced 19-year-old Russian activist Daria Kozyreva to nearly three years in prison after she used Taras Shevchenko’s poetry and graffiti to express her protest against the war in Ukraine.
