ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- A court in St. Petersburg has extended pretrial detention by another two months for an 18-year-old activist who is charged with repeatedly discrediting Russian armed forces involved in Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The Petrograd district court ruled on May 22 that Darya Kozyreva must stay in pretrial detention at least until July 25.
Kozyreva was detained on February 24, the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after she glued a poster on a monument to prominent Ukrainian writer, poet, and thinker Taras Shevchenko with an excerpt of a well-known poem from his book, My Testament:
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
The poster was so strongly glued to the monument that police were unable to remove it and had to cover it with a black plastic bag.
Kozyreva was initially charged with vandalism in January last year after she left a comment in December 2022 on an art installation symbolizing "friendship" between St. Petersburg and Ukraine's city of Mariupol, which was destroyed by Russian bombs at the start of the invasion.
An investigation into that case is still under way.
On December 18, 2022, less than a week after the installation was unveiled in St. Petersburg's Palace Square, the words “Murderers, you bombed it to ruins yourselves!" appeared on the installation.
Kozyreva was expelled from St. Petersburg State University in January after she was found guilty of discrediting Russia's armed forces and ordered to pay a 30,000 ruble ($330) fine in December.
That charge stemmed from Kozyreva's online posts criticizing Russian laws on discrediting the country's armed forces, which were introduced shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in late February 2022.