Siberian journalist Maria Ponomarenko, who was sentenced to six years in prison in February on a charge of discrediting Russia's armed forces over the invasion of Ukraine, says she will be transferred to a remote location from her native Altai region, which is a violation of her two children's right to regularly visit their mother.
The Telegram channel RusNews carried Ponomarenko's handwritten letter on May 2, in which the journalist said she expected to be transferred to Krasnoyarsk, 1,000 kilometers away from the city of Barnaul, where her children now live with their grandparents.
Ponomarenko wrote that her former husband had voluntarily joined the Russian armed forces.
Ponomarenko was arrested in St. Petersburg in April 2022 and later transferred to her native city of Barnaul in Siberia, where she had worked for the RusNews website.
The charge against her stemmed from her online posts about an attack by Russian warplanes on a theater in the Ukrainian port of Mariupol that is believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, including children.
Ponomarenko said in March that she was beaten and humiliated after she was transferred from Barnaul to a detention center in the city of Biisk, where she was kept in a psychiatric clinic for three days, underwent a "psychiatric evaluation," and was forcibly injected with unknown substances when she demanded her personal belongings or hygiene items.
Human rights watchdogs demanded the immediate release of Ponomarenko, saying the psychiatric evaluation of criminal suspects does not include any injections.