Russian anti-war activist jailed for tribute to Ukrainian poet released from prison

A St. Petersburg anti-war activist jailed last year for “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian military after she paid tribute to a Ukrainian poet and condemned Moscow’s war in Ukraine has been released from prison, her support group announced on Wednesday.

Darya Kozyreva, 20, was met by relatives upon her release from the penal colony in the city of Kineshma in Russia’s central Ivanovo region where she had been serving her sentence early on Wednesday morning, independent news outlet Mediazona reported.

“Dasha is free! A huge thank you to everyone who supported her,” the Free Darya Kozyreva group wrote in a Telegram post.

Kozyreva was first detained by police when she was just 18 on 24 February 2024, the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after she left flowers at a St. Petersburg monument to Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko alongside a handwritten excerpt from one of his poems.

Later that year, she was also charged with “discrediting the military” for giving an interview to news outlet Sever.Realii, an affiliate of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that has been declared an “undesirable organisation” in Russia.

In April 2025, after using her closing statement in court to quote Shevchenko and reiterate her support for Ukraine’s independence — for which she was later fined 40,500 rubles (€450) — she was sentenced to two years and eight months behind bars.

Prior to the criminal case against her, Kozyreva had been targeted by the Russian authorities for her activism as a teenager.

In December 2022, while still a high school student, she was detained for spray painting an installation on St. Petersburg’s Palace Square celebrating the city’s relationship with the occupied Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which Russian forces captured after a brutal three-month siege earlier that year.

A year later, Kozyreva was expelled from St. Petersburg State University’s medical faculty for posts she made on social media network VK in March 2022 criticising Russia’s wartime censorship laws.

In July, she became the youngest signatory of a joint letter from jailed Russian dissidents to world leaders calling for the mass release of political prisoners in Russia and Ukrainian civilians held by Russian forces — estimated at over 10,000 people — as a key term in any peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv.