Published: Just now
Russian teenagers who dare to criticize the war are put under house arrest and sentenced to severe punishments.
One of them is Olesija Krivtsova. On one ankle she wears a Putin-critical tattoo – on the other a foot shackle.
19-year-old Olesija Krivtsova from Arkhangelsk in northwestern Russia is the latest in a long line of young Russians to be punished for criticizing President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
A leggy spider body with Putin’s face adorns her right ankle. “Big brother sees you,” it says in Russian. The electronic ankle cuff on the other ankle, which monitors every step she takes, she must wear during her house arrest while awaiting sentencing. She is also prohibited from using the internet and other forms of digital communication.
“Great sin” not to be silent
Last year, Krivtsova published partly a war-critical post from the Russian activist Ilya Lesyukov, partly an Instagram story about the explosion on the Crimean bridge in which Russia’s invasion of the neighboring country was criticized.
The publications discredit the Russian army and justify terrorism, authorities claim, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The teenager’s name has now been added to the country’s list of terrorists and extremists – side by side with IS, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
– Olesija’s case is not the first and not the last, says Krivtsova’s lawyer to CNN.
According to the independent human rights group OVD-Info, at least 61 legal cases related to the “justification of terrorism on the Internet” were initiated in 2022. 26 of them have so far resulted in convictions.
– She has a great pathos of justice, which makes her life difficult. The inability to remain silent is now a great sin in Russia, says Olesija Krivtsova’s mother Natalija.
Threatened with a sledgehammer
The 19-year-old, who usually studies at the University of Arkhangelsk, was arrested at the end of December. According to the mother, police stormed the daughter’s apartment and forced her to lie face down on the floor. The police are said to have threatened Olesija with a sledgehammer and said it was a greeting from the Wagner group, whose soldiers in a viral film clip from wartime Ukraine beat a Russian defector to death with just a sledgehammer.
In the clip in question, a convicted murderer who was recruited to the war from a Russian penal colony by the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is executed.
– This country has a strange policy. Prisoners are sent to the war and children to prison, says Natalija Krivtsova.