A St Petersburg court has sentenced a 19-year-old woman to nearly three years in a penal colony after she was accused of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army, including by gluing a quotation on a statue of a Ukrainian poet.

Darya Kozyreva was sentenced to two years and eight months, the Joint Press Service of Courts in St. Petersburg said in statement Friday.

Kozyreva was arrested on February 24, 2024, after she glued a verse by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko onto his monument in St Petersburg, according to OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights group.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    51·
    3 hours ago

    They literally want to know your opinion of it?

    I mean seriously, can you be any more obtuse?

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      73·
      2 hours ago

      I’m not being obtuse, this is my opinion on it: this is entirely expected and in line with what’s going on in Russia currently. Nothing about this is surprising.

      Are you asking me to make a moral judgement? I think it’s a bit draconian, sure.

      Are you asking me to expand more upon the dynamics in the Russian Federation right now, leading to why this is entitely unsurprising? The Russian Federation right now is split between 2 major and 1 minor groups:

      1. The Nationalist Liberals. United Russia, the nationalist party, is the current dominant party in the Russian Federation and controls the largest number of seats in the State Duma. This is Putin’s political party. They have broad support due to opposing western imperialism, which devastated Russia in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR, but their support is shrinking in favor of group number 2 due to the failures of capitalism in Russia.

      2. The Communists. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) is the second largest group in Russia, and controls the second most seats in the State Duma. In the last several years, communist party membership has skyrocketed, and a wave of soviet nostalgia has overtaken the populace. The nationalists are trying to steer that soviet nostalgia towarss Russian nationalism, but by and large this has resulted in more people moving to supporting a return of socialism. The CPRF critically supports the nationalists over group 3, which hardly anyone supports.

      3. The pro-western Liberals. These are very unpopular, because the west looted and destroyed much of the gains made by the previous socialist system. Reconciliation with the west is an extremely unpopular view, but this group gets magnified in western viewpoints over the communists because they wish to present a narrative that Putin is unpopular.

      The harsh truth is that Putin’s popularity in Russia is real because the nationalists stopped the outflow of wealth from the country, but this same group of nationalists largely keeps it for themselves, so the communists are rising to distrubute that wealth to the working classes and restore socialism. The pro-western liberals, which is who the subject of OP seems to belong to, are extremely unpopular, hence why the Russian state is cracking down on them to not much outcry from the Russian public.

      Is that developed enough for you?