Anti-war Russian teen faces a long prison term after police threaten her with sledgehammer

Anti-war Russian teen faces a long prison term after police threaten her with sledgehammer

RFE/RL reports:

The Russian government did not wait for the trial of Olesya Krivtsova, a 19-year-old student in the northern city of Arkhangelsk, to even begin before adding her to its list of “terrorists and extremists.”.

The designation on January 10 came as Krivtsova spends her second month under house arrest, facing the possibility of more than 10 years in prison on charges of “justifying terrorism” and “discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”

“The worst possibilities whirl in my head,” Krivtsova told Current Time in an interview from her home. “I understand perfectly well that I might be imprisoned…. I’m trying to reconcile myself to that possibility.”

Krivtsova’s Kafkaesque case began on December 26, when police showed up to search the apartment she shares with her husband.

“Olesya didn’t see the search,” her mother, Natalya Krivtsova, told RFE/RL. “They removed her from the apartment 10 minutes after they arrived.”

While the search was being conducted, a police officer stood over Krivtsova, intimidating her with a sledgehammer, her mother said. Later, an officer of the Interior Ministry’s anti-extremism center told her and her husband separately that the visit was “a greeting from the Wagner” mercenary group.

Just a couple of weeks previously, the Kremlin-connected Wagner group released a brutal video in which convicted murderer Yevgeny Nuzhin, who had been recruited from prison to fight in Ukraine, was branded a traitor and killed by having his skull crushed with a sledgehammer. That video was titled The Hammer Of Revenge. [Continue reading…]

Comments are closed.