Russian Artist Jailed For Protesting War Details Abuse In Prison Letters

A Russian artist jailed in April for replacing price tags in supermarkets with anti-war messages detailed the abuse within the Russian prison in letters to her girlfriend.

Russia has attempted to crack down on anti-war protests since the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, but artists and protestors have not been deterred.

Alexandra Skochilenko, who also goes by the name Sasha, was arrested on April 11 for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans under the law that criminalizes the distribution of "fake news" about the Russian military or the war. In several letters written to her girlfriend, Skochilenko described the unsanitary and sometimes dangerous conditions of the Russian jail.

According to Business Insider, Skochilenko is currently held in a pre-trial detention center until at least June and faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Skochilenko's girlfriend of five years, Sonia Subbotina, spoke with Insider and shared some of the letters she has received from Skochilenko.

According to the letters, Skochilenko has faced issues with other inmates. One letter stated that an inmate "talks to me with an authoritarian tone and constantly gives me orders." Skochilenko wrote, "She controls my every move and complains about every single one of my actions."

The artist also wrote that a Russian state TV program "shouts all day" at the inmates with pro-war messages, and is only turned off at night.

Subbotina explained to Insider that Skochilenko has celiac disease, an immune reaction to eating gluten that causes damage to a person's small intestine. The artist ate very little due to a lack of gluten-free food, and when she got too hungry, she ate some of the food containing gluten. "This made her very sick, and she was throwing up a lot and feeling a lot of pain," Subbotina said.

Subbotina also said that her girlfriend has several other ailments and has been denied medical treatment for them. She told Insider that Skochilenko has an ovarian cyst and an impacted wisdom tooth that was scheduled for surgery before she was arrested.

Subbotina said an emergency surgery was performed in jail, but "They didn't have stitching material, so they left it as an open wound, quite a large open wound, and because of this, Sasha is in a lot of pain, and her gums are inflamed, infected, and she is now having to be treated with antibiotics," Subbotina said.

"This is definitely to do with the hardening of the authoritarian regime," Subbotina said to Insider. "There is no way that a person can speak out safely. Any attempt to show an opinion that differs from the government opinion is punished very, very harshly."

Russian opposition to the war has mounted since February, and in March, Russia arrested over 13,000 protestors over the course of several weeks as anti-war rallies were held in 65 cities.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.