Darya Kozyreva

An activist and former medical student at St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU).

This final statement was made at the announcement of the verdict. Darya was sentenced to two years and eight months in a general-regime penal colony in a case of repeated ‘discrediting’ of the army. The persecution had begun in 2022, when the then 17-year-old Kozyreva wrote on an installation dedicated to St. Petersburg’s aid to Mariupol the phrase: ‘Murderers, you bombed it. Judases.' In early 2024, the student was expelled from SPbSU for posts on VKontakte criticising the criminal articles on ‘discrediting’ and on ‘fakes.’ Darya was detained on 24 February 2024, after she had stuck a poster with an excerpt from Taras Shevchenko’s poem ‘Testament’ to his monument. Released in March 2026.

2020s

Reading time: 10 minutes

The Final Statement

‘Being a dictator is a bad idea. A very bad idea. But even those who could trample on human rights and liberties with impunity have not been forgiven by descendants. Indeed, the dictators’ names have remained for ages, yet just as headlines of the blackest pages of our history’.

I am imprisoned under an article that is illegal. The fact is obvious and trivial for the point has been expounded thoroughly, and yet – this article flatly contradicts the Russian Constitution. In it there’s a wonderful article No. 29. It says, in particular: ‘Freedom of thought and speech is guaranteed for everyone.’ It is Part One. Oh, there must be Part Two in there as well: ‘Propaganda and agitation inciting social, racial, national or religious hatred and hostility shall not be allowed. Propaganda of racial, religious or linguistic superiority is prohibited.’

I understand it is all covered by Article 282. It might be the case with that [illegible] Vasilyev. However, my dear Article 280, note 3, has nothing to do with all that whatsoever. But let’s be fair enough. They would suggest Article 55, part 3 as an argument from where this extract can be actually drawn: ‘Human and civil rights and liberties may be restricted by federal law only to the extent necessary in order to protect the foundations of the constitutional order, health, legitimate interests of others, to ensure the defence of the country and the state security.’

Yes, that’s right, but I’m struggling to figure out how the phrase ‘no war’, being charged in the majority of cases with at least discrediting under the administrative Article 20, paragraph 3, can possibly be an incursion on the foundations of the constitutional order or interfere with the country’s defence and the state security. It’s nothing like espionage of some kind, is it?

Does it make any difference at all what’s declared in the Constitution? There are plenty of declarations written down in it. For instance, we’ve got a democratic legal state in this country. Very funny. To be fair, the Constitution of 1993 is itself the mother of this vicious circle, and is itself to blame for becoming not worth a penny anymore. To be precise, there was someone else to blame. Boys and girls, you can’t shoot parliaments. Even though the parliament hasn’t been awarded a proper name instead of ‘council’, you just can’t do it, anyway.

Even if the Reds or some Brownshirts, among others, had come to rescue the parliament, nobody had the right to shoot at it still. Usurping the power by means of tanks is a crime. Likewise, adapting the Constitution to one’s own needs in response to the recent shooting of the parliament house, is a bad thing. It all happened back then, and here we are with what we’ve got now, still paying the price in every way.

Almost sole power has been concentrated in the president’s hands. The parliament is no more in a position to tell him: ‘Listen pal, hold your horses!’ All civilised countries follow the brilliant principle of division of powers into the three independent branches, which would compete and oppose each other, if need be. The Constitutional Court could declare a parliamentary resolution illegal. The parliament could prevent the president or the government from taking certain actions. It would be just nice, wouldn’t it?

Regretfully, the Russian parliament is nothing more than a president’s stooge, a puppet theatre with a couple of factions. It will adopt anything it’s been told to adopt. If needed, anything might be adopted unanimously. Its independence is close to zero. But no surprises awaited. We have stability under Putin, after all. Like we’re in a swamp. There’s total stability in the electoral field: the elections are yet to be held, but everyone already knows the results in advance. Not that due to [illegible]. It seems they even no longer cover up their falsifications here and there.

Today it looks like an order of things so much so that it’s become a new ‘spiritual clamp’ of ours. Along with blaming the state employees. I would call this type of a fancy philosophy an armchair positivism that goes like: ‘How would you know that? You didn’t see it yourself, did you? No? So you’d better shut up.’

I was eligible to vote for president in prison back in 2024. Placed a cross against every name – just the right thing I suggest everybody should do. Later on, I was told there had been no invalid ballots at my polling station, according to official data. None at all. Nil, that is. The rule of law is not even worth discussing then, I assume.

I’ve gained some priceless experience from the prison. Numerous cases have proved the fact to me that the principle of presumed innocence is just non-existent in this country. The presumption ensures the legal right to always prove one’s innocence. I would call the main principle of the Russian litigation ‘an assumption of guilt’. This anti-legal postulating stems from the system itself.

Alas, this system sets its conditions for survival even to the best judges, with regards to any criminal case. You don’t have to be politically persecuted to have your rights violated. The political [illegible] are an essential attribute of any legal and democratic state, by the way. You know that, don’t you? I got sick and tired of amusing myself with joking about it within the first six months of my term or so. Either history does move in cycles, or freedom of speech under Putin’s rule isn’t greater than that under Czar Nicholas I. Well, all in all, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Once a brave soldier Shevchenko had been arrested and exiled for his works, now it’s my turn to be put in gaol. Oh, great [illegible]!

I’d like to quote Chief of the third department Orlov. Very much. I’ve got nothing to add to it. ‘Shevchenko… composed poetry in Little Russian that was of the most outrageous content. In some verses he used to express his weeping over an alleged enslavement and misery of Ukraine, in other verses he used to proclaim glory of the hetmans’ reign and the former freemen of the Cossacks, or he would pour out his slander and bile onto the imperial court nobles with incredible impudence, disregarding his own benefactors in so treating them. The youth and weak-minded people get attracted by the forbidden, on top of that among his friends Shevchenko has gained the fame of a remarkable writer of Little Russia, hence his poetry is doubly harmful and dangerous. Such verses, held dear in Little Russia, could arouse and implant the ideas of an imaginary beatitude during the period of hetmanship, of longing to return to those happy times and of an opportunity for the Ukraine’s existence as a separate state.’ Fortunately, it is impossible to return those times and deprive Ukraine of its independence rights. Orlov, Chief of the third department, was also a great fighter back in 1840, if ever there was one.

As Mikhail Yuryevich Russkiy, my prosecutor has told in the debate, ‘Shevchenko happens to be a symbol of Ukraine itself.’ That is true. And of course, it’s the case of ‘the funnel is lower and the smoke is thinner’. Look what is stated in my administrative order: ‘When [comma missing] having taken an excursion into history with an emphasis on T. Shevchenko, B. Khmelnytsky, Mazepa, a conclusion is being made that the Russian Federation represented by the president of the Russian Federation and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, by starting ‘a special military aggression, is the aggressor country’… [hyphen missing] have carried out the occupation of the Ukrainian lands, being a sovereign and independent state.’ The author’s spelling is preserved and carefully transmitted.

There will come a night when, deeply depressed, in a fit of severe self-pity, I will be looking at this order, going: ‘Well, perhaps it seems a bit like truth.’ I would like to address the secretary of the court of first instance. Ilya Sergeyevich, you have made a really decent court record. Honestly. Yeah, I got carried away with details. Since I’ve started talking about the case, let me get back to where I’d left off so hastily in the debate – to the plot of the unanimous accusation of me.

Sorry, if you’re getting bored, I’ll go on amusing. ‘During a special operation in Ukraine with the actual goals of demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine…’ Skipping protection of citizens’ interests and support of international organisations as uninteresting to mention. ‘…Execution by the state bodies of the Russian Federation of their powers outside the Russian Federation territory with the above goals, protection of the state interests and sovereignty of the Russian Federation [illegible] by means of DPR (Donetsk Peoples Republic) and LPR (Lugansk Peoples Republic).”

Nope, I’m not going to pinpoint lies here and there. I’ve spoken enough about lying, let’s now speak about truth. You heard it right: about truth. The other day I talked about what kind of democratic legal state we had. It was for a reason. Dictatorships dislike calling things by their proper names. Strongly dislike. They are prone to introduce nice terms. Their own Newspeak. Nonetheless, one might uncover some truth even out of that Newspeak, had they wished so. That would be a grossly distorted truth, and yet somehow a word of truth could be retrieved. Just to understand where it’s rooted, where the ‘Russian land’ comes from. I’m not pretending to speak the ultimate truth in my interpretation, I’ll just play with it, trying to find the so-called antiderivative feature in this palette. Sorry for the stupid metaphor. Picked it up from a library book by Lumberg.

Let’s go now. A special old… a good old special military operation (SMO), in fact being a war. It’s a general subject that has become quite annoying to everyone over three years already. The weirdest reasoning why it’s not being called ‘war’ but ‘SMO’, was suggested by a taxi driver. You can throw tomatoes at me in reply, but I still find it most logical: ‘We are at war with the West, with Europe and the USA. Though hidden to us, it’s still a war, whereas the SMO in Ukraine is an operation in terms of “multi-stage battle”. A one-off campaign at the certain front like, say, Operation Bagration.’ That’s not the real reason why they try to call the war in Ukraine an ‘operation’, but in general, the propaganda circles have always had the tendency to challenge the entire Europe and threatened to strike at Washington for surrender, and they still continue.

Obsession with the Napoleonic dreams is typical to local dictatorships. The Bolshevik dictatorship, for instance, dubbed them ‘global revolution’. Just recall the Soviet poster ‘The whole world will be ours.’ Or recall the line of a song ‘Give us Warsaw, give us Berlin’ from the Mayakovsky’s poem ‘150 Million’, meaning not a desirable amount of money on our bank accounts, but a number of people feeling eager to go to America and fan the world fire there.

Talking about DPR and LPR, I’m not going to state now that there are no such republics at all, as I would normally do. Since some people call them so, at least they exist as an idea. I’m just going to point out the regimes that were historically called ‘people’s republics’: sometimes sheer cannibalistic dictatorships meant to be puppets in the hands of another dictatorship like, say, People’s Republic of China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. Or those that had remained to be puppets till the very end of their existence like Polish People’s Republic, People’s Republic of Bulgaria.

‘Sovereignty’ is a rather loose concept for dictatorships, more so for totalitarian ones, as their experience suggests, and means something like ‘Our borders end nowhere’, and so does our sovereignty. The Nazis denoted this with the word ‘living space’, the communists used it to denote a kind of ‘world socialist republic’ with variations. The communists strived to liberate the proletarians of all countries: this way they called occupation of territories. The world revolution had been their goal.

A disgusting song ‘Take Us In, Suomi the Beauty’ had such lyrics:

A lot of lies have been made up these years

To confuse the Finnish people.

Now open up to us trustingly

Your double gate leaves!

And so on…

Take us in, Suomi the Beauty,

In the necklace of your clear lakes!

There’s something crazy in this song. The terms ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ won’t need interpreting, it’s almost literal truth. It should be noted, however, that it’s in no way denazification because there is no Nazism in Ukraine. Nazis might be there: they can be found anywhere, and they are in Russia and in USA as well. With the exception, perhaps, of the islands in Oceania. The Nazis have never been in ruling power.

Since the legitimate power in Ukraine is called ‘Nazi’ by the propaganda, it would make sense to assume they mean a classical shift of power and a complete deprivation of the defence capability in Ukraine. It follows from the mentioned ‘demilitarisation’. Well, that is about it.

Does the above-said give us an answer to the question: what the hell?

There were many dictatorships in history, quite a lot during the twentieth century. Few of them have survived up to now: either dictatorships had collapsed under its own weight, or the Allied troops had come to liberate Germany and the world from the Nazis. Many dictatorships and even more dictators were known in history. They’d been glorified and welcomed “Long live!”, but not for a long time.

Some had died and soon thereafter were cursed like Comrade Stalin was. Some had been cursed during their lifetimes so badly it sent them to the grave, like Comrade Ceausescu. Being a dictator is a bad idea. A very bad idea. But even those who could trample on human rights and liberties with impunity have not been forgiven by descendants. Indeed, the dictators’ names have remained for ages, yet just as headlines of the blackest pages of our history.

That’s all.

26 August 2025
City Court, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Source: SotaVision
More about the case: Memorial
Photo: Andrey Bok / Kommersant