Exactly four years have passed since Iryna Navalna, who was just 24, was seized by the Russian invaders of her native Mariupol and tortured into providing a ‘confession to terrorism’ for Russian propaganda. Although she retracted that ‘confession’ in court and also rejected the prosecution’s attempt to claim she had been ‘arrested’ much later, her show trial, before the Southern District Military Court ended, as they always do, in a conviction and long sentence.
According to Iryna’s mother, Oleksandra Stoliar, in all these years she has had no contact with her daughter, no telephone calls nor even letters. Iryna is now imprisoned at the Yurgamysh Prison Colony No. 7 in Kurgan oblast (Russia), with even access to her lawyer illegally restricted.
Oleksandra explained to the ZMINA Human Rights Centre that her daughter has been at the Yurgamysh prison colony since September-October 2025 and suffers bitterly from the cold. It is cold in the cells even in summer and the women are forced to make jackets from mattress covers as the uniforms issued are much too thin for the climate. In such conditions, they develop coughs, other symptoms, however receive no medica treatment and Iryna does not always receive the medication which her grandmother sends her.
Although very young, Iryna Navalna has been in Russian captivity for four years and it has clearly taken a toll on her health. Although she had long complained of stomach pain, this was long ignored. it was only after a special commission turned up in Rostov that, on 21 October 2024, she had an operation on her intestine at the Rostov tuberculosis clinic No. 19. She has also suffered from lymph node inflammation, thrombosis and bad headaches and clearly needs a comprehensive examination and treatment.
Iryna was held in solitary confinement in several Russian or Russian occupation SIZO [remand prisons] after her abduction on 27 September 2022. In occupied Donetsk, she was also moved to a cell with women convicted of actual crimes for two weeks, during which she was tormented and ill-treated by the other prisoners. Oleksandra says that by the time she was moved to a cell with Ukrainian prisoners of war, she was covered in bruises. The conditions were appalling, with severe overcrowding, meaning that women needed to share a narrow bed. The treatment was terrible. “You weren’t allowed to sit down for up to 16 hours in a day. Cry and you’re punished; laugh and you’re punished; any superfluous noise and you’re punished. That is how the Russian system treated Ukrainian women.
The RF has taken four years of my daughter’s life. It’s very hard for women to be in such difficult conditions. There have recently be no exchanges of women prisoners – total silence. RF does not have the right to deprive my daughter of her future.
Oleksandra Smoliar earlier suggested that her daughter had been seized because of the name that she shares with the late, and probably murdered, Russian politician and political prisoner. She points to the treatment that Iryna received when she and her mother first left Mariupol, and the fixation with her name in Russian reports. It is possible that there are other reasons. There could, equally, be none, and Russia just ‘needed a Ukrainian’ to fabricate a ‘terrorism plot’ on the eve of the fake referendum it staged to pretend justification for its claimed annexation of Ukrainian territory.
Iryna Navalna (b. 28.01.1998) is from Mariupol and was living there, together with her mother, when Russia began its full-scale invasion and relentless attacks on the city. Iryna’s stepfather was taken prisoner in May 2022 from the besieged Azovstal Steelworks.
Russia systematically blocked any evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, and the only way of getting out was via occupied Donetsk oblast into Russia. Oleksandra managed to pay somebody to take her and her daughter on this route, in order to then get back to government-controlled Ukraine through the Baltic Republics and Poland. Both of them needed to undergo Russia’s illegal ‘filtration’, with Iryna Navalna doing this first, on 9 May 2022. She was made to stand, with her face to the wall and her hands raised, while they interrogated her with a pistol at her head. Having seen her surname, one of the Russians asked “Who wants to talk with Navalny’s daughter? Who wants to see her?” They demanded to know if she had friends in Ukraine’s Azov regiment, and what their names were. She was held by the Russians for two and a half hours, but was eventually released, and allowed to leave for Russia, from where she crossed into Lithuania, then Poland, making her way back to Ukraine. Her mother got out separately, without major problems, and, after returning to Ukraine, mother and daughter settled in the Zhytomyr oblast.
Tragically, Iryna went back in August 2022, to spend time with her paternal grandmother who was there alone, and kept ringing, complaining how hard everything was, and pleading with iryna to come and visit her. She unfortunately assumed that since she had got through the ‘filtration’ once, that she would not have any problems.
All contact was lost with Iryna on 27 September 2022. In the evening of that day, the Russian state-controlled RIA Novovsti posted a video on which the young woman was shown providing a ‘confession’ that has been repeated, with very few variations, on several occasions. She is supposed to have been paid money by someone from Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] to collect a package, which she understood to be an explosive device, to take it to the Prymorsky district administration, and then return later and press a device in order to detonate it. This, it was asserted, had been with the aim of disrupting Russia’s fake ‘referendum on joining the Russian Federation’.
The young woman was charged with attempting to commit an act of terrorism (under Articles 205 § 2 and 30 § 3 of Russia’s criminal code) and of illegal possession of an explosive (Article 222 § 3a&b). The prosecution claimed that Navalna had ‘entered into a conspiracy’ with Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] and agreed to carry out a terrorist act. This was, purportedly, in protest at what, in the Russian narrative, is claimed to be “the sovereignty” of the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [‘DPR’]. The ‘act of terrorism’ supposedly planned, but thwarted, was against the fake ‘referendum on joining the Russian Federation’ held at gunpoint at the end of September 2022.
A standard element of such indictments is the attempt to minimize any ideological motive by claiming that the person was offered financial reward. Here it was asserted that, as well as 25 thousand UAH from the SBU in August 2022 (to buy the bike allegedly needed to transport the explosive device), Navalna was promised 100 thousand UAH after ‘carrying out the terrorist attack’ and making her way to government-controlled Ukraine.
An accomplice was supposed to have prepared the explosive device and sent it to Mariupol, with Navalna’s role claimed to have been to collect the device, keep it in her apartment and then take it, by bicycle, to a ‘polling station’ at the occupation Prymorsk district administrative body, plant it and, by remote control, detonate it. She was then, supposed to get to government-controlled Ukrainian territory and “receive financial remuneration”.
The prosecution had claimed that Navalna had brought the explosive device to the ‘polling station’ on 27 September 2022 and had gone off to get the remote control in order to detonate it. The device had, allegedly, been discovered, with Navalna soon detained.
The prosecutor demanded a 14-year sentence. While presiding judge Ilya Nikolaevich Bezgub from the Southern District Military Court passed the ‘guilty’ verdict he clearly understood to be demanded of him, he ‘only’ sentenced Iryna to 8 years’ imprisonment.
He ignored the fact that Iryna Navalna retracted her supposed ‘confession’ and that she also pointed out that she had been held in Russian captivity from 27 September 2022, and not a full month later. The only other ‘evidence’ against her had been from a prosecution ‘witness’ who, in court, refuted the key claims. He had not, as asserted, seen Navalna and informed the police of a crime, recognizing the young woman who had been detained. Instead, in court, he stated that he had witnessed Navalna being detained. This destroyed the ‘testimony’ of two other supposed witnesses. “Not to mention the fact that it is unclear where she was for a whole month, from when she was detained until criminal charges were laid on 28 October.”
Please write to Iryna! The letters tell her, and Moscow, that she is not forgotten. They do, unfortunately, need to be in Russian, handwritten and on ‘safe subjects’.
If it’s hard to write in Russian, there are adequate translation tools, for example, on ChatGPT, though try to avoid using idioms and any expression that might not be understood.
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