Father of girl who took anti-war photo released from Russian prison

A man arrested in Russia after his daughter took an anti-war photo – in a case that made headlines around the world – has been released from a penal colony.

The drawing – with the phrases ‘No to war’ and ‘Glory to Ukraine’ by Alexei Moskalev’s daughter Masha – was reported to the police in 2022.

He was later accused of repeatedly criticizing the Russian military on social media and sentenced to two years in prison in March 2023 for discrediting the military.

Footage shared online on Tuesday showed him leaving the penal colony in the Tula region and hugging his daughter, still wearing his prison uniform.

His release was reported by his OVD-Info lawyer, Vladimir Biliyenko, the Russian human rights organization said.

Moskalev described spending two months in a punishment cell while being held.

He said: “It was just a torture chamber. Just a torture chamber. First of all, the cell was two by one meters, do you understand what that is?

“At first I sat alone, then they added a second person. And the two of us sat in a cell measuring two by one meters.

“The floors were rotten, there were rats everywhere, coming from the sewers and everywhere, huge rats.”

Russia’s Federal Prison Service did not immediately comment, nor did it respond to a request for comment from the Reuters news agency.

The family’s troubles began in 2022 after Masha, then 12, in April drew a Ukrainian flag with the words “Glory to Ukraine,” rockets and a Russian flag with the phrase “No to war!”

Moskalev said the school reported his daughter’s drawing to police. He was then fined for an anti-war post on social media.

But after his apartment was searched in December that year, he was charged under the Criminal Code as he had already been convicted of a similar crime.

Authorities separated Masha from her father and placed her in a children’s home, and later under the guardianship of her estranged mother.

Moskalev was sentenced to two years in prison in March 2023.

He was not present at the sentencing hearing because he had escaped house arrest to flee the country to neighboring Belarus, OVD-Info said.

He was later arrested and extradited back to Russia the following month, the organization added.

Last year, city councilor Olga Podolskaya told the BBC she was “in shock”.

“A prison sentence for expressing your opinion is a terrible thing. A two-year prison sentence is a nightmare.”

The case comes against the backdrop of a serious deterioration in human rights in Russia since the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a recent UN report.

The investigation details police brutality, widespread repression of independent media and continued efforts to silence Kremlin critics through new criminal laws.

One of the cases highlighted in the report is that of Artyom Kamardin, who was jailed for seven years for publicly reading an anti-war poem – an act that authorities said “incited hatred”.

The report accuses the government of trying to spread its views on the conflict in Ukraine to children through the introduction of compulsory school lessons, which are officially labeled as “important conversations”.

“Children who refuse to attend such classes and their parents are subjected to pressure and intimidation,” it added.