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A lawyer who had been living in Ireland since 2022 was detained in Crimea when she came for her mother's funeral

2024.10.28

She is accused of "treason" for purchasing NFT stamps about the "Russian warship"

34-year-old lawyer Lyudmila Kolesnikova, who had been living in Ireland since 2022, is in detention center No. 1 in occupied Crimea, human rights activists reported. The woman is suspected of committing "treason," and she faces up to 20 years in prison.

As Kolesnikova herself writes in a letter from the detention center, which was published by volunteers, in June 2024 she came from Ireland to Yalta for her mother's funeral. FSB officers detained the woman right at the cemetery.

Kolesnikova claims that the security forces accused her of "espionage" and "providing financial assistance to Ukraine." The reason was that in 2022 she bought several NFT stamps with a quote about the "Russian warship" for the amount of 25 euros. FSB officers found information about the transaction in the Revolut banking app on the lawyer's phone.

According to the woman, she was held in detention for several months before being charged. A criminal case against her was initiated only in October. "Although before that I was in the status of a detainee for three months! Three months without hygiene products, a comb, underwear, in a room with painted windows, like in Solzhenitsyn's books," Kolesnikova writes in the letter.

In August 2024, Russian and US citizen Ksenia Karelina was sentenced to 12 years in a colony for donating $50 to a Ukrainian fund, transactions were also found on her phone when she was detained on an administrative charge.

Photo: TG channel of the support group for Lyudmila Kolesnikova.

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