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| 19-March-2026 |
Solidarity Zone, which gives practical support to Igor and other political prisoners, reported this week:
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| Igor Paskar in court in 2023. Photo: Mediazona |
Igor has been transferred to the federal penitentiary service’s prison colony no. 2 in Asino, Tomsk province.
Since arriving at the colony in December 2025, Igor has been confined in a punishment cell several times and declared a “malicious offender”.
He was first punished while still in quarantine, immediately after arrival – for failing to do the required physical exercises. That resulted in seven days in a punishment cell.
On the seventh day, a further punishment was announced: another seven days, for lying down on a bench while in quarantine.
After he had done that sentence, he was given another five days in the punishment cell – this time, for lying down on a bench in the punishment cell.
These three breaches of the rules were enough for Igor to be declared a “malicious offender” and transferred for six months to a solitary confinement unit (in Russian PKT or pomeshchenie kamernogo tipa, literally “cell-type building”) for six months – the maximum possible period.
PKTs are a separate part of a prison colony, with a much stricter regime. They were previously named BUR (barak usilennogo rezhima, or barracks with a stricter confinement regime), and in many prison colonies that old name is still used, informally.
In the PKT, prisoners are permitted only one brief visit every six months; the sum that prisoners may spend at the colony shop is limited; and telephone calls are permitted only very rarely. And you can be returned from the PKT to a punishment cell.
Igor is also concerned that some of the letters he has written may not reach the adressees.
In June 2022, Igor Paskar set fire to a Z-banner (a militarist symbol) in the centre of Krasnodar. Two days later he carried out an action at the local office of the Federal Security Service: he threw a molotov cocktail at the building’s stone porch, and painted his face with the colours of the Ukrainian flag.
The Southern District Military Court ruled that these actions were “vandalism” and “an act of terrorism”, and sentenced Igor to eight-and-a-half years. The Memorial, Support Political Prisoners human rights defence project considers Igor Paskar to be a political prisoners, on the basis of internationally accepted criteria.
🔴 Solidarity Zone asks people to write to Igor: “at a time when the prison administration is putting such pressure on a political prisoner, this is especially important”.
In campaigners’ experience, letters not written in Russian are extremely unlikely to be passed on to prisoners. It is possible to write short letters, or a drawing, or a drawing accompanied by a single phrase, e.g. «Большой привет из Великобритания» (“a warm hello from the UK”). Solidarity Zone recommends using the Prisonmail.online on-line service.
Letters should be addressed to: Paskar Igor Konstantinovich (d.o.b. 1976), Russia 636840 Tomsk region, Asino, ulitsa Michurina 7, FKU IK-2.
Igor Paskar’s speech in court is included in the book Voices Against Putin’s War, and featured in “Try Me For Treason”, a reading of English translations of anti-war protesters’ speeches.
🔴 Vladimir Osipov, another Russian political prisoner, died in a pre-trial detention centre in Ukhta in the Komi republic this week, the Prison Lawyer human rights project reported. In November last year Osipov, 56, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years’ imprisonment by the Liuboretsky court for social media posts about the war in Ukraine, including one that called it a “the shameful president’s shameful war”.
Osipov suffered from hypertension and kidney stones, had been attended by ambulance staff during the trial, and was excused from trial sessions due to ill-health. At the detention centre he was given medication but refused transfer to hospital.
🔴 Anti-war activist Darya Kozyreva was released from prison on Wednesday after serving a two year, eight month sentence, Mediazona reported. Journalists gathered at the penal colony in Kineshma were not allowed near the entrance due to “drills being conducted”. She met with them later in the day.
Kozyreva, 20, was sentenced last year for laying flowers and a poem at the statue of Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko. (The sentence included time spent in pre-trial detention.) Her speech in court and other statements are published in Voices Against Putin’s War.
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