Russian man jailed for daughter’s anti-war drawing alleges dire conditions in prison

Alexei Moskalyov, a Russian man jailed for two years for discrediting the army after his daughter drew an anti-war picture, alleged after his release on Tuesday that he had been held in dreadful conditions.

Moskalyov was greeted by his daughter, journalists and human right defenders after leaving a penal colony in Russia’s Tula region, video on social media showed.

Moskalyov, still dressed in his prison uniform, told OVD-Info, a Russian human rights project, that he had spent two months in a punitive isolation cell, which he described as a “torture chamber.”

He said he and another man had spent time in a two-by-one metre cell with rotten floors in the extreme cold and described how huge rats had crawled inside.

“We were on our feet for 16 hours every day because the beds were fastened to the wall and the metal bench was so cold that it was impossible to sit on it,” Moskalyov said.

Russia’s federal prison service did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment about his complaints.

Moskalyov was sentenced in March, 2023 to two years in a penal colony for discrediting the Russian army in comments he was accused of posting online about Russia’s war in Ukraine, something it calls a special military operation.

He fled house arrest and escaped to Belarus, but was quickly rearrested and returned to Russia.

The investigation into him started after his daughter Masha, then 12, drew a picture showing Russian missiles raining down on a Ukrainian mother and child, prompting the head of her school to call the police.

Moskalyov’s case generated global headlines because Masha was removed from her father’s care and placed in a children’s home ahead of his trial before being handed over to her mother who she had not lived with for many years.

In February 2024, a Russian appeals court reduced his jail term by two months.

(Reporting by Reuters,Editing by Andrew Osborn and Ed Osmond)