A woman from Moscow has been sent to a penal colony because of her tattoos: “Glory to Ukraine” and the insignia of Azov.

The Timiryazevsky District Court in Moscow has found 58-year-old Svetlana Kudryashova guilty of repeated display of prohibited symbols (part 1, article 282.4 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced her to two and a half years in a penal colony. This was reported by SOTAvision.

The prosecutor had requested a sentence of four years and one month in a colony for her.

The case against Kudryashova was brought over tattoos: an emblem of the Ukrainian Azov regiment with the inscription ‘Ilya’ on her shoulder, and the phrase ‘Glory to Ukraine’ on her back. This is already the second criminal case against her due to these tattoos.

Kudryashova said the tattoo on her shoulder was done by her former partner Ilya, who served in Azov. In March 2022, he was killed in Kharkiv. She herself has no connection to this unit.

In summer 2023, blogger-informant Vladislav Pozdnyakov shared a photo of Kudryashova sleeping on a commuter train, which showed the tattoo on her shoulder as well as a pendant and earrings featuring Ukraine’s coat of arms. Several months earlier, she had been arrested over the tattoo and sentenced to ten days’ detention under an administrative charge for displaying prohibited symbols (part 1, article 20.3 of the Administrative Code). Now, a criminal case was opened against her for a repeat offence. In 2024, Kudryashova was sentenced on this charge to seven months in a general regime penal colony, according to Mediazona. After the verdict was announced, she was released from custody due to time already served in pre-trial detention and house arrest.

In that same year, 2024, Kudryashova was given another administrative protocol over the tattoo after a dispute in the stairwell of her apartment building. In April 2025, Kudryashova was placed in a pre-trial detention centre for a second criminal case concerning the repeated display of prohibited symbols because of the same tattoos. According to her, in September 2024 she covered up the tattoo on her back, and the Azov emblem was covered with a heart motif.

In court, Kudryashova said the security officers obtained self-incriminating testimony from her through blackmail. She said she was forcibly stripped naked at the Khovrino police station, after which they photographed her tattoos—officers also took pictures on their personal phones. They then threatened to post these photos online.