Russia jails theater artists amid crackdown on dissent: report | World News

A moscow court The arrests of a theater director and a playwright were ordered on Friday for “justifying terrorism” after an award-winning play told the story of online recruiting of Russian women to marry radical Islamists in Syria.

Director Yevgeniya Berkovich and writer Svetlana Petriychuk were detained until July 4, Russian news agencies reported.

The case comes as Moscow launches an unprecedented crackdown on domestic dissent as troops fight in Ukraine and many in the Russian art world flee the country.

Berkovich is also an outspoken critic of the president vladimir putinThe Ukrainian offensive, which lasted more than a year, published poetry critical of military action.

Unlike many members of Russia’s liberal arts community, the 38-year-old refused to leave the country during the offensive.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

The women were detained a day earlier in a move that shocked Russia’s shrinking theater community.

In their play titled “Finist, the Brave Falcon,” Thy is accused of “justifying terrorism.”

Last year, a female performance about a Russian woman marrying a Syrian man won two prestigious Golden Mask Drama Awards.

Berkovich was a student of Kirill Serebrennikov, one of Russia’s most innovative and successful directors, who left the country.

“In the culture of a normal country such a person is rare, miraculous, proud. But in Russia, everything is reversed now,” Serebrennikov said after announcing his arrest.

“You’re a star,” he said, calling Berkovich his “most talented” student.

ukrainian poetry

Russia’s exile community was quick to defend the two women, with many arguing the director had been targeted because of her stance on Ukraine and denouncing what they saw as absurd allegations.

“It’s a bit like arresting Dostoyevsky because he justified killing the old lady after writing “Crime and Punishment,” journalist Alexander Baumov was quoted by the Meduza news website as saying.

According to her Instagram page, a book of Berkovich’s poetry was recently published in Israel.

Her emotional poems are filled with victims of Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine.

“We need to dress a woman /70 years old / from a city that no longer exists,” wrote one.

“Number M — stands for Mariupol,” read another excerpt, referring to the city that was captured by Russian forces last year after it was nearly razed to the ground.

An AFP reporter saw about 100 people outside the courtroom, including journalists for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov.

At least 2,000 people have signed an online petition in the women’s defense. The letter called on Russian authorities to “persecute murderers, not poets”.

Berkovich, from St. Petersburg, is the granddaughter of a well-known writer in Russia’s second-largest city. She adopted two teenage girls.

“Her children are waiting for her at home. Her mother and grandmother are waiting in St. Petersburg,” the letter of support said.