Moscow (AsiaNews) – This September marked the 1,000th day of imprisonment for Nika Novak, a freelance journalist with Radio Svoboda, who spent around six months in extreme conditions of detention before being transferred to a standard-regime labour camp. In November 2024, Nika was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for “covert collaboration with a foreign organisation” – the first time a journalist had been convicted of this offence. Nika Novak is now serving her sentence at the penal colony in the village of Bozoj, in the Irkutsk region of Siberia.
She still has just over 200 days left in prison, but she and her family are trying not to count the days, so as not to get their hopes up. “Lately, whilst in the SUS (Penal System), every day begins with a search during which they rummage through her few personal belongings, but she takes it all in her stride with great humour and a touch of sarcasm,” says her friend Inna. Since her arrest in December 2023, Nika has spent around six months in solitary confinement – that is, more than 150 days. “We, her friends, are disheartened by the despair that surrounds us, but Nika, on the contrary, tries to find the silver lining in everything; otherwise, you cease to be human,” says another of Nika’s friends, Elvira.
During her imprisonment, Nika’s friends have learnt first-hand what life in captivity is like. The Pkt, the punishment cell, is not a penal colony in the true sense, but a specific locked room within the colony. Nika is repeatedly transferred there as a disciplinary measure for minor offences, isolating her from all other inmates. This means she lives in a locked cell under extremely austere conditions: folding bunk beds which she is forbidden to use after waking up, a table and benches fixed to the floor, a toilet behind a partition wall, and bars on the window. Furthermore, she is forbidden to spend more than a minimal amount from her personal account. “Short visits are only permitted once every six months, and only if the prison authorities expressly authorise them,” explains Elvira. A visit usually lasts an hour and a half, no more. In theory, no one can be held in a cell like this for more than six months, but of course they manage to do so, citing the most far-fetched violations: failing to button one’s shirt correctly, or failing to greet an inmate in an appropriate manner. On one occasion, Nika nearly fainted during a hunger strike she had gone on because of an illegal transfer to a maximum-security wing, for failing to greet an inmate properly.
According to her family, the harsh conditions Nika is subjected to have not changed much since June; she has simply ‘got used to them’. In letters to her family, she writes: ‘I’ve really got used to it, even though I neither accept nor resign myself to violations and discriminatory behaviour... I write to the various authorities if there’s something I don’t like: it’s a legal way of defending my rights’. ‘People write to me and I can tell from their tone that they’re going through a difficult time, so I try in some way to lift their spirits; seriously, it seems I’m sitting behind bars writing to people that everything will be alright – you have to learn to live in the present’, Nika adds.
In May 2026, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled that Nika Novak’s detention violated several articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. According to the document, the journalist’s detention is arbitrary. “The Working Group urges the Russian government to ensure a full and independent investigation into the circumstances of Novak’s arbitrary detention and to take appropriate measures against those responsible for the violation of her rights,” the document states.
