Concerns for imprisoned Russian journalist after reported suicide attempt

Fears for the well-being of the jailed Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko have risen after she told her lawyer that she had attempted suicide in prison, human rights group OVD-Info reported on Monday.

Ponomarenko’s lawyer, Dmitry Shitov, said that Ponomarenko had shown him a stitched vein on her elbow during her latest court hearing and told him that she had decided to attempt suicide as a result of her “constant bullying” at the hands of prison staff.

Meanwhile, Ponomarenko’s former employer RusNews cited two letters from Ponomarenko in which she asked for help but explained that she was unable to write about what she was going through for fear that her letters would not get past prison censors.

One of the letters, dated 14 March, refers to another letter dated three days earlier which censors appear not to have allowed through. A month earlier in a phone call with her daughter, Ponomarenko apparently asked for her forgiveness and hinted at suicide, RusNews added.

Ponomarenko, who comes from the city of Barnaul in southern Siberia’s republic of Altai, is currently serving a six-year sentence for “spreading false information” about the Russian military for a Telegram post she wrote about the Russian siege of Mariupol in 2022.

Upon receiving Ponomarenko’s letters, RusNews contacted Shitov, who contacted the Prosecutor’s Office and the Commissioner for Human Rights for the Republic of Altai to investigate her reported suicide attempt.

Ponomarenko is also currently believed to be on hunger strike, refusing both food and water, in an attempt to improve her living conditions and to have her right to correspondence respected. Ponomarenko previously announced a hunger strike in September after being sent to solitary confinement.

According to her lawyers, Ponomarenko requires regular medical treatment for borderline personality disorder, which she has been consistently denied since she was imprisoned, according to RusNews. She also has a history of self-harm.

Ponomarenko is due to appear in court on Monday after new charges of assault were brought against her for allegedly assaulting prison staff, something that Ponomarenko has repeatedly and categorically denied.