The China Mail - The strange case of Evgeniya Mayboroda, Russia's rebel retiree

Then, according to a witness who saw her in the dock, "her nose began to bleed".

Yet only a few years before, Evgeniya Mayboroda had been an ardent fan of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and had celebrated his annexation of Crimea.

A photo taken in the court in Shakhty shows her shock as the sentence was pronounced -- her punishment held up as an example of what can happen to even model citizens if they question the war.

Mayboroda -- who comes from the Rostov region bordering Ukraine -- was accused of sharing "false information" on the Russian army on social media and of "making a public appeal to commit extremist activities".

Even before she was convicted in January 2024, the posts on her social media feed -- thick with pictures of cats and flowers -- had put her on the Russia's "terrorist and extremist" watchlist.

Curious to discover how a pro-Kremlin pensioner could so quickly become an enemy of the state, AFP tracked her down to a penal colony where she said her faith and prayers were sustaining her.

We also talked to those who know her and were able to piece together a picture of this unlikely rebel, whose strange story says much about today's Russia.

- Loss and loneliness -

Evgeniya Nikolaevna Mayboroda was born on June 10, 1951 near the coal-mining town of Shakhty and met her husband Nikolai at the local technical institute.

They both got jobs at a facility just outside the city -- he was a miner in an elite squad, while she worked in the power station above ground. They had a son, Sergei, in 1972.

The Mayborodas were the ideal Soviet family. As mine workers they occupied a privileged place in the communist hierarchy and were able to travel regularly across the Eastern Bloc.

But when the USSR collapsed in 1991 so did their world. Not only was there no money to pay their wages but the socialist values they believed in were replaced by a wild, cowboy capitalism.

Then on Miners' Day 1997, an important date in the Soviet calendar, Sergei, their only child was killed in a car accident. He was 25.

"We were at the burial. Evgeniya was in such a state that she can't remember it," a friend of the family, too afraid to give her name, told AFP.

"Her son was everything to her."

The mine shut down in 2002 and, less than a decade later, her husband died after a sudden illness and Mayboroda found herself alone.

- Love for Putin -

She took refuge in religion and was soon back on her feet, again taking pride in her appearance. Photos show that even on a budget, she kept her sense of style, always with a little touch of mascara.

"She is a leader in life," a friend said. "She is hard to break."

At the end of 2017, she discovered social media and joined VK (Russia's equivalent to Facebook). Her page shows her political evolution.

For five years she shared hundreds of pictures of cats and flowers, religious messages or nostalgic reminiscences about life in the good old USSR.

And she was effusive in her praise of President Vladimir Putin, posting some 30 photos of him from March to August 2018, hailing him as a marvellous leader who was making Russia great again.

In one of them, Putin tells Donald Trump that Russia would give Crimea back to Ukraine "if the United States gives Texas back to Mexico and Alaska back to Russia".

She also called former Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko -- who accused Putin of having him poisoned -- a "moron".

Like many Russians laid low by the crisis of the 1990s, Mayboroda was receptive to the Kremlin's rhetoric that Russia had regained its power and stability under Putin.

- 'No to eternal lies' -

Then something changed. In the summer of 2018, a sudden raising of the retirement age saw discontent with the government spread beyond the big cities.

"Normally Putin, as a great popular leader, likes to position himself as referee, guaranteeing the interest of the people," said French sociologist Karine Clement, a specialist on Russian protest movements.

"But this was the first time he spoke up to defend a reform that, let's say, went against the interests of the poor."

While his popularity plummeted, there were no large protests.

At around the same time, the mood of Mayboroda's posts about politics began to change.

She started to share posts denouncing poverty in Russia, contrasting it with the country's vast natural resources.

Tatyana Vasilchuk, a journalist from the independent outlet Novaya Gazeta, said the Maiski area where Mayboroda lived was wracked by neglect and unemployment when she visited.

"It was drowning under rubbish," she said.

In 2020, Mayboroda made clear her opposition to a change in the constitution allowing Putin to stay in power until 2036, reposting a message that said: "No to an eternal Putin... No to eternal lies and corruption."

- War -

Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

"One of the motors" for Putin going to war, Clement said, was his need to silence opposition and "restore control".

On her VK account, Mayboroda -- who had family in Ukraine -- criticised the invasion and even expressed support for the Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian unit founded by far-right militants.

While some Azov members were neo-Nazis, its dogged resistance on the battlefield, particularly during the siege of Mariupol in 2022, won it hero status in Ukraine and recruits beyond ultranationalist groups.

In Russia, where all opposition -- particularly online -- is tracked, her posts did not go unnoticed.

The security services have locked up hundreds of people for criticising the conflict and Mayboroda's turn came in February 2023.

Police raided her home and she got her first jail term and a fine. A more serious criminal investigation was also opened, which led to her conviction last year.

Investigators accused her of criticising the Russian assault on Mariupol in which thousands of besieged Ukrainians died.

They also said she reposted a disturbing video in which a young girl, sat in front of a screen showing a swastika, holds a knife and declares in Ukrainian that Russians should have their throats cut.

The video seems to support the Kremlin line that Russia had gone into Ukraine to fight "neo-Nazis", playing on the admiration some Ukrainian nationalist groups have for those who fought with the Germans against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during World War II.

Mayboroda was accused of being a Nazi for reposting the video, which had in fact been published by a pro-Kremlin account on VK. Ukraine's SBU security service claim the clip was part of a Russian "propaganda campaign".

"She does not support that ideology," a source close to the case told AFP.

Mayboroda, who regularly crossed the border to visit her Ukrainian relatives before the war, told the court that one was wounded in a Russian strike on a building in Dnipro in the summer of 2022.

- 'Scrambling minds' -

Yet at the time Mayboroda did not see how dangerous her online comments were, a friend told AFP. She compared the pensioner to a "lost lamb" who she still loved despite being "in the wrong".

Expert Clement said she could understand how Mayboroda became politicised once she saw through the Kremlin line.

Beyond prosecuting its opponents, the Kremlin tries to "scramble minds" with a fog of often contradictory disinformation to stop "the forming of mass political movements", Clement said.

This strategy of confusion allows it to present the invasion as "a fight against Nazism", she added, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.

Russians are cynical about politics after watching oligarchs present their ultraliberal reforms that robbed the poor in the 1990s as an advance toward "democracy", the expert argued, a distrust which now works in favour of Putin's authoritarianism.

"You have to be very smart to navigate public life in Russia," she said, adding that a "thirst for community" was part of the reason why so many have got behind the war.

Despite that, Mayboroda's plight has garnered attention from opposition media and NGOs both in Russia and in exile. The banned group Memorial quickly recognised her as a "political prisoner", and Kremlin critics said her jailing showed the growing intensity of repression.

- 'Thou shalt not kill' -

Unlike thousands of Ukrainian prisoners who human rights groups say are being held in secret and sometimes tortured, as a Russian citizen Mayboroda's prison conditions are much better.

Theoretically she can receive letters, though censored by prison authorities, and occasionally make phone calls.

In June, after a six-month wait, AFP was able to talk to her during a mediated and recorded 10-minute call from her prison in the Rostov region.

During the spring her friends said she was depressed and unwell. But her tone during this call was surprisingly upbeat given she has been behind bars for 18 months.

"The hardest thing for me was losing my freedom. It's very hard... But my faith and prayers help me," she told AFP, her voice sometimes cut by the crackly line.

Asked why she reshared the video of the girl calling for Russians to be killed, she said "it happened by accident. It was stupid."

She insisted that she detested "hate" and "lies", and that she believed in "love and the joy of living".

Her opposition to the war was on simple moral grounds, she said. "I am a (Christian) believer. Thou shalt not kill."

Nor could she see why the invasion had to happen. "Why all this? I don't understand."

J.Thompson--ThChM