The Russian FSB has accused an elderly woman of terrorism for opposing the collapse of the Soviet Union
In Tyumen, the Central District Military Court sentenced 71-year-old local resident Lyudmila Pashnina to nine years in a general-regime penal colony.
The elderly woman was found guilty of aiding terrorist activities and publicly calling for them through her participation in the informal movement “Citizens of the USSR.”
Russian authorities are increasingly using strict anti-terrorism provisions of the criminal code to crack down on elderly supporters of Soviet nostalgia.
According to the official version of the Russian Federal Security Service, the convicted pensioner considered the current Russian government illegitimate.
She was a member of a group called the “Council of People’s Deputies of the Tyumen Region of the RSFSR”—an organization that promotes the idea that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was illegal.
Security forces accuse the woman of attempting to recruit military personnel from the Tyumen garrison with the aim of subsequently seizing power in the region by force.
Supporters of the “Citizens of the USSR” movement openly refuse to comply with the laws of the Russian Federation and attempt to use homemade or old Soviet documents.
Mass repression against this group has been ongoing for several years across the entire territory of the aggressor state.
The movement’s founder, Sergei Taraskin, was sentenced to eight years in prison back in 2022, accused of creating an extremist organization.
Judicial practice in Russia demonstrates a sharp intensification of punitive measures against adherents of the Soviet cult, most of whom are elderly people.
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