To me, Arina is everything: my air, my sun, my life." The mother of Arina Ivanova, convicted over "fake news," speaks about her daughter

🖼 "To me, Arina is everything: my air, my sun, my life." The mother of Arina Ivanova, convicted over "fake news," speaks about her daughter

Tatyana is sixty years old. She works as a hotel maid in South Korea. She left about ten years ago, when she realized that in Russia "things would get worse." Tatyana's daughter Arina remained behind in her hometown of Novokuznetsk.

In August 2025, Arina was sentenced to five years in a penal colony for "fake news." And Tatyana learned about her daughter's arrest in December 2024 from one of Arina's friends, on that very night when they came for her.

"Until April I was walking around in winter clothes and didn't even realize summer was approaching: I was still in that December when they took her away. I feel like I'm alone in outer space without her," Tatyana says.

Tatyana recalls that her daughter became independent early. Tatyana worked as a train conductor, and when she left on trips, ten-year-old Arina stayed home alone, managed the household, cooked, and handled everything by herself.

"Sometimes I traveled to Simferopol or Kislovodsk, where fruit was cheap. I'd buy several buckets, bring them home, leave them with my daughter, and leave again that same evening. When I came back, there would be jam in the house that a ten-year-old child had made. I relied on her as if she were an adult," Tatyana recalls.

As a child, Arina experienced domestic violence. Her stepfather beat her mother, threatened her with a knife, and the girl tried to protect her.

"He sat me down on the bed and said that if I tried to get up, he would slit her throat. And I sat there until morning," Arina writes from Novokuznetsk SIZO-2.

According to Arina, because of that atmosphere in the family, she left home at thirteen, "because enduring it was unbearable, but about a month later I came back, because I was worried about my mom."

"To me, Arina is everything: my air, my sun, my life," Tatyana says, adding that she only began to come back to herself thanks to antidepressants.

"Now I'm starting to get my bearings in reality a little," Tatyana adds. "Before that, there was complete indifference, just one thought, only about her. I worked on autopilot, without even realizing it. The pills are working now, but it's still hard. Why was my child arrested and given such a sentence? For her love for people, for her warmth, her compassion? I cannot understand it at all."

In August 2025, Arina was sentenced to five years in a penal colony for "fake news." In mid-November 2025, the appeals court left Arina's sentence unchanged.

🔗 Read the full story of Arina and her mother on our website.

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