Yanina Kopaigorodskaya has declared a hunger strike.

Yanina, the wife of former Sochi Mayor Alexei Kopaigorodsky, has declared an indefinite hunger strike demanding visits with her children in the capital's pretrial detention center "without bars or partitions."

As reported by Kavkazsky Knot, at the end of October, the court accepted a lawsuit from the Prosecutor General's Office demanding the seizure of 14 apartments, land plots, cars, and other property belonging to Alexei and Yanina Kopaigorodsky and individuals and organizations associated with them. The defense of the former Sochi mayor called the agency's demand baseless.

Yanina Kopaigorodskaya's lawyer, Elizaveta Metkina, stated that the prisoner declared a hunger strike on November 13 and that it is a "legal form of protection for her maternal rights." "During her eight months in custody, Kopaigorodskaya sent more than a dozen appeals and complaints to the pretrial detention center's management and to the Lyublinsky Court in Moscow, where she appealed the actions of the facility's management, but all were rejected. The court's latest ruling stated that 'the children's psycho-emotional state is of no importance to the court,'" Kommersant reports.

"My client is not demanding special treatment, but rather compliance with the direct provisions of the law. "Visiting children under the prescribed conditions is not a privilege, but part of the established procedure for detention," noted Elizaveta Metkina.

The lawyer explained that since her client's preventive measure was changed from house arrest to pretrial detention in March 2025, she has only been granted two visits with her three young children—twins born in 2023 and a daughter born in 2021—which lasted about an hour. All of these visits took place in the visiting room, behind glass. However, her client would like "just to hug her children."

Metkina reported that the defense has appealed to the Human Rights Commissioner of the Russian Federation, Tatyana Moskalkova, as well as to supervisory authorities, asking them to verify the legality of the actions of the SIZO-6 administration and ensure that Yanina Kopaigorodskaya is granted visits with her children. The defendant herself, in her appeal to Moskalkova, notes that formal meetings with the children "The barrier does not compensate for the separation," but "provokes regression, worsens sleep and appetite," the publication reports.

As a reminder, Yanina Kopaigorodskaya previously appealed to human rights activists to facilitate the placement of her young children with her in the pretrial detention center. An appeal was also filed with the Lyublinsky Court of Moscow with a request to allow her young children to live with her in the pretrial detention center in a "mother and child" cell, where children of detainees born in captivity can be held. However, the court dismissed the claim on September 16. The Moscow City Court later upheld the decision.

Previously, the "Caucasian Knot" reported that Krasnodar native Alexei Kopaigorodsky had headed Sochi since 2019. On May 14, 2024, he submitted a letter of resignation from his post in connection with a transfer to a new job, and the next day the city council accepted the mayor's letter of resignation.