18:50, 31 March 2026

Nikita Zhuravel's mother received his letter from the prison colony.

Former Volgograd student Nikita Zhuravel wrote a letter to his mother from a penal colony in the Ulyanovsk region in late March, reported Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," the family of former Volgograd student Nikita Zhuravel expressed concerns for his health and life in late March, reporting that they had not received any letters from him for three months. On March 26, the Federal Penitentiary Service stated that Nikita Zhuravel's mother had been sent information about his whereabouts, but had not received any such information. The prisoner is not guaranteed the right to communicate while being transported, and in the penal colony, Zhuravel faces the risk of additional isolation, lawyers indicated.

On February 27, 2024, a court in Grozny sentenced Nikita Zhuravel to 3.5 years in prison, finding him guilty of violating the right to religion and hooliganism for burning the Quran. In October 2024, the Prosecutor General's Office announced a new case against Zhuravel - for treason (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code). Several weeks later, the convicted man was transferred from Chechnya to Volgograd, where the case was subsequently heard. On November 25, 2024, a court in Volgograd sentenced Zhuravel to 13.5 years in prison, giving him 14 years in prison, taking into account the remainder of his sentence for burning the Quran. In April 2025, the Third Appellate Court upheld Zhuravel's sentence at a visiting hearing in Volgograd. In December, before the cassation appeal was heard by the Supreme Court of Russia, Zhuravel was transported to the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center in Moscow. The Supreme Court of Russia also refused to change the sentence.

Nikita Zhuravel, whose whereabouts his relatives had not known for several months, was "found" in a penal colony in the Ulyanovsk region, Eva Merkacheva reported today.

According to Merkacheva, Nikita's mother received a letter written on March 26 and sent via an electronic messaging system. "He writes that he's alive and well. He writes that he wrote a paper letter home about a month ago and hopes it was received (or not received)," the human rights activist's post reads.

Nikita's mother, according to her, expressed joy at having received "at least some news from her son." Merkacheva confirmed that delivering paper letters from the prison colonies remains a major problem, and the ability to send emails "is not available in all prison colonies."

On September 25, 2023, Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video of his son, Adam, beating Zhuravel in a pretrial detention center. The head of Chechnya praised his son for this act, according to a "Caucasian Knot" report "The beating of Nikita Zhuravel: why Kadyrov's men needed to publish the video".

After Zhuravel's beating, Adam Kadyrov began receiving numerous awards and titles—among the first were the title of Hero of Chechnya and the highest state awards of Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. On December 30, 2025, he received from his father the Akhmat Kadyrov Memorial Medal "For Contribution to Ensuring the Security, Stability, and Prosperity of the Homeland." Commenting on his son's awards, Kadyrov Sr. stated that all of them were received for specific achievements.

Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/422058