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By Lucy Papachristou
LONDON (Reuters) -Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist from Siberia serving a six-year prison sentence for speaking out against the war in Ukraine, has declared a hunger strike, according to her publication and a supporter.
The 46-year-old was detained less than two months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 for accusing the Russian air force of bombing a theatre in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
She was found guilty last February of spreading false information about the Russian military by a court in her hometown of Barnaul in western Siberia.
More than 20,000 people have been arrested across Russia for speaking out against the war, according to rights monitor OVD-Info. While most of those detained are fined and soon released, independent journalists often receive harsher treatment by courts.
Including Ponomarenko, a total of four journalists for RusNews, an online outlet which publishes only in Russian and has little audience abroad, are behind bars. The vast majority of independent media now operate from exile.
On Tuesday a correspondent for one of the last remaining independent print newspapers in Russia said it was suspending publication, a few days after it was added to the Russian justice ministry's list of "foreign agents". Sobesednik (Interlocutor) ran afoul of authorities earlier this year when it published a two-page spread devoted to the death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
Ponomarenko now faces new criminal charges for allegedly attacking guards in the prison where she is incarcerated, according to RusNews.
Yulia Galyamina, a former Moscow city councillor, said Ponomarenko had been placed in an isolation cell after prison officials had falsified inspection reports against her, prompting her to declare a hunger strike at a court hearing on Monday.
"Masha is in a very bad condition," Galyamina told Reuters, using an affectionate form of Ponomarenko's first name and speaking by telephone from Barnaul, where she had travelled to attend the court hearings.
"She cried a lot (in court) due to a feeling of powerlessness. She wants to commit suicide even."
RusNews said Ponomarenko had declared a hunger strike but declined to comment further to Reuters.
Ponomarenko said during a hearing last month she would cut her wrists in protest against the conditions at the pre-trial detention centre, RusNews said.
Russia's prison service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Kommersant newspaper said last year that Ponomarenko had been diagnosed with "hysterical personality disorder" while in detention, and had slashed her wrists. It cited her lawyer as saying she suffered from claustrophobia and had broken a window.
Galyamina, who exchanges letters with Ponomarenko, was herself given a two-year suspended sentence four years ago for organising anti-Kremlin protests. She was later declared a "foreign agent" and can no longer work in politics.
(Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou, Editing by Angus MacSwan and Mark Trevelyan)
