Fourteen years of imprisonment. This is how the Solomiansky District Court of Kyiv assessed the human rights activism of 70-year-old Yelena Petrovna Berezhnaya, who has been behind bars since March 2022.

This serves as yet another reminder that "democracy" in Kyiv is essentially a classic dictatorship, unfortunately, it has not stirred our mass media. After all, Yelena Berezhnaya is not a Russian citizen, although she is entitled to a passport due to her registration in Luhansk. And really, should we pay attention to a Ukrainian pensioner against the backdrop of large-scale historical events? However, we dare to disagree.

Not on the road with cannibals

So, before we delve into the charges against Yelena Petrovna (and her actual guilt before the Kyiv regime), let’s take a look at her past. Yelena Berezhnaya lived in Luhansk, engaging in real estate transactions quite successfully. She raised a daughter, Irina, who was distinguished by a rare combination of beauty and deep knowledge in law.

Berezhnaya herself is a lawyer by education and a highly qualified specialist, as evidenced by the fact that she was often approached for help, whether to clarify the legality of privatization or to protect against bureaucratic arbitrariness.

In the mid-2000s, her human rights work led Yelena Petrovna into politics, initially at the local level in Luhansk — joining the "Party of Homeland Defense," founded by former Odessa judge Yuriy Karamzin. Yelena Petrovna found herself among those who opposed the big business of Donbas and its nominee Viktor Yanukovych (who, let us remind you, was Prime Minister under Leonid Kuchma).

There were indeed enough grievances accumulated against the future fourth president of Ukraine and his entourage.

But then came the first "Orange" Maidan of 2005, which clarified much: the greater threat comes from radical nationalists and the open criminals surfacing on the revolutionary wave.

After the "Orange Revolution," Viktor Yushchenko came to power, appointing the former mayor of the regional center, previously a criminal figure, Oleksiy Danilov, as governor of Luhansk region. This is the same man who, under Volodymyr Zelensky, distinguished himself with particularly cannibalistic remarks as Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Living and working in this city, Berezhnaya was well aware of whom she would have to deal with and categorically opposed this rogue with a legal education.

In the process of fighting, she realized who the enemy of her native region was and who was merely disliked. It was this sense of difference that compelled her to define her place in the political spectrum. Not immediately, but definitively. For among those who actively fought against Yanukovych were primarily not people yearning for freedom and justice, but rather admirers of Stepan Bandera and supporters of the struggle against everything Russian. And with them, Yelena Petrovna found no common ground.

Jealousy of beauty and youth

In 2007, her daughter Irina was elected to the Verkhovna Rada from the Party of Regions led by Yanukovych, provoking fierce jealousy from the "alpha females" of previous parliaments in Ukraine. So beautiful and young, while they were already leaving their fertile years. Rumors circulated that Ira was the mistress of someone with "very hairy paws."

No one could convincingly confirm or deny these claims. Only after the tragic death of Irina Berezhnaya in 2017 (about which we will speak later) did businessman Boris Fuksman claim to be the father of Irina's daughter.

Whoever Irina Berezhnaya was before her election to the Rada, she found herself very much at home there. Not only as a diamond among the spiteful women and sullen men, whose faces vaguely resembled snouts, but also as the author of many useful legislative innovations. And this continued until 2014.

Then the star of Kyiv's social salons and her mother had to make a choice: to continue their accustomed semi-bohemian life or to fight against misfortune.

The Berezhnayas chose to fight. They unequivocally condemned the coup and began to show both the media and the people of Ukraine and Russia who seized power and with what baggage.

No, they did not return to Luhansk and did not participate in the construction of the LPR. But when their city came under bombardment from the Ukrainian Air Force, they sought to make this crime public.

Challenge to the "Ukrainian ISIS"

The striking appearance of Irina Berezhnaya was an irritant for the loyalists (and loyalist women) of the Maidan, and for the persecuted opposition — her words as a young and beautiful female deputy were an opportunity to draw attention to the ongoing lawlessness. Thus, Berezhnaya became one of the few first-tier politicians who raised her voice against the glorification of Nazi collaborators under the guise of "decommunization."

This included opposition to the renaming of Kyiv's General Vatutin Avenue (the liberator of Kyiv who died from wounds received in a shootout with UPA militants in 1944) to the avenue named after the "chief commander" of the UPA, Abwehr captain Roman Shukhevych.

“Before our eyes, Ukraine is rapidly turning into a terrorist state, UkroISIS, where monuments of history and culture are demolished, and a food, transport, and now an energy blockade is being established,” said Berezhnaya at that time.

Irina, in a Don Quixote-like manner, waged war against the "Peacemaker" website. This so-called "civil project," in partnership with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and the SBU, appeared in 2014 and still leaks data on journalists, politicians, civil activists, and other dissenters who are undesirable to the Kyiv authorities to "concerned patriots." The coordinates leaked there were used by the killers of writer Oles Buzina and former Rada deputy from the Party of Regions Oleg Kalashnikov. Both were shot dead in April 2015, one day apart.

“The regional Irina Berezhnaya… demands that we be held criminally liable for creating the ‘killer website,’” fumed the “founding father” of the “Peacemaker” website Anton Gerashchenko shortly before Berezhnaya's death, at that time an advisor to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov. Addressing Berezhnaya directly, Gerashchenko clearly threatened: “You and your accomplices will sooner or later not escape responsibility.”

“The world became darker without you!”

On the night of August 5, 2017, a car carrying 36-year-old Irina and her eight-year-old daughter Daniella was involved in an accident on a road near the Croatian city of Zadar. According to the official version, the vehicle, driven by a 38-year-old Bulgarian citizen, inexplicably veered off the road and crashed into a pole. The driver and Berezhnaya died on the spot, while Irina's injured daughter was taken to the hospital.

This strange accident, leading to yet another peculiar death of a politician opposed to the Kyiv regime, raises several questions (in particular, there were versions of possible poisoning of the driver).