FKU
['FKU' stands for Federal Governmental Institution ("federalnoye kazyonnoye uchrezhdeniye") and UFSIN is for Office of the ]Federal Penitentiary Service
The Federal Penitentiary Service (, FSIN) is a federal agency of the Ministry of Justice of Russia responsible for correctional services.
The FSIN is the federal authority for the detention of suspected and convicted persons, the security an ...
("Управление федеральной службы исполнения наказаний"). Corrective Colony No. 2 of the FSIN of Russia for the Republic of Mordovia,
or simply IK-2 Yavas, is a women's
corrective colony in Russia.
It is located near
Yavas
Yavas (; , ''Javaz'') is an urban locality (a work settlement) in the Zubovo-Polyansky District of the Republic of Mordovia, Russia. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 7,941. It is the location of women's prison corrective colony ...
,
Mordovia
Mordovia ( ),; Moksha language, Moksha and officially the Republic of Mordovia,; ; is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia, situated in Eastern Europe. Its capital city, capital is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of S ...
, about southeast of Moscow. It is known for the incarceration of
WNBA player
Brittney Griner
Brittney Yvette Griner (; born October 18, 1990) is an American professional basketball player for the Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). She is a three-time Olympic gold medalist with the U.S. women's natio ...
.
Conditions
The prison was built as part of a system of similar prisons in the region in the 1930s during the
Soviet era
The history of the Soviet Union (USSR) (1922–91) began with the ideals of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and ended in dissolution amidst economic collapse and political disintegration. Established in 1922 following the Russian Civil War, ...
.
University of Oxford scholar
Judith Pallot described the prison as being "stuck in time for 50 years."
Inmates are housed dormitory-style with 100 bunk beds in a large room.
Personal belongings are not permitted.
There is little supervision at night.
Prisoners wake at 6 a.m. with group exercises, then operate sewing machines for 10-12 hours per day, producing uniforms for military and prison service members.
According to
University of Helsinki
The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...
sociologist Olga Zeveleva, who works with the
Gulag Echoes project studying Russian prison conditions, "Prisons in Mordovia are notoriously terrible, even by Russian standards. The prisons there are known for the harsh regimes and human rights violations."
According to ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', a popular saying among female prison inmates in Russia is "If you haven’t done time in Mordovia, you haven’t done time at all."
Violence from other prisoners and prison guards is not as frequent as in men's prisons, but is not uncommon.
Prisoners at IK-2 Mordovia and human rights organizations have lodged complaints about conditions.
Former inmate Olga Shilayeva, who was released in 2017, described frequent beatings by Vyacheslav Kimyaev, then a senior official.
Kimyaev was later placed in charge of the facility.
He was replaced by Yelena Pozdnyakova after a 2021 investigation by Russian authorities.
Because of its remote location, human rights organizations have little access for scrutinizing conditions.
Notable inmates
WNBA player
Brittney Griner
Brittney Yvette Griner (; born October 18, 1990) is an American professional basketball player for the Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). She is a three-time Olympic gold medalist with the U.S. women's natio ...
was briefly incarcerated in the facility.
In November 2022, she was transferred to IK-2 to serve a nine-year sentence for possession of medically prescribed vape cartridges containing less than 1 gram total of
hashish
Hashish (; ), usually abbreviated as hash, is a Compression (physics), compressed form of resin (trichomes) derived from the cannabis flowers. European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, As a Psychoactive drug, psychoactive ...
oil.
The Guardian wrote that according to Judith Pallot, who visited IK-2 in 2017 as part of her research on Russian prisons, Griner was sent to IK-2 because of its inaccessibility.
On December 8, 2022
the U.S. swapped Griner for convicted Russian arms dealer
Viktor Bout
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout (; ; born 13 January 1967) is a Russian Arms industry, arms dealer and politician. A weapons manufacturer and former Soviet military translator, he used his companies to smuggle arms from Eastern Europe to Africa and the ...
.
See also
*
Prisons in Russia
Prisons in Russia consist of four types of facilities: pre-trial institutions; educative or juvenile colonies; corrective colonies; and prisons.
A corrective colony is the most common, with 705 institutions (excluding 7 corrective colonies for ...
Notes
References
{{Reflist
Prisons in Russia
Women's prisons
Buildings and structures in Mordovia