“Prisons in Mordovia are notoriously terrible, even by Russian standards. The prisons there are known for their harsh regimes and human rights violations,” said Olga Zeveleva, a sociologist at the University of Helsinki who specializes in Russian prison conditions as part of the Gulag Echoes project. “It’s a place every prisoner wants to avoid,” Zeveleva said. A popular saying among Russian prisoners, underscoring the grim reality Griner is about to face, says: “If you haven’t spent time in Mordovia, you haven’t spent time at all.” Griner, 32, was sentenced to nine years in August for possession of vapor cartridges containing a small amount of cannabis oil after she was arrested at a Moscow airport in February. It came amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Deep in the taiga, IK-2 is part of an extensive network of penal colonies in the northwest of the Mordovia region, about 300 miles east of Moscow. The prisons were built in the early 1930s as part of the Stalin-era gulag system and together form one of the largest penal complexes in Europe “When you arrive, you feel like you’re entering a different headquarters. Everything seems stuck in time for 50 years,” said Judith Pallot, Professor of Human Geography of Russia at the University of Oxford, who visited IK-2 in 2017 as part of her research on Russian prisons. Brittney Griner is escorted into a courtroom after a hearing in Khimki on August 4. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Pallot said Griner would share a dormitory with about 100 other women in a crowded space full of bunk beds. “Prisoners do not enjoy any private space. You are not allowed to hang pictures of loved ones or keep other personal items. It’s all very sterile and sad,” he said. When prisoners arrive at the IK-2 colony, they are first placed for two weeks in a “quarantine block” to be tested for infectious diseases. At this point, Griner will ditch her civilian clothes and exchange them for the prison uniform and headscarf she must wear most of the day. “This is a period of adjustment to the new prison life,” Pallot said. “They tell you what the internal rules and duties are. The authorities will also consider whether you will be someone who could be a status offender.” Pallot feared that Griner would initially struggle to understand all the formal and informal rules that govern a prison colony. “When I was there, everything was in Russian,” he said. “God knows how Griner will figure it all out.” During quarantine, it is determined which otryad, or detachment, a prisoner will join for the duration of his sentence. The otryad is the basic building block of a Russian colony. The word refers to both the physical space and the social unit to which a prisoner belongs. After being integrated into her otryad, Griner’s day will start around 6am. with a morning call followed by group exercises. The rest of her day will likely be spent behind a sewing machine, where she is expected to work for 10 to 12 hours sewing clothes, mostly uniforms for the prison service and for the Russian army fighting in Ukraine. A prison tower in IK-2 Mordovia. Photo: Reuters Human rights workers have for years documented incidents of torture and sexual abuse in Russian male prisons. While this level of violence is less common in women’s colonies, experts say intimidation by fellow inmates as well as violence by prison guards are common. “The Russian prison system is not interested in rehabilitation, it is based on retribution and punishment. It’s a system based on violence,” Pallot said. Russian women’s colonies have long practiced the doctrine of “prisoner self-organization” to run errands around the detachment blocks and organize the prisoners’ daily lives, Pallot said. A woman recruited by the prison administration is designated as a “guard” and at night the prisoners are left virtually unsupervised. “This system goes against all the rules we have in prisons in the West. It opens the door for both mental and physical bullying,” Pallot said. Pallot and Zeleneva said it was hard to predict how inmates would react to Griner, a tall, black, queer woman. “She will definitely be perceived as an exotic figure,” Zeleneva said. Human rights abuses in Mordovian prisons first received widespread international attention in 2013 after Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of the collective Pussy Riot published an open letter condemning her conditions in IK-14, a prison less than four miles from Griner’s IK-2. Tolokonnikova, who spent two years in IK-14 and went on hunger strike over prison conditions, described in the letter how she was forced to sew police uniforms for 17 hours a day with other exhausted inmates. She wrote: “A menacing, anxious atmosphere pervades the work zone. Perpetually sleep-deprived, crushed by the endless race to meet inhumanly large quotas, the prisoners are always on the verge of breaking down, screaming at each other, fighting over the smallest of things.” Conditions at Mordovia’s IK-2 have recently come under scrutiny following a series of complaints from prisoners and human rights groups, prompting authorities to send a team of investigators to inspect the prison. “Regular prisons don’t apply there,” Olga Shilayeva, who spent time in IK-2 before being released five years ago, said in a video interview in a Russian outlet in 2018. In the interview, Shilayeva said she was regularly beaten by Vyacheslav Kimyaev, a senior prison official who was later promoted to head of the colony. In 2021, investigators concluded that they found no violations within the prison. But in a sign that authorities were unhappy with the public complaints, Kimyaev was recently replaced by a female head, Yelena Pozdnyakova. “It remains to be seen whether Pozdniakova will be any different from her predecessors,” Zveleva said. Human rights experts said it was no accident that authorities chose to send Griner to IK-2. Pallot said: “First of all, the local prison authorities are fiercely loyal to Moscow. The central administration will know exactly what will happen there.” A fan at a WNBA playoff basketball game between the Seattle Storm and the Washington Mystics holds a sign supporting Brittney Griner. Photo: Ted S Warren/AP Located far from the capital, the colony will also be difficult for foreigners to reach. “It’s going to be much harder for human rights groups and journalists to get there and report what’s going on,” he said. Griner will be hoping she won’t have to spend much of her nine-year sentence behind bars. Since her arrest, the US government has been pushing to involve her in a prisoner swap with Russia, potentially exchanging her for convicted Russian arms dealer Victor Bout. “My hope is, now that the [US midterm] The election is over, that Mr. Putin will be able to talk to us and will be willing to talk more seriously about the prisoner exchange,” Joe Biden said at a recent press conference, emphasizing his desire to release Griner. Russia made some positive noise on Friday in a possible trade, but for now Griner will have to adjust to her new life. Human rights experts were divided on whether her high-profile position would protect her in prison. “There is a camp that believes her tall stature will act as a shield,” Zeveleva said. But there were also concerns that amid the anti-American hysteria that has gripped Russia, Griner might face even more severe treatment. “In times of war, the rules may be different… In any case, it will not be pleasant there,” Zveleva said.
