Sarah Krivanek.Photo: VK
In letters sent to loved ones back home, jailed AmericanSarah Krivanekwrites: “my soul is in torment.”
Krivanek, 46, is serving a one-year, three-month sentence in a remote Russian penal colony in connection with domestic assault charges that stemmed from a November 2021 dispute in Moscow. She told the court that she was defending herself from repeated attacks against a Russian man she knew and nicked him on the nose with a knife.
She’d been living and working in Russia’s capital as a schoolteacher for five years when the incident occurred.
Krivanek is one of two known American women imprisoned in Russia. The other is WNBA starBrittney Griner.
“I am all alone here in prison with no support,” she writes in one. “I have no friends. I can trust no one! This is a very evil place.”
A letter from Sarah Krivanek, written in Russian.
Krivanek says that she was permitted to make one call to the U.S. Embassy on Aug. 24 to ask why no embassy officials had come to see her since her incarceration last December.
“They promised they would send someone to see me!” she writes of the call. “I am still waiting for a ‘diplomat’ to come and visit me. I can tell them what problems I have here in the camp so they can help me with my health.”
“Please call them again,” she urges her family. “Tell them that Sarah Krivanek is waiting for someone to come to her!”
A spokesperson at the embassy told PEOPLE on Tuesday that they were aware of Krivanek’s situation but were unable at present to give a statement regarding a potential visit.
Prisoners' rights activist Natalia Filimonova, from the NGO ‘Russia Behind Bars,’ tells PEOPLE that life in a labor camp is “10 times” worse for Krivanek, who worked as a well-paid accountant in the U.S., than it would be for the average Russian inmate.
“Sarah’s offense was very minor, but she will be in with those who have committed serious crimes like murder and drug dealing,” she says. “It is not a good contingent.”
“Also, inmates can get medical attention there with Russian insurance, but that’s only for Russian citizens,” Filimonova adds. “Sarah can’t access that or even buy medicines or vegetables, fruit and milk because her family aren’t allowed to transfer money to her from abroad.” Krivanek is also unable to communicate freely with her loved ones outside Russia as phone calls or letters abroad are only permitted under rare circumstances.
Filimonova, who arranged for a food package to be delivered to Krivanek through local volunteers as well as a visit from the Russian Public Monitoring Service, explains that it will be very hard for “a person from a different world, who doesn’t fit in and understand the unspoken rules of a place like that. She will be shouted at and humiliated for the slightest violation.”
Sarah Krivanek in a meeting room at the Russian penal colony.Prisoner Monitoring Service
Filimonova adds that Krivanek cannot divulge the true conditions in the labor camp because criticism of the prison regime is forbidden. “I am not allowed to write or speak in English,” Krivanek writes in one letter. Filimonova explains that this is because “something that cannot be understood cannot be censored. She won’t even be allowed to talk to herself or swear in English.”
“The main focus is not rehabilitation, but oppression,” Filimonova says. “The system is created around the need to crush you. It’s hell.”
“I think about my family all the time,” she writes in one letter. “I am worried about Nanny too and I am trying to contact them constantly. I want them to know that I love them SO much. Tell them I love them madly!”
The penal colony where Sarah Krivanek was held.Ryazan Novaya Gazeta
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Filimonova says that women in Krivanek’s prison work three shifts, cleaning, cooking, sewing or working in the fields.
“It’s hard physical work and they are given long hours to keep them fearful and submissive.” Commenting on Krivanek’s health problems, she adds: “It doesn’t matter how sick you are, you have to work. There are no exceptions.”
Svetlana Gorbacheva, Krivanek’s former lawyer who defended her at trial, tells PEOPLE that the U.S. Embassy will be informed when it comes time for her to be deported. “It’s then up to them to help her.” Gorbacheva adds that thepolitical situation in Russiahas made it very hard and prohibitively expensive to leave the country.
“It would be great to get home before New Year!” writes Sarah. “I will probably be taken to a detention cell and then a court will decide about my deportation. Better to get home through our Government in this time of war.”
“I am waiting for a reply from you,” she says in her last letter to Filimonova, “explaining how the process will go and how I can get home. My hands are tied here in prison. It is hard for me to help myself in here.”
But, she declares at the end, “I have not yet given up!”
Sarah Krivanek.Facebook
Nanny tells PEOPLE that Krivanek has been through many hardships in her life, with a distant mother and cruel stepfather. Although her career eventually flourished, her personal life suffered.
“She had such a beautiful house, a good income, a new car and then she got involved with this one guy in Russia through a dating site,” says Nanny. “She kept sending him money and went out twice to visit him. The third time she went, she never came back.”
According to Nanny, the Russian man she moved there for did not treat her kindly; he “spent all her money” and left her stranded there.
Nanny adds that Krivanek fell in love with her job teaching Russian kids to speak English, but privately moved from one harmful relationship to another. “She’s a giver. She was so kind and so smart, her heart is as big as it can be. But her weakness for men overrode everything. She just wanted to be loved so much.”
source: people.com
