The mass media published two letters of director Zhena Berkovich from the SIZO

Theater director and poet Zhenya Berkovich, arrested on charges of justifying terrorism, handed over two letters from the pre-trial detention center.

Berkovich’s messages were published on Wednesday by several mass media. In one of them, addressed to the TV presenter, producer and founder of the WOS portal Ekaterina Khorykova, the arrested woman asks “not to make Joan of Arc out of her” and not to swear because of her case “between themselves”. Berkovich also claims that everything is “excellent” with her, she is “cheerful, alive and healthy”, “the family is under control”, and “the cats are fed”.

In the second letter written to his mother, Berkovich reports that life in the pre-trial detention center is tolerable, “only oak and cigarettes have run out”, and besides, she has not yet been out for a walk. The director also writes that the only time she cried was when the list of vouchers for her was read out in the courtroom. “I didn’t think such support existed at all,” Berkovich sums up.

At the beginning of May, Russian law enforcement agencies detained and then sent Zhenya Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk to a pre-trial detention center. A criminal case was brought against them because of the play “Finist Yasnyi Sokol”, which was written by Petriychuk and staged by Berkovich.

The play tells about Russian women who decided to virtually marry adherents of radical Islam and move to Syria with them. The basis of the production, as reported by its creators, was real sentences and protocols of interrogations of women. In 2022, the performance won in two nominations for the main Russian theater award “Golden Mask”.

Dozens of cultural figures, human rights activists, and public figures spoke out in support of Berkovych and Petriychuk, who face long prison terms. The guaranty for Berkovich, which was presented to the court, was signed by Oleg Menshikov, Veniamin Smekhov, Ksenia Sobchak, Nyuta Federmesser, Alexander Lungin, Elena Panfilova, Maksym Vitorgan, Aryna Borodina, Konstantin Raikin and others.

• It is known that Zhenya Berkovich is raising two adopted daughters with disabilities. One of them is a minor.
• A number of her acquaintances suggest that the persecution of the director may be connected with her active anti-war position. After the beginning of the full-scale armed invasion of the Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine, Berkovych publicly spoke out against the war.

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