On March 18, 2022, a student asked Irina during class why Europe banned Russia from the swimming championship. A conversation started, during which the teacher condemned the Ukrainian “special operation” and expressed views that disagreed with the official position of the Russian Ministry of Defense. One of the schoolgirls recorded the conversation using a recording device, and later the recording ended up in the media.

Several days later, Federal Security Service officials took the teacher in for questioning after picking her up straight from her place of work, the Penza Olympic Reserve High School. Soon after that, a criminal investigation was launched against Irina under article 207.3, part 2, “dissemination of false information about the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”. Under pressure from the law enforcement officials and her state-appointed lawyer, Irina pleaded guilty, which did not exempt her from criminal liability.

Irina has been following the situation in Ukraine since 2014; she has been reading foreign news media and trying to share with other people the non-official take on the events. Irina was teaching at the Penza Olympic Reserve High School for the past ten years, but after what happened she had to resign. The teacher did not feel comfortable continuing to work in the organization, where she was essentially informed on.

Lawyer Alexander Fedulin is trying to get the court to quash Irina’s confession. This is the only way to prove that the teacher was not intentionally disseminating “wrong” information. On June 9, 2022, the case went to court. It took the court 20 days to pass a guilty verdict on Irina. In August 2022, the Penza Court sentenced Irina to a suspended sentence and a ban on teaching for 3 years.