Saxophonist Andrey Shabanov, who is serving a six-year sentence in Penal Colony No. 10 in the Samara region, has been placed in a punitive isolation cell for five days. According to Novaya Gazeta, this was reported by his mother, Olga Medvedeva.
Medvedeva said she has not heard from her son since June 25. The colony governor told her that Shabanov had been sent to the isolation cell for allegedly sunbathing near the barracks without outer clothing. His mother questioned that explanation, saying that it had been raining and the weather was cool in recent days, so “it is hard to sunbathe in such weather.”
Medvedeva said that over the weekend she called the duty office and was told that “Andrey is walking around the colony grounds and is definitely not in the punitive isolation cell.”
She now believes her son may have been placed there immediately after the hearing on June 25, when the Krasnoyarsky District Court of the Samara region refused to grant him release on medical grounds. Shabanov has a second-degree disability status and several chronic illnesses, including psoriasis and ankylosing spondyloarthritis.
In June, Novaya Gazeta notes, the musician’s name was repeatedly mentioned in reports about harassment he was facing in the colony. According to his mother and his support group, other prisoners began pressuring Shabanov after he listened to a jazz program in the “wrong” place.
They say that afterward he was no longer allowed to sleep in his own bed or use the kitchen and refrigerator, and that he also began receiving threats of physical violence.
Shabanov is a saxophonist from Samara. In February 2025, the Central District Military Court sentenced him to six years in a general-regime penal colony on charges of public calls for terrorism and activity against state security. In April, he was transferred to Colony No. 10 in the Samara region. The case against him was opened over Facebook posts. Investigators allege that the posts called for fighting Vladimir Putin and the current authorities, including by financing the Ukrainian armed forces, supporting the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, and carrying out acts of sabotage.