On New Year's Day, the Federal Penitentiary Service will feed prisoners caviar and show them “good films”

The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) promised to arrange a New Year's table for Russian prisoners with salads, vegetable caviar and dumplings. Perhaps there will even be sautéed chicken, and definitely movie screenings.

“On New Year’s Eve and during the holidays, various cultural and sports events will be held in all correctional colonies. The New Year’s menu will also become more diverse,” the press service of the FSIN told Interfax .

The holiday diet may include vinaigrette, vegetable caviar, chicken sauté, chakhokhbili, cutlets, meat and fish balls, dumplings, meat and vegetable rolls. However, guards pamper some prisoners with real delicacies not only during the New Year holidays. In the fall, a scandal broke out around a member of the “Tsapka gang” Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz. Then photographs showing prisoner Tsepovyaz eating crabs and red caviar , and also frying kebabs in a prisoner’s uniform, were widely circulated across the media and the Internet.

The leadership of the Amur colony explained thatthere is a sea nearby , so crabs and caviar are not so rare.

“Traditionally, to organize leisure time for convicts, institutions hold amateur art concerts, theatrical performances, quizzes, screenings of good New Year’s films, and wall newspaper competitions,” the department promised before the New Year.

In addition, in some colonies and prisons there will be shows of national costumes from the 15th to 19th centuries, sewn by the prisoners themselves, culinary competitions and vocal competitions. Convicts will also be able to take part in charity events for the production of soft toys and knitted items, which are donated to orphanages.

In all colonies, on New Year's holidays, sports competitions and snow figure competitions are traditionally held; in the northern regions, convicts build snow towns .

In addition to events with the participation exclusively of prisoners of correctional institutions, during the holidays many of them will host “Open Doors Days” to meet convicts with relatives; city and republican creative groups will visit correctional colonies.

The FSIN also reported that on Christmas Eve, prisoners visit churches, chapels, and prayer rooms located in institutions to perform religious sacraments and rituals.

Let us add that a tortured routine is peeking out from under the festive tinsel. Simultaneously with the publication of a press release in which the Federal Penitentiary Service promises prisoners almost a New Year's feast, a message came about the initiation of a criminal case of torture in correctional colony No. 3 in the city of Uglich, Yaroslavl region. According to lawyer Irina Biryukova, the case was opened a month ago, but the prisoners learned that they had become victims only at the end of December after interrogations by investigators.

The total number of victims in the torture case is 25 people, writes “Public Verdict” . Human rights activists name four of them.

"Interesting competitions"

Previously, the FSIN has repeatedly reported on various events that were designed to provide convicts with fun leisure time and diversify their life. For example, in early January, convicts at correctional colony N47 in the city of Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk Region, made an exact copy of a mid-20th century steam locomotive from ice and snow during the New Year holidays. In addition to the steam locomotive, the prisoners also built several platform cars.

While some were making snow sculptures, others were said to be playing winter mini-football, competing in backgammon, table tennis, darts and taking part in a quiz. The colony even held a poetry evening on January 6, which ended with tea and cake.

In the Krasnoyarsk Territory that same month, the annual competition for the best sculpture made of snow and ice was won by convicts suffering from tuberculosis from the Krasnoyarsk KTB-1, who sculpted the most elegant Father Frost and Snow Maiden from snow and ice.