The elegant 74-year-old Russian put her hand on her heart as the verdict fell. Five and a half years in prison for posts opposing the war in Ukraine.

Then, according to a witness who saw her in the dock, "her nose began to bleed".

Yet only a few years before, Evgeniya Mayboroda had been an ardent fan of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and had celebrated his annexation of Crimea.

A photo taken in the court in Shakhty shows her shock as the sentence was pronounced -- her punishment held up as an example of what can happen to even model citizens if they question the war.

Mayboroda -- who comes from the Rostov region bordering Ukraine -- was accused of sharing "false information" on the Russian army on social media and of "making a public appeal to commit extremist activities".

Even before she was convicted in January 2024, the posts on her social media feed -- thick with pictures of cats and flowers -- had put her on the Russia's "terrorist and extremist" watchlist.

Curious to discover how a pro-Kremlin pensioner could so quickly become an enemy of the state, AFP tracked her down to a penal colony where she said her faith and prayers were sustaining her.

We also talked to those who know her and were able to piece together a picture of this unlikely rebel, whose strange story says much about today's Russia.

Evgeniya Nikolaevna Mayboroda was born on June 10, 1951 near the coal-mining town of Shakhty and met her husband Nikolai at the local technical institute.

They both got jobs at a facility just outside the city -- he was a miner in an elite squad, while she worked in the power station above ground. They had a son, Sergei, in 1972.

The Mayborodas were the ideal Soviet family. As mine workers they occupied a privileged place in the communist hierarchy and were able to travel regularly across the Eastern Bloc.

But when the USSR collapsed in 1991 so did their world. Not only was there no money to pay their wages but the socialist values they believed in were replaced by a wild, cowboy capitalism.

Then on Miners' Day 1997, an important date in the Soviet calendar, Sergei, their only child was killed in a car accident. He was 25.

"We were at the burial. Evgeniya was in such a state that she can't remember it," a friend of the family, too afraid to give her name, told AFP.

"Her son was everything to her."

The mine shut........

© International Business Times