Ryazan Prisons
(LEFT) Correctional Colony No. 2 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Ryazan Region, one of three penal colonies in operation in Ryazan. It is not known whether Jimmy has been relocated here, although many foreign prisoners (mostly Ukrainian) are known to be kept here. Image courtesy of Google.com.
Jimmy has been transferred in late August, 2025 to a prison colony somewhere in Ryazan, Russia. His whereabouts are unknown, and Jimmy's parents and the US Embassy have not heard from him since June 4, 2025. Prior to that he was held at IK-7 prison colony located at Sosnovka, Zubovo-Polyansky District, in Mordovia, Russia for 2 months. This is apparently due to a consolidation of prisons, as many prisoners are drafted to fight in the war against Ukraine. Prior to IK-7, he was imprisoned for over 8 years at IK-17 in Mordovia, another notoriously terrible penal colony even for Russian standards.
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The prisons there are known for the harsh regimes and human rights violations,” said Olga Zeveleva, a sociologist at the University of Helsinki who specializes in Russian prison conditions as part of the Gulag Echoes project. “It is a place any prisoner wants to avoid,” Zeveleva said | "... a sprawling network of penal colonies in the north-west of the Mordovia region, about 300 miles east of Moscow. The prisons were built in the early 1930s as part of the gulag system of the Stalin era and together make up one of the largest penal complexes in Europe." (The Guardian Nov 18, 2022). Today, Russia is more repressive than it has ever been in the post-Soviet era. The authorities crack down on critical media, harass peaceful protesters, engage in smear campaigns against independent groups, and stifle them with fines. Foreign organizations are increasingly banned as “undesirable,” and Russian nationals and organizations are penalized for supposed involvement with them. A new law enables Russian authorities to partially or fully block access to the internet in Russia in the event of undefined “security threats” and gives the government control of the country’s internet traffic, enhancing its capacity to conduct fine-grain censorship. Impunity for egregious abuses by security officials in Chechnya remains rampant. - Human Rights Watch