Berkovich described the punishment in a letter to her mother, Elena Efros, from Correctional Colony No. 3 in the village of Pribrezhny in the Kostroma region. The letter was published by Novaya Gazeta.
The director said it was the second such punishment in a month. She was first given seven days, and ten days later was placed in isolation again, this time for 15 days.
According to Berkovich, both infractions she was accused of almost never result in a punitive isolation cell. For candies, she said, prison staff usually just file a report and confiscate them without imposing a penalty. Entering an office and giving only a first and last name rather than the full set of personal details also rarely draws punishment.
"Apparently I stood out in some way. But how, I don't understand yet, and the staff don't explain. They just point at my misdeeds," Novaya Gazeta quoted her as saying.
In the letter, Berkovich described the conditions: cold, damp, and no psychiatrist visiting. She said she shares a cell with a 22-year-old inmate from Uzbekistan, whom she is teaching Russian.
"Well, there were candies, there were - five days for each one!" she wrote, acknowledging the penalty with irony.
Berkovich is serving her sentence in a case over "justifying terrorism." In July 2024, the Second Western District Military Court sentenced her and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk to six years in a general-regime colony each. The case centered on their play "Finist, the Brave Falcon," about Russian women who travel to Syria to marry fighters; the production won a Golden Mask award in 2022.
Berkovich's sentence was later reduced by five months, and Petriychuk's by two months.
Earlier, Nobel laureate and Novaya Gazeta co-founder Dmitry Muratov, speaking on CNN, urged American negotiators to raise the release of Russian political prisoners in meetings with Vladimir Putin. He showed a photograph of political prisoners, including Berkovich.