The mother of prominent theater director Kirill Serebrennikov has died after a long period of illness, while her son remains under house arrest.
Serebrennikov, the director of Moscow’s Gogol Center, was detained in August and placed under house arrest on charges of embezzling 68 million rubles ($1.1 million) of government funds in a case that critics argue is politically motivated.
Her death was confirmed to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency by Serebrennikov’s father, Semyon Serebrennikov, and a “close family friend” to the state-run TASS news agency.
Official sources did not specify whether Serebrennikov was present at his mother’s cremation. But journalists and commentators said on social media that requests to have Serebrennikov temporarily released had been denied.
Some commentators on social media compared his case to that of exiled tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin in 2013 and allowed to leave Russia to visit his dying mother.
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