A Russian military court on Thursday sentenced a woman to eight years in jail for criticising the Ukraine offensive online and calling for the assassination of President Vladimir Putin, state media reported.
Moscow has opened hundreds of criminal cases against those who oppose the Ukraine campaign under strict censorship laws ushered in at the start of the conflict.
Russia’s second western district military court found Anastasia Berezhinskaya, 43, guilty of spreading “false information”, “discrediting” the armed forces and “justifying terrorism” over a series of posts on Russian social media platform VK.
Berezhinskaya, a theatre director, had railed against Russia’s actions in Ukraine, saying Moscow’s soldiers were killing civilians and destroying cities in a naked land grab.
Referring to Putin, Berezhinskaya wrote: “Destroy that bastard. Wipe him off the face of the Earth.”
She also posted accounts of atrocities carried out by Russian soldiers in Bucha, a town occupied by Russian forces for the first month of the conflict.
In April 2022, the bodies of dozens of civilians, some with their hands tied, were found in the Kyiv suburb after a month-long occupation by Russian forces.
The Kremlin has denied targeting civilians throughout its near three-year campaign and accused Ukraine of staging the scenes at Bucha.
The United Nations has verified more than 11,000 civilian fatalities since the start of the conflict, though they believe the real number is likely much higher.
According to a counter on VK, some of Berezhinskaya’s posts had been viewed just 60-130 times as of Thursday. Russia has blocked access to her page inside the country.
The independent Mediazona site reported she has two children, aged eight and 10.
She has also been diagnosed with a personality disorder, according to case materials cited by Mediazona.
In court she pleaded partially guilty, denying that her comments on Putin were a genuine call to murder the Kremlin leader, it reported.
