A news editor in Siberia was sentenced to eight years in prison for publishing critical material about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which was followed by increased repression in Russia.
Sergej Mihailov, a journalist and editor in the mountainous Altai Republic in southern Siberia, was arrested in the first weeks of the 2022 aggression, shortly after the adoption of repressive laws banning criticism of Russian actions in Ukraine.
He published online posts about the deaths of civilians in the Kiev suburb of Buča and in Mariupol.
The court in the city of Gorno-Altaysk sentenced 48-year-old Mihajlov after finding him guilty of "knowingly spreading false information" about the Russian army.
Prosecutors said he was "motivated by political hatred".
Mikhailov had a small opposition Listok on the Telegram network based in Altai, the region from where a large number of men were sent to Ukraine.
Speaking in court earlier this week, Mikhailov stood by his report and sharply criticized the Kremlin for sending troops to Ukraine.
He said that the Russian state narrative, according to which the Ukrainian leadership is "fascist", created "a whole virtual universe in the information space, and this fog became stronger and stronger."
"My publications were directed against that fog, so that my readers would not be misled by lies, that they would not participate in armed conflicts, that they would not become murderers and victims, and that they would not harm the fraternal Ukrainian people," Mikhailov said in an audio recording of the speech, which was Listok published on social networks.
More than 1.000 people have been prosecuted in Russia for criticizing the invasion of Ukraine since the beginning of the armed conflict in February 2022, according to data from the OVD-Info organization.
Bonus video:
