eight years in prison for a woman convicted of “apology of terrorism”

This Thursday, a Muscovite was sentenced to eight years in prison for “discrediting” the Russian army and “advocating terrorism”, in publications relating to the conflict in Ukraine and hostile to Vladimir Putin on the social network VKontakte, announced the public agency Ria Novosti. This mother of two minor children, who was on parole, appeared before a military court to hear the verdict, the agency said.

She was detained after her conviction, which also relates to “dissemination of false information about the Russian army”, according to RIA Novosti. In publications and comments on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, Anastassia Berejinskaïa, aged around forty, violently attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling for his assassination, and had blamed the army Russian for the Boutcha massacre.

Russian soldiers are accused of having killed hundreds of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Boutcha, on the outskirts of kyiv, before withdrawing from the region in the spring of 2022. Moscow has rejected these accusations and denounced Western staging, despite numerous testimonies implicating the Russian military. Since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, thousands of people have been sanctioned, threatened or imprisoned because of their opposition to the conflict. Since 2022, the Russian authorities have increased arrests for “espionage”, “treason”, “sabotage”, “extremism”, “discrediting the army”, often with very heavy prison sentences.