In this photo taken from a video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, a Russian soldier is seen firing a D-30 howitzer toward Ukrainian positions at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. | Photo Credit: Russian Defense Ministry press service via AP
A Russian news editor in Siberia was sentenced to eight years in prison on Friday for publishing material critical of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, marking a massive crackdown on dissent in Russia.
Sergei Mikhailov, a journalist and editor from the mountainous Altai region, was arrested in the first weeks of the Kremlin’s launch of a military operation in 2022, shortly after the adoption of repressive laws banning criticism of Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
He published online posts about the deaths of civilians in the Kiev suburbs of Bucha and Mariupol.
A court in the city of Gorno-Altaisk handed down the sentence after finding the 48-year-old man guilty of “deliberately spreading false information” about the Russian military.
Prosecutors said he was “motivated by political malice.”
Mikhailov ran a small online opposition social media channel called “Listok” in Siberia’s Altai Republic — the region from which many people have been deported to Ukraine.
In a speech in court earlier this week, Mikhailov stood by his reporting and strongly criticized the Kremlin for sending troops into Ukraine.
He said the Russian state’s narrative of calling the Ukrainian leadership “fascists” has “created an entire virtual universe in the information space, and this fog is growing stronger.”
“My publications were aimed against this fog, so that my readers would not be misled by lies, they would not take part in armed conflicts, they would not become killers and victims, and they would not harm the brotherly Ukrainian people,” Mikhailov said in audio of the speech published on social media by Listok.
More than 1,000 people have been prosecuted in Russia for criticising the Russian offensive against Ukraine since the start of the armed conflict in February 2022, according to monitor OVD-Info.