Doctor accused of criticizing ukraine war A patient was found guilty Tuesday of spreading false information about the Russian military and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Kremlin repression On the contrary.
Dr. Nadezhda Buyanova, 68, was arrested in February after Anastasia Akinshina, the mother of one of her patients, reported the pediatrician to authorities. Akinshina claimed that Buyanova told her and her son that his father, a Russian soldier killed in Ukraine, was a legitimate target of Kiev’s forces and blamed Moscow for the war.
A video of an angry Akinshina complaining about Buyanova went viral, and Russian Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin personally called for a criminal case to be filed against the doctor.
Buyanova, who was born in western Ukraine, denied the allegations, insisting she never said what she was accused of. In a tearful final statement to the court last week, she urged them to acquit her.
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Her lawyers argued that prosecutors failed to provide evidence that the conversation took place, including a recording, and that her accuser fabricated the story out of hostility toward Ukrainians, independent news site Mediazona reported. ) reported the whole story. hearing of the trial.
Buyanova broke down in her final statement to the court, saying it was “painful” to read the accusations in the indictment.
“No doctor, especially a pediatrician, can wish to harm the child or the mother or traumatize the child’s psyche. Only a monster could do this. And what I said to them.” Mediazona quoted her as saying:
‘Spreading disinformation’ about the military became a criminal offense from March 2022 after Russia adopted a series of laws banning public representations of the invasion that diverge from the official narrative. Authorities began using it actively against critics and protesters.
More than 1,000 people have been implicated in criminal cases on charges related to their speech or actions against the war, according to OVD-Info, one of Russia’s leading human rights organizations that tracks political arrests.
Last November, Russia placed Ukrainian singer Susanna Jamaladinova on its wanted list. Laws adopted in 2022 This prohibits the spread of so-called false information about Russian forces and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.
A week ago, Russian court sentences artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko Seven years in prison for swapping supermarket price tags for other products anti-war message.
Also in 2023, Russian courts sentenced prominent opposition figures and journalists. Vladimir Karamurza He was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security prison for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine.
