Six years in prison for a post about Ukraine on Instagram

A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced a journalist to six years in prison who had denounced the offensive in Ukraine on Instagram, another example of the repression of critical voices in the conflict.

Maria Ponomarenko, 44, was found guilty of “spreading false information” about the army, said the Russian Investigative Committee, responsible for the main criminal investigations in Russia.

This offense, introduced after the start of the assault on Ukraine, has already been used on several occasions to sentence people who publicly criticized the conflict to heavy prison terms. The journalist was sentenced by a court in Barnaul, in the Siberian region of Altai, where she worked for a news site, RusNews.

According to the specialized NGO OVD-Info, she was prosecuted for having published in March 2022, shortly after the offensive of February 24, a message on the social network Instagram denouncing the bombing of the theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, then besieged by the Russian army. kyiv has accused Moscow of killing hundreds of civilians in the bombardment, charges denied by Russian authorities.

Maria Ponomarenko had been arrested in April, in Saint Petersburg, then transferred to Barnaul. His lawyer affirms that his psychological state deteriorated in detention and that he had requested, in vain, his transfer to a psychiatric hospital. In September, according to OVD-Info, she broke the window of her cell because it was too opaque and prevented her from seeing the sun and the sky. As punishment, she was placed in the punishment cell for a week.

Also according to OVD-Info, in November, the journalist had been placed under house arrest at the home of her ex-husband. After an argument with the latter, at the end of January, she went to a police station and was again placed in pre-trial detention.