Russia on Thursday sentenced a 59-year-old nurse to eight years in a penal colony for denouncing Moscow’s Ukraine offensive on social media.
Moscow has banned criticism of its military campaign, punishing thousands with either jail terms or fines for speaking out against it.
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Moscow’s Dorogomilovsky court found nurse Olga Menshikh guilty of spreading “fakes” on the Russian army, under legislation adopted shortly after the Kremlin sent troops to Ukraine and used to silence dissent.
The court ruled she had published posts “motivated by political hatred.”
Menshikh had denounced a deadly 2022 Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia and civilian killings by Russian soldiers in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
The medic pleaded not guilty and said in court that she felt sorry for the wounded Russian soldiers arriving at the Pirogov National Medical and Surgical Centre in Moscow where she worked as a nurse anesthetist.
“When a young man passes by, do you know what a woman feels? Compassion, not the hatred of which I am being accused,” she said in court, according to the independent website Mediazona.
“I felt really sorry for them.”
Wearing a checked shirt, she looked sternly through the glass defendant’s box in court.
She addressed the prosecutor, saying: “You want to give me a sentence like one for murder, but I was fighting for your health. I have treated so many prosecutors and judges from the whole of Moscow.”
Menshikh was arrested in April and placed under house arrest, but was moved to pre-trial detention in September.
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