Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to 6 years in prison for reporting on Instagram about the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which in Russia makes her guilty of “spreading false information”.
This was indicated by the Russian Investigative Committee, in charge of major criminal cases in Russia. The journalist was sentenced by a court in Barnaul, in the Siberian region of Altai, where she worked for the information website RusNews.
The 44-year-old reporter was one of the first in her country to publish about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which occurred in February 2022.
“It would be enough to open the Constitution and read to prove my innocence,” said Ponomarenko, who has asserted that “No totalitarian regime has been so strong just before its own collapse.”
But the Russian Investigative Committee in Altai maintains that the journalist had published a series of photos and videos on the Internet that contained “unreliable information about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces”.
According to OVD-Info, an NGO, Ponomarenko shared a message on Instagram in March last year denouncing the bombing of the theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, then besieged by the Russian army.
Ponomarenko was arrested in April in Saint Petersburg and later transferred to Barnaul. Her lawyer claims that her psychological state has deteriorated in detention and that she had asked, in vain, to be transferred to a psychiatric hospital.
“We live in the 21st century, not the Stone Age. The same things that they support in neighboring countries they prohibit in theirs. It is pure hypocrisy, ”said the journalist during her last judicial visit. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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