TALLINN, Estonia — A physician accused of criticizing the warfare in Ukraine in entrance of a affected person was convicted Tuesday of spreading false details about the Russian army and sentenced to five 1/2 years in jail, a part of an unrelenting Kremlin crackdown on dissent.
Dr. Nadezhda Buyanova, 68, was arrested in February after Anastasia Akinshina, the mom of one in every of her sufferers, reported the pediatrician to authorities. Akinshina alleged that Buyanova advised her and her son that his father, a Russian soldier who apparently was killed in Ukraine, was a reliable goal for Kyiv’s troops and had blamed Moscow for the warfare.
A video of the outraged Akinshina complaining about Buyanova was extensively publicized, and chief of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin personally demanded a prison case be introduced in opposition to the physician.
Buyanova, who was born in western Ukraine, denied the accusation, insisting she by no means stated what she was accused of claiming. In a tearful closing assertion to the court docket final week, she had urged it to acquit her.
Her protection argued the prosecution didn’t current proof that the purported dialog came about, together with any recordings of it, and alleged that her accuser fabricated the story out of animosity towards Ukrainians, in accordance with the impartial information website Mediazona, which reported the entire hearings within the trial.
In her closing assertion to the court docket, Buyanova stated it was “painful” to learn the accusations within the indictment, and broke down.
“A physician, particularly a pediatrician, shouldn’t be able to wishing hurt to a toddler, his mom, or traumatizing the kid’s psyche. Solely a monster is able to this — and of the phrases that I allegedly stated to them,” Mediazona quoted her as saying.
Buyanova’s case drew nationwide consideration, with greater than 6,500 folks signing a web based petition demanding her freedom and supporters usually attending court docket hearings. Because the decide learn out the decision, they shouted, “Shame!” earlier than bailiffs escorted everybody from the courtroom.
Her lawyer, Oscar Cherdzhyev, advised reporters afterward that the decision was “unexpectedly harsh” and “monstrously merciless.”
“We did not anticipate this,” he stated.
“Spreading false info” in regards to the military has been a prison offense since March 2022, when Russia adopted a sequence of legal guidelines prohibiting any public expression in regards to the invasion that deviated from the official narrative. Authorities began actively utilizing them in opposition to critics and protesters.
In line with OVD-Information, one in every of Russia’s main rights teams that tracks political arrests, greater than 1,000 folks have been implicated in prison instances on prices associated to talking or performing out in opposition to the warfare.
