Russian Interior Ministry staffer handed five-year prison sentence for reposting news story

A Moscow court has sentenced a Russian Interior Ministry employee to five years in prison for reposting a news story about a Russian missile strike on Ukraine, which it ruled constituted spreading false information about the Russian army, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Wednesday.

The court found that Anastasia Zibrova had reposted news of an April 2022 missile strike on the main train station in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region to a private page on Russian social media platform VK. The attack, for which the Russian authorities have always denied responsibility, killed 63 civilians.

Zibrova’s lawyer Oscar Cherdzhiev argued in court that his client had not intended to mislead the public by reposting the story, stressing that she hadn’t known that the information she reposted was untrue. He also pointed out that Zibrova was herself a veteran and that her ex-husband and “numerous friends” were fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

While prosecutors requested a six-year prison sentence, Zibrova’s admission of “the facts of the case”, effectively being a single parent to her six-year-old daughter, as well as her dependent grandmother, were all considered to be mitigating factors by the court, though it declined Zibrova’s request that it suspend her sentence.

The case against Zibrova was opened on 25 October following an unauthorised search of her home in August 2023, since when she has been under house arrest.