On January 30, the Akhtubinsky District Court of the Astrakhan Region sentenced Natalya Belyavskaya, a resident of Znamensk, to eight months of correctional labor in the case of military “fakes” (Part 1 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code) due to posts on VKontakte. This was reported by the press service of the court.
“Publications in the form of text entries and images, which contained, under the guise of being reliable, deliberately false information about the physical destruction of the civilian population on the territory of Ukraine by Russian military personnel,” Belyavskaya posted on her page in April 2022. The case came to court on January 29.
The woman fully admitted her guilt, filing a petition for a special trial procedure.
- Since February 24, 2022—the first day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—residents of Russian cities have been holding anti-war protests every day and talking about the tragedy online. Anti-war speeches and statements become grounds for criminal prosecution. At the moment, more than 800 people have become defendants in criminal cases initiated due to protest against the war with Ukraine. Read more about this in our infographic .
- Article 207.3 (Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the armed forces of the Russian Federation) was included in the Criminal Code in March 2022 - in this way the authorities responded to anti-war speeches and statements, as well as the dissemination of information about the war that does not come from official Russian sources. The maximum penalty under this article is 15 years in prison.