Russia has sentenced a 68-year-old pediatrician to five and a half years in prison for allegedly criticising the Ukraine campaign, after she was accused by the former wife of a soldier killed in combat.
As Russia’s troops battle in Ukraine, the case against Nadezhda Buyanova has served as an example of the severity of the country’s repression and the frequency of its denunciations.
Anastasia Akinshina, a soldier’s former partner, accused the Moscow doctor, who was arrested in February, of calling the man a “legal target” of Ukraine in remarks she allegedly made during her son’s doctor’s appointment.
Buyanova has said she is innocent and “just a doctor”.
Judge Olga Felina sentenced her despite no public evidence that the conversation took place.
The case against her was personally launched in February by the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles serious crimes.
Over 1,000 people have been criminally prosecuted in Russia for speaking out against the war, according to rights project OVD-Info, while over 20,000 have been detained for protesting.
Many have pointed to Buyanova’s birthplace, Ukraine’s western city of Lviv as the real reason for her harsh treatment.
Handcuffed in the defendant’s glass cage and wearing a black jumper, she thanked supporters for coming to the court.
The medic cried in court last week as prosecutors demanded a six-year sentence for her, saying she was from a “simple family” and did “not have an easy life”.
Her defence insists there is no audio recording of the alleged comments and decried that prosecutors brought Akinshina’s child into the trial, saying he had been pressured by the FSB security service.
Despite his mother saying earlier in the trial that he was not present during the conversation, the boy told the court that Buyanova had called his father a “legal target for Ukraine”.
Buyanova and her lawyers have said that he used language that was unusual for a child his age.
Lawyer Solovyev said he was “surprised” to see that people came to support Buyanova “on the third year of no rule of law”.
