On Thursday, a Muscovite woman was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for “discrediting” the Russian army and “apology for terrorism”, in publications relating to the conflict in Ukraine and hostile to Vladimir Putin on the social network VKontakteannounced the state agency Ria Novosti. The mother of two minor children, who was on parole, appeared before a military court to hear the verdict, the agency added.

She was taken into custody after her conviction, which also relates to “spreading false information about the Russian army”, according to RIA Novosti. In posts and comments on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, Anastasia Berezhinskaya, aged around forty, had violently attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling for his assassination, and had blamed the Russian army for the Boutcha massacre.

Russian soldiers are accused of killing hundreds of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Boutcha, on the outskirts of Kiev, before withdrawing from the region in the spring of 2022. Moscow has rejected these accusations, denouncing them as Western staging, despite numerous testimonies implicating the Russian military. Since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, thousands of people have been punished, threatened or imprisoned for their opposition to the conflict. Since 2022, the Russian authorities have multiplied arrests for “espionage”, “treason”, “sabotage”, “extremism” and “discrediting the army”, often with very heavy prison sentences.