A doctor accused of criticizing the war in Ukraine in front of a patient, was convicted Tuesday of spreading false information about the Russian army and sentenced to 5 and a half years in prison, as part of an ongoing campaign Kremlin crackdown on dissent.
Dr. Nadezhda Buyanova, 68, was arrested in February after Anastasia Akinshina, the mother of one of her patients, reported the pediatrician to authorities. Akinshina claimed that Buyanova told her and her son that his father, a Russian soldier killed in Ukraine, was a legitimate target for kyiv’s troops and blamed Moscow for the war.
A video of an outraged Akinshina complaining about Buyanova was widely distributed, and the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, personally demanded that criminal proceedings be initiated against the doctor.
Buyanova, born in western Ukraine, has denied the accusation, insisting she never said what she was accused of. In a tearful final statement to the court last week, she urged him to acquit her.
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His defense argued that the prosecution failed to present evidence that the alleged conversation took place, including recordings of it, and alleged that his accuser fabricated the story out of animosity toward Ukrainians, according to the independent news site Mediazona, which reported all the information. trial hearings.
In her final statement to the court, Buyanova said it was “painful” to read the accusations contained in the indictment and she broke down.
“A doctor, especially a pediatrician, is not capable of wishing harm to a child, to his mother, nor to traumatize the child’s psyche. Only a monster is capable of this – and the words that I tell them would have said,” Mediazona said. as said.
“Spreading false information” about the military has been a criminal offense since March 2022, when Russia passed a series of laws banning public expression about the invasion that deviates from the official narrative. The authorities began to actively use them against critics and protesters.
According to OVD-Info, one of Russia’s leading human rights groups that tracks political arrests, more than 1,000 people have been implicated in criminal cases on charges related to comments or actions against the war.
Last November, Russia placed Ukrainian singer Susana Jamaladinova on its wanted list, after she was reportedly charged under a law adopted in 2022 which prohibits the dissemination of false information about the Russian army and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.
A week before that, a A Russian court convicted artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko to seven years in prison for exchanging supermarket price tags with anti-war messages.
Also in 2023, a Russian court convicted an opposition figure and a journalist. Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in high security prison for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine.
