A 72-year-old pensioner has been jailed by Putin for criticising the war in Ukraine.
Yevgeniya Maiboroda, from Russia’s Rostov region, is to serve five and a half years for two social media reposts in one of the most draconian punishments since the war started almost two years ago.
Maiboroda said she was distraught because it came as her brother was buried under the rubble by a Russian missile attack.
The harsh sentence is part of Russian law banning ‘false information’ about Putin’s army and has been interpreted as a warning to others from the government.
Maiboroda admitted reposting material on her VK social media account but denied that she was motivated by ‘political hatred’ as prosecutors alleged, according to the OVD-Info rights group.
Yevgeniya Maiboroda, from Russia ‘s Rostov region, is to serve five and a half years for two social media reposts in one of the most draconian punishments since the war started almost two years ago.
The harsh sentence is part of Russian law banning ‘false information’ about Putin’s army and has been interpreted as a warning to others from the government
One of the two reposts was an ’emotional video’ about the conflict, and the other was about the number of soldiers killed in the war.
Maiboroda said at the time that she made the post when her brother, who lived in Dnipro, was hit by a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city, which saw him buried beneath the rubble of his house.
The Russian woman has been fined twice since the end of 2022 for ‘discrediting’ the army.
Ten months ago she was briefly jailed twice for ‘displaying Nazi symbols’ and ‘sharing extremist materials’.
Russia’s election commission today formally registered Putin as a candidate for the March presidential election, a vote in which he’s all but certain to win another six-year term in office.
Putin, 71, is running as an independent, but he retains tight control over Russia’s political system that he has established during 24 years in power.
With prominent critics who could challenge him either jailed or living abroad and most independent media banned, his re-election in the March 15 to 17 presidential vote looks all but assured.
In 2018, Putin also ran as an independent, snubbing the United Russia party that nominated him to run in 2012. With his approval ratings hovering around 80 per cent, Putin is far more popular than United Russia, which is widely seen as a part of the Kremlin-controlled state bureaucracy rather than a political force.
Maiboroda was distraught because it came as her brother was buried under the rubble by a Russian missile attack, she said
The Central Election Commission formally cleared Putin for the race after reviewing 315,000 signatures gathered by his campaign from all 89 regions of Russia.
Russian election law requires independent candidates to present at least 300,000 signatures to get on the ballot.
The commission already has approved three other candidates who were nominated by parties represented in parliament and weren’t required to collect signatures: Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, Leonid Slutsky of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Vladislav Davankov of the New People Party.
All three parties have been largely supportive of the Kremlin’s policies. Kharitonov ran against Putin in 2004, finishing a distant second.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old liberal politician who serves as a local legislator in a town near Moscow, is also seeking to run. He has openly called for a halt to the conflict in Ukraine and starting a dialogue with the West.
The announcement from Russia’s election commission came as Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met today to discuss ways to further expand their close alliance that has seen the deployment of some of Russia’s nuclear weapons on the territory of its neighbour.
Putin emphasized that Russia and Belarus have developed a ‘strategic partnership’ as part of their 25-year union agreement. That pact stopped short of a full merger, but envisaged close political, economic and military ties between the two nations.