Russia jails journalist for spreading ‘fake news’ about army in Ukraine war
Al Jazeera
Sergei Mikhailov was arrested in 2022 after publishing reports about civilian deaths in Bucha and Mariupol.
A court in Russia has sentenced journalist Sergei Mikhailov to eight years in prison for “intentionally spreading false information” about the Russian army, a human rights group confirmed.
Prosecutors in Gorno-Altaysk, a city in the southern Altay region that lies in the foothills of the Altai Mountains, said the 48-year-old was motivated by “political hatred,” Net Freedoms Project said on Friday on its Telegram channel.
The court also imposed a four-year ban on the reporter’s journalistic and publishing activities, it added.
Mikhailov, a journalist and editor at Listok, was arrested in 2022 near Moscow for posting on the publication’s Telegram channel and website about the murder of civilians in Bucha, northwest of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, and about Russian shelling and killings in the southeastern city of Mariupol.
The events in both Ukrainian cities came to represent the worst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rights groups have said.
