A Moscow military court has sentenced 43-year-old Anastasia Berezhinskaya, a theatre director and mother of two, to eight years in a penal colony for posting anti-war comments online, including calls for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Berezhinskaya was found guilty under two wartime censorship laws: discrediting the Russian military and spreading false information, along with justifying terrorism.
Berezhinskaya’s posts, which began shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, criticized the Russian army and Putin’s role in what she described as a “genocide” against Ukrainians.
On May 14, 2022, she posted multiple messages on VKontakte, a Russian social media platform, condemning the war and calling for Putin’s death.
Her posts included inflammatory remarks such as, “Shoot that stupid bastard Putin, how many more murders of civilians do we have to bear? Wipe him off the face of the earth.”
More than 1,000 individuals in Russia have faced criminal charges for speaking out against the Ukraine war, with over 20,000 detained for protesting, according to the rights project OVD-Info.
The case highlights the ongoing crackdown on dissent in Russia, where even the slightest criticism of the government’s actions in Ukraine can lead to severe legal consequences.
Berezhinskaya admitted to spreading “fakes” and discrediting the military but only partially acknowledged the terrorism-related charges.
Mediazona reported that she suffers from a mixed personality disorder and is a mother to two children, aged 8 and 10, while her husband has epilepsy. There is no immediate confirmation on whether she intends to appeal the sentence.
