‘Fake news’ journalist sentenced

Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail by a Moscow court on Wednesday on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army.

The court found Nevzorov was “motivated by political hatred” when he accused Russia’s armed forces in social media posts last March of deliberately shelling a maternity hospital in Mariupol. Moscow said the allegation was false.

The court said that if he returned to Russia he would be sent to a penal colony and banned from managing internet content for four years.

Nevzorov, who runs a YouTube channel with almost 2-million subscribers, called the investigation ridiculous and left Russia with his wife last March.

Prosecutors asked for a nineyear sentence. Nevzorov responded to the verdict by saying: “I don’t think Russia will exist in nine years.”

He told a Russian news outlet that he had no plans to return to the country and President Vladimir Putin was heading “a dictatorship based on dirt, blood and denunciations”.

Nevzorov made his name hosting the pioneering news programme 600 Seconds as Soviet society opened up under Mikhail Gorbachev. He served in Russia’s parliament and was granted Ukrainian citizenship after denouncing Russia’s invasion, saying it was a “crime” and Ukraine was its victim.

The case against him was brought under a law passed eight days after the invasion. It sets jail terms of up to 15 years for intentionally spreading false information about the military.

Russia has since blocked access to news sites publishing content at odds with the official line on the conflict. Dozens of Russian and international news outlets have left the country.

In another development on Wednesday, the general prosecutor’s office declared the foreign-based opposition platform Free Russia Forum to be an “undesirable” organisation that posed “a threat to the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation”.

The forum, whose leading members include former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, has held several meetings in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, where it staged an antiwar conference late last year.

“Undesirable” organisations are banned from operating in Russia, and people risk prosecution for supporting or promoting their activities.