The Jrussian justice has sentenced the punk group activist to 8.5 years in prison in absentia Pussy Riot and former editor of the independent media Mediazona Piotr Versílov for spreading “fake news” about the Russian Armed Forces.
As reported today on his Mediazona Telegram channel, the sentence was read by the judge Natalia Dudar in the district court of Basmanni from Moscow.
The prosecutor Alexander Kienko He asked that Verzilov be sentenced to nine years in a general prison and that he be prohibited from writing on the Internet for four years. Lawyer Leonid Solovyov asked for the acquittal of his client.
Verzilov was convicted in absentia for two messages published on the social network X (then Twitter) and two entries on the Instagram application with a story about the massacre in the Ukrainian town of Bushing in 2022, whose authorship Russia has always denied.
According to the indictment, the publications contained a message “that could lead to an unreasonable increase in social tension and harm the interests of the Russian Federation“.