A Russian court has today sentenced in absentia the well-known journalist Alexandr Nevzorov, declared a "foreign agent" in Russia, to eight years in prison for having spread "false news" about the Armed Forces immersed in the military campaign in Ukraine, according to reports today. Interfax agency.
Judge Yevgenia Nikolaeva of the Moscow Basmanni District Court today read the sentence against the journalist, who lives outside of Russia, for having "publicly disseminated, under the guise of reliable reports, deliberately false information about the actions of the Armed Forces From Russia".
The sentence includes a ban on Nevzorov from managing Internet resources for four years.
The prosecutor's office, which had requested nine years in prison the day before, affirms that the journalist, "expressing his disagreement with the special military operation that the Russian Federation is carrying out and acting for reasons of political hatred," published on his Telegram channels and YouTube "fake news" intended to be viewed "by an unlimited number of people in the form of text and video.
According to the indictment, it was "deliberately false information about the deliberate destruction by the Russian military of the N3 maternity hospital in Mariupol and the civilian population in Bucha, kyiv region."
The defense has insisted on the acquittal by stressing that Nevzorov used information from open sources.
The journalist had a well-known program called '600 seconds' on Leningrad television that was seen throughout the USSR and collaborated with the Echo Moscow radio station, whose closure was forced last year by the Kremlin structures.
The informant was placed on the wanted list and arrested in the absence of Russia.
Nevzorov has been very critical of Russia's war intervention in Ukraine, but years ago he maintained a nationalist position, which he regretted in 2015, and supported Vladimir Putin during his presidential campaign in 2012.
In 2014, he nonetheless opposed Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula and in April 2021 warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would end in tragedy and humiliation for Russia.
In March 2022, he was accused of distributing false information about the Armed Forces.
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