Ten months after being arrested for a post on Instagram, the Russian journalist and activist Maria Ponomarenko has received her final sentence: six years in prison.
A court in the Siberian city of Barnaul has sentenced the reporter for commenting on the attack that killed hundreds of people taking refuge in the Mariupol theater in Ukraine on June 16.
“Not a single day has passed since February 24 (the beginning of the offensive on Ukraine) that I did not cry.
Now I will not cry, because they will think that my tears are due to the fact of being imprisoned, ”Ponomarenko said during her trial.
The court has applied against the reporter the recent law that persecutes any personal statement that discredits the role of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine.
Specifically, the section on the dissemination of information that the Kremlin considers false.
Likewise, she disqualifies her from practicing the profession of journalist for five years.
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Moscow denied having committed that bombing during its assault on the city.
Inside the theater more than a thousand people had sought refuge, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of which Russia is a part, denied the Kremlin's version.
“Russia is not saying that (the theater) was a legitimate target, but that it was blown up by the Ukrainian Azov battalion.
Our mission has not obtained any indication that this was the case," the agency said in a report dated April 17.
Another Amnesty International inquiry blamed the killing on a Russian airstrike, and the Associated Press published an inquiry in May estimating that some 600 people died in the building's destruction.
The Russian Prosecutor's Office had requested nine years in prison for Ponomarenko for its publication, although his sentence was ultimately reduced to six years because the investigation failed to determine the Internet (IP) address from which the story was posted on his personal account.
During the trial, the prosecution criticized the non-collaboration of the American company Meta, owner of that social network and designated as an extremist organization by Moscow.
punishment cell
Ponomarenko was arrested in April last year.
The journalist suffers from claustrophobia and "histrionic personality disorder", as she explained herself in September during a trial session.
Also, the only window in her cell had been covered with gray tape.
Ponomarenko ended up breaking her months later, in September, and she was placed in a punishment cell.
Later, it was revealed that she also attempted suicide.
The Russian justice system granted her house arrest in November on the condition that she stay in her ex-husband's apartment.
According to the Russian press, the man, who supports the invasion of Ukraine, grabbed her by the neck during a discussion about the war and she fled into the street.
By violating the conditions of her arrest, she was thrown back into prison.
Mother of two minor children, before her arrest she also held an individual protest with a sign that read "Russia, wake up!"
Following the Kremlin's legal reforms in recent years, even one-person street protests are a crime without prior permission from the authorities.
The reporter has received the support of other opponents who have also been persecuted for criticizing the war.
"Maria Ponomarenko is a political prisoner", published on Telegram the team of the opposition Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is currently in prison awaiting trial for alleged treason, which would mean up to 20 years in prison.
"Maria has not only suffered the violence of a repressive State, but also that of the father of her daughters," published the circle of councilor Alexei Gorinov, sentenced to seven years in prison for saying that children were dying in Ukraine by asking not to hold a children's festival in Moscow.
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