Russia jails journalist for spreading ‘fake news’ about army in Ukraine war

Sergei Mikhailov was arrested in 2022 after publishing reports about civilian deaths in Bucha and Mariupol.

A court in Russia has sentenced journalist Sergei Mikhailov to eight years in prison for “intentionally spreading false information” about the Russian army, a human rights group confirmed.

Prosecutors in Gorno-Altaysk, a city in the southern Altay region that lies in the foothills of the Altai Mountains, said the 48-year-old was motivated by “political hatred,” Net Freedoms Project said on Friday on its Telegram channel.

The court also imposed a four-year ban on the reporter’s journalistic and publishing activities, it added.

Mikhailov, a journalist and editor at Listok, was arrested in 2022 near Moscow for posting on the publication’s Telegram channel and website about the murder of civilians in Bucha, northwest of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, and about Russian shelling and killings in the southeastern city of Mariupol.

The events in both Ukrainian cities came to represent the worst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rights groups have said.

The journalist denies any wrongdoing and his defence is expected to take the stand next week, according to Net Freedoms Project.

Earlier this week, Mikhailov told the court that he stood by his reporting and harshly criticised the Kremlin for sending troops to Ukraine.

He said the Russian state narrative of calling the Ukrainian leadership “fascist” had “created a whole virtual universe in the information space, and this fog became stronger and stronger”.

“My publications were aimed against this fog, so that my readers were not seduced by lies, so that they do not take part in armed conflicts, do not become murderers and victims and so that they do not harm the brotherly Ukrainian people,” Mikhailov said, in an audio of the speech published by Listok on social media.

Mikhailov was arrested started soon after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While President Vladimir Putin has been tightening Russia’s grip on media freedoms and freedom of expression over the past decade, repression and a crackdown on dissent have intensified dramatically since the start of the war, watchdogs say.

Three months after the invasion, Putin expanded laws against “foreign agents” to include nonprofit organisations, media outlets, journalists and activists. This meant that organisations receiving any foreign support – including any donations or other funding – could be designated as foreign agents.

In 2023, Putin pushed for war censorship laws criminalising anyone who could be accused of discrediting the Russian armed forces or sharing information about their conduct that doesn’t subscribe to the government line. Those accused of breaching these laws could be jailed for up to 15 years.

With state censorship resulting in the closure of several independent media outlets and the persecution of prominent journalists, hundreds of reporters have fled into exile. Others have remained in Russia at great cost.

According to human rights group OVD-Info, more than 1,000 people are now defending themselves in criminal cases initiated because of their criticism of the Ukraine war.