A Russian military court on Monday convicted a popular Ukrainian YouTube blogger and journalist in absentia for making public calls to kill President Vladimir Putin.
A Moscow military court sentenced Dmitry Gordon to 14 years imprisonment, the TASS news agency reported.
Russia has been convicting its opponents in absentia as part of a crackdown since the start of the Ukraine offensive.
Gordon, 56, is a household name in Ukraine with millions of followers on social media.
A poll in August 2023 placed him seventh among Ukrainians’ most viewed “experts” commenting on YouTube.
Starting as a newspaper journalist, he founded a Russian-language weekly newspaper called “Gordon’s Boulevard” and hosted a television show called “Gordon’s Guests,” also in Russian.
He then launched an online news site called Gordon and two YouTube channels.
Gordon would often appear as a commentator on Russian television talk shows, saying on Olga Skabeyeva’s 60 Minutes show in 2019 that “I would call Putin one word: a criminal.”
He was critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky up to Russia’s offensive.