A Russian man previously convicted of criticizing the war in Ukraine during a street interview had his sentence toughened on Tuesday from five years of hard labor to five years in prison, state media reported.
Yuri Kokhovets, 38, accused Russian soldiers of shooting civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha “for no reason at all” in a spontaneous interview he gave to U.S.-funded news outlet Radio Liberty in July 2022.
He was sentenced to five years of correctional labor in April 2024 for spreading “false information about the Russian army” but prosecutors appealed, asking for a tougher sentence.
“The court has decided to change the sentence of Yuri Kokhovets and sentence him to five years of imprisonment in a general regime penal colony,” a Moscow City Court judge was quoted as saying on Tuesday by the state-run TASS news agency.
Russia has detained, fined and jailed thousands of people for opposing its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in what rights groups large-scale crackdown reminiscent of those during the Soviet era.
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