Russia sentences a Russian journalist to 6 years in prison for reporting on Instagram the attack on the Mariupol theater

The Russian reporter Maria Ponomarenko44, has just joined the long list of journalists retaliated for allegedly false information about the war in Ukraine.

Ponomarenko was today sentenced to six years in prison for recounting on Instagram what happened in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, specifically the attack on the city’s Drama Theater in March last year and completely destroyed it, causing the death of hundreds of people who took refuge there.

The Leninsky court in Barnaul (Siberian region of Altai) has found her guilty of “spreading false information about the Russian Army.” She will also be prohibited from practicing journalism for five years.

The Prosecutor’s Office had asked to sentence Ponomarenko, who has been working for the RusNews news website, to nine years of confinement in a penal colony. She was arrested in April last year in Saint Petersburg.

It turns out that Moscow never came to admit that the destruction of the theater was the work of its troops, so Ponomarenko’s information was described as “hoax.” The journalist underwent a psychiatric examination and apparently attempted suicide.

She is among the hundred and a half Russian journalists and bloggers sentenced under this law on “false information” and “denigration of the Armed Forces”, which came into force after the invasion of Ukraine.