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Russian prosecutors requested a six-year prison sentence for a Moscow pediatrician accused of criticizing the invasion of Ukraine during a private appointment Friday, despite the medic insisting she was innocent.
Nadezhda Buyanova was accused by the ex-wife of a soldier killed in Ukraine of criticizing the war. She was arrested in February.
The case against the 68-year-old — born in Ukraine’s Lviv, but who has lived in Russia for decades — showcases the level of repression that has gripped Russia while its troops fight in Ukraine.
Buyanova on Friday cried in court and insisted she was innocent.
The prosecutor requested the court find her guilty of spreading “fake” information about the Russian army and “sentence Buyanova to six years of imprisonment in a penal colony,” he said in court.
Moscow has used a law against spreading “fake” information widely to silence dissent amid its offensive.
Buyanova was brought into court handcuffed and wearing a black jumper, then placed into a cage for defendants.
Asked by AFP before the start of the hearing what is helping her live through being behind bars in pre-trial detention, she said: “My knowledge that I am innocent.”
“This has a big significance for a person, for your internal state,” she added, speaking from inside a glass defendant’s cage in the courtroom.
“Life did not spoil me. I did not have an easy life. I am from a simple family,” she said, her voice breaking.
Buyanova was reported to police by Anastasia Akinshina — who was previously married to a soldier killed fighting in Ukraine — for allegedly criticizing the full-scale invasion during a doctor’s appointment for her son.
She alleges that Buyanova called her ex-husband a “legal target for Ukraine” and said that “Russia is guilty” in Ukraine.
Buyanova’s defense team has said there is no evidence the conversation took place.
Prosecutors this summer brought out Akinshina’s seven-year-old son — who Buyanova’s lawyers say was not in the room during the alleged conversation — to testify against the doctor.
The child backed the prosecution’s case in court, alleging Buyanova said, “Russia is an aggressor country and that Russia kills peaceful people in Ukraine.”
“My dad is our hero, he protected our country,” the boy said in court in July, according to independent media outlet Mediazona.
A dozen people, mostly medics, came to support Buyanova at her trial.