UkraineKupiansk sty

An informal memorial next to the former 'PMC Wagner Centre's St.Petersburg, St Petersburg, Russian Federation - 24 Aug 2023

HANDOUT on 6/9/2023

How U.S. military aid has grown since the start of the war

The Washington Post

UKRAINE YOUNG SOLDIERS

UKRAINE DRONES PRODUCTION

Wagner fighters deployed in Rostov-on-Don

Russia Ukraine War

The potent U.S. arsenal for Ukraine’s counteroffensive

Ukraine southern front

Promo image for russia-ukraine-frontline-map 

Ruble Sinks as Russia Isolated by Sanctions

Bloomberg

FTWP

HOGP

United States Russia Nuclear Treaty

Ukraine Russia War Crimes Hospitals

For The Washington Post

U.S. Army M1 Abrams tanks from the 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 163rd Cavalry Regiment prepare to conduct movement operations during Exercise Eager Lion in Jordan, Sept. 6, 2022

Task Force Spartan

handout

UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT-WAR

Contributor

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Chinese EVs are good for the world. Biden says they’re bad for America. 

Why the Solomon Islands election matters to China and the U.S.

Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ like China, Russia, at campaign event

The 6 best things to do with kids in the D.C. area this weekend 

The 33 best things to do in D.C. this weekend and next week

Trevor Williams’s escape act helps Nationals blank Rangers 

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Taxes are inevitable. Paying to prepare them doesn’t have to be.

Miss Manners: Offering my bedroom to guests

Ask Amy: My wife’s sister confessed her feelings for me

Carolyn Hax: Will request for a postnup offend much younger wife?

NASA moon capsule suffered extensive damage during 2022 test flight

Russian state media ramping up English, Spanish presence on TikTok, study finds

Apple is behind in AI and killed its self-driving car project. What’s next?

This masterpiece ‘Birth of Venus’ probably isn’t of Venus at all

The beginner’s illustrated guide to watching an F1 race

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

You asked: Do I need a passport for my cruise?

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

I learned to heal my sadness by cradling dying chickens 

World Press Freedom Day, 2024

How Trump convinces Republicans to adopt extreme views

Campuses are grappling with the Gaza war. So are our columnists.

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Eighty percent of Ukraine-Israel bill will be spent in U.S. or by U.S. military

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Local sports networks go dark mid-game amid dispute with Comcast 

Trump

Europe

World

National Security

Military

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukraine-russia/

War in Ukraine

Alexander Nemenov

A Moscow court on Monday sentenced a man to five years of compulsory labor for giving an antiwar comment to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) two years ago — a criminal prosecution that showed the Russian government intensifying its crackdown on dissent and that could have a chilling effect on international media still operating in the country.

The man, Yuri Kokhovets, 38, made a brief comment critical of Russia’s war in Ukraine in July 2022, when reporters from RFE/RL were conducting “vox pops” — quick interviews surveying public opinion — outside a subway station in the Russian capital.

The reporters for RFE/RL, which is financed by the U.S. government, asked passersby if they felt there was a need for “détente between Russia and NATO countries.”

Kokhovets, in reply, said he found justifications for the war given by President Vladimir Putin and other officials to be baseless, and he said that hostilities should cease immediately.

“Our government unleashed this: Putin and his gang of thugs. Russia created all these problems for itself,” Kokhovets said. “For 20 years, they’ve been saying that NATO is a big problem. I don’t see any problems in NATO at all; they will not capture anyone.”

“Our government says that it wants to fight nationalists but bombs shopping centers; in Bucha, our soldiers from Buryatia and Dagestan shot civilians for no reason at all,” he added. “We need to finish all these actions, and that’s it.”

Nearly a year later, reports surfaced that the authorities had initiated a criminal case against Kokhovets on charges of spreading “false information” about the Russian army — under new laws adopted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Law enforcement officials have focused particularly on remarks about Bucha, a city near Kyiv, where Russian soldiers were accused of committing atrocities, including murdering civilians, during the early weeks of the invasion.

Multiple cases were prosecuted retrospectively, sometimes months after critical remarks had been made, as Putin and other Russian officials insisted that the alleged atrocities in Bucha were provocation staged by the West and denied the Russian military’s involvement.

Kokhovets was detained for several days but then released on bail with a travel restriction imposed on him.

During the proceedings, prosecutors presented a linguistic analysis of his interview that added gravity to the charge — “spreading false information motivated by political hatred” — because Kokhovets had described Putin’s allies as a “gang of thugs.” That small adjustment to the charge meant Kokhovets was facing up to 10 years in prison.

Prosecutors demanded a prison sentence of 5½ years, but the court on Monday delivered a markedly lenient verdict in today’s Russia by sentencing Kokhovets to five years of mandatory labor, and deducting 10 percent from his salary to be paid to the government.

“My whole life has been a mishap, but I had to get lucky at least once in my life; here I walked along the razor’s edge,” Kokhovets told reporters following the verdict. “I am going to unpack my prison bag finally. … I’m happy this stage of my life is over.”

Defense lawyers, who maintained Kokhovets did not commit any crime, said they were happy with the verdict and would not file an appeal because “they are aware of the judicial practice” in Russia, in which appeals in such cases rarely result in acquittal.

Two similar probes under harsh “discrediting of the army” laws were initiated last year after Muscovites were queried by Deutsche Welle, the German public broadcaster, which has expressed support for Western supplies of weapons to Ukraine.

Both Deutsche Welle and RFE/RL have been declared “foreign agents” by the Russian government, a label widely applied to media organizations and individual journalists critical of the Kremlin who are deemed to be under foreign influence.

Moscow’s hunt for war critics has extended far beyond Russia’s borders. European authorities last week arrested a group of people suspected of attacking a Russian political opposition figure Leonid Volkov outside his home in Vilnius, Lithuania. Volkov, a close aide to the late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/12/leonid-volkov-navalny-attack-aide-hammer/" target=_blank>attacked with a hammer</a>.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Friday that three men were arrested in the case, including two Polish citizens allegedly linked to radical football hooligan groups. Tusk said they were suspected of carrying out the attack at the direction of a Belarusian citizen.

At the time Volkov was attacked. Lithuanian intelligence officials said the incident was linked to the Russian security services. The Kremlin declined to comment on that accusation.

Lithuanian prosecutor Justas Laucius said at a news conference following the arrests that Volkov was attacked “because of his political activities and opinions.”

The attack occurred about a month after Navalny died unexpectedly in a remote Arctic prison. Russian authorities claimed he died of natural causes, while Navalny’s family said he was murdered on orders of the Kremlin.

Lomonosov Moscow State University

Mary Ilyushina, a reporter on the Foreign Desk of The Washington Post, covers Russia and the region. She began her career in independent Russian media before joining CNN’s Moscow bureau as a field producer in 2017. She has been with The Post since 2021. She speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian and Arabic.

Mary Ilyushina

Russian man sentenced to five years of labor for criticizing war in Ukraine

the-washington-post

RUSSIA-UKRAINE-CONFLICT-TRIAL

AFP/Getty Images

Verified videos

Donbas region

Russian combat capabilities

HIMARS

washpost

prism://prism.query/site,/world/europe&limit=20

The Washington Post provides the latest information and analysis on UK and European news. Includes news from the European Union, European commission news and European parliament news.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.