Pediatrician sentenced in Russia to 5 years in prison for criticizing war with Ukraine in front of patient

On Tuesday, November 12, Russia sentenced a pediatrician to 5 and a half years in prison for allegedly criticizing the Ukraine campaign during a medical appointment, after she was denounced by the ex-wife of a soldier killed in combat.

The case against Nadezhda Buyanova, 68, has exemplified the level of repression in Russia and how allegations have become more common as the country’s troops fight in Ukraine.

Arrested in February, the Moscow pediatrician was accused by Anastasia Akinshina, a military man’s ex-partner, of calling the man a “legal target” of Ukraine, in comments allegedly made during her son’s medical appointment. Buyanova claimed that she is innocent and “just a doctor.”

Judge Olga Felina convicted her even though there was no public evidence that the conversation had taken place and after Akinshina’s 7-year-old boy testified against the galena.in a practice reminiscent of Soviet show trials.

“I think this is absurd,” the gray-haired Buyanova said moments before she was sentenced to prison. Several supporters, mostly doctors, shouted “Shame on you!” in court while the sentence was read. “I’m a pediatrician… I don’t regret a day,” said the professional.

Many have pointed to Buyanova’s birthplace, the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, as the real reason for her harsh treatment.

Handcuffed in the defendants’ glass cage and wearing a black sweater, she thanked her supporters for coming to court. “We must empathize with others and love others,” he said in court. “But there is no paradise on Earth, there is no peace on Earth. And that is what I would like,” he added.

The pediatrician cried in court last week when the Prosecutors demanded a 6-year sentence for her, saying she came from a “simple family” and “didn’t have an easy life.”

“No evidence has been presented,” his lawyer Leonid Solovyev argued after the verdict. He insisted there is no audio recording of the alleged comments and charged that prosecutors brought Akinshina’s son to trial, saying he had been pressured by the FSB security service.

Although his mother had stated earlier in the trial that she was not present during the conversation, The boy told the court that Buyanova had called his father a “legal target for Ukraine.” The doctor and her lawyers assured that The minor used unusual language for a child his age.

Lawyer Solovyev was “surprised” to see that people had come to support Buyanova “in the third year without the rule of law.”

The pediatrician, who has lived in Russia for more than three decades, has been accused of having a “personal hatred” toward Russian leaders because of her place of birth. “She is from Lviv. That’s why she hates Russia,” Akinshina said in court at the beginning of the trial.

Moscow has unleashed a massive crackdown on dissent since launching its campaign in Ukraine in 2022. Yuri Samodurov, former director of the NGO Sakharov Center in Moscow, said: The verdict was “totally unfounded” and reminiscent of a “witch hunt.”

The parents of exiled opposition leader Ilya Yashin, who has attended various political trials in Russia, also attended the hearing. “It is a woman’s complaint against the word of a doctor,” Tatiana Yashina, who is desperate at the number of prison sentences handed down in Russia in cases considered political, told AFP. “With each sentence it seems that the system loosens its jaws… But The sentences are so harsh that even for murder they give less“, held.

More than 1,000 people have been criminally prosecuted in Russia for speaking out against the waraccording to the OVD-Info human rights project, while more than 20,000 have been detained for protesting.

Buyanova’s case is part of a broader trend in Russia of people suing each other for alleged political crimes. OVD-Info has registered 21 criminal proceedings of this type in the more than two and a half years since the beginning of the conflict.

Eva Levenberg, a lawyer for the human rights group, told Reuters that another 175 people had faced lower-level administrative cases for “discrediting” the Russian military as a result of people reporting them, and 79 of them had been fined.