Russian authorities are seeking a six-year prison sentence for a pediatrician accused of criticizing the war in Ukraine in front of one of her patients and his mother, Russian independent news site Mediazona reported on Friday.
The case against Dr. Nadezhda Buyanova, 68, is one of hundreds filed against the Russians after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, unleashing an unprecedented crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and ordinary people .
Buyanova was arrested in February. The mother of one of her patients reported her to authorities, claiming that the pediatrician told her son that his father, a Russian soldier killed in Ukraine, was a legitimate target for Kiev’s forces, and blamed Russia of the war.
The pediatrician was charged with spreading false information about the military, a criminal offense under a law passed shortly after the invasion that was widely used to attack critics and protesters. She has denied the allegations and insisted she never said these things.
Buyanova’s defense argued that the prosecutor failed to provide evidence that the alleged conversation took place and claimed that the woman who reported the doctor, who was born in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, made up the story out of hostility toward Ukrainians, according to Mediazona .
In her closing statement to the court, Buyanova said it was “painful” to read the allegations in the indictment and burst into tears.
According to OVD-Info, one of Russia’s leading human rights organizations that tracks political arrests, more than a thousand people are involved in criminal cases on charges of speaking out or acting against the war in Ukraine.
