A self-exiled member of the Pussy Riot protest group, Lyusya Shtein, has been sentenced in absentia to six years in prison over her online posts about Russian armed forces involved in the war in Ukraine.
Moscow's Basmanny district court issued the ruling against Shtein on March 27 after finding her guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military.
In May 2022, the Interior Ministry added Shtein to its wanted list for violating a parole-like August 2021 sentence for ignoring coronavirus safety precautions by calling on people to rally against the arrest of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.
Navalny died last month in an Arctic penal colony under suspicious circumstances.
Shtein, who is also a member of the SK SOS group defending LGBT rights, left Russia in April 2022 after her apartment door was marked with a Z-shaped sticker and the inscription, "Collaborator. Do not sell the Motherland."
Many Russian military vehicles and tanks have been marked with the letter Z during the ongoing invasion, with the insignia becoming an increasingly ubiquitous symbol of support for the war -- launched against Ukraine on February 24, 2022 -- for the military, the Kremlin’s policies, and above all for President Vladimir Putin.
Shtein's partner and Pussy Riot founding member Maria Alyokhina also fled Russia in 2022 after a Moscow court changed the remainder of her one-year parole-like sentence to real prison time for an alleged violation.
Shtein, Alyokhina, and other members of the protest group were sentenced to up 15 days in jail several times in 2021-2022 for taking part in protest actions and unsanctioned rallies.
Pussy Riot came to prominence after three of its members were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for a stunt in which they burst into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in 2012 and sang a "punk prayer" against Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time and campaigning for his subsequent return to the Kremlin.
Alyokhina and bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova had almost completed serving their two-year prison sentences when they were freed in December 2013 under an amnesty.
The two have dismissed the move as a propaganda stunt by Putin to improve his image ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which were held in the Russian resort city of Sochi.