Prosecutors in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, have asked a court to sentence to eight years in prison an artist who was arrested last year for using price tags in a city store to distribute information about Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Aleksandra Skochilenko was arrested in April 2022 after she replaced price tags in a supermarket in late March with pieces of paper containing what investigators called "knowingly false information about the use of the Russian armed forces."
Skochilenko has several medical conditions, including a congenital heart defect, bipolar disorder, intolerance to gluten, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
However, Judge Aleksandr Gladyshev ruled that Skochilenko was fit to serve a prison term in case of her conviction and to be transferred to prison, while the process of transferring convicts in Russia, known as "etap," involves “vagonzaks” -- trains specifically designed for prisoners.
Such trains have caged compartments for prisoners, who are provided with little fresh air, no showers, and only limited access to food or a toilet.
The transfers can take days, weeks, or even months as the trains stop and convicts spend time in transit prisons. Convicts almost always face humiliation, beatings, and sometimes even death at the hands of their guards.
Skochilenko has said her actions were not about the army but instead an attempt to support peace.
Earlier this year, Skochilenko's defense team asked linguist Svetlana Drugoveiko-Dozhanskaya to analyze the texts on the pieces of paper and the expert concluded that they did not carry false information about Russia's armed forces.
Shortly after her testimony in the courtroom, Drugoveiko-Dozhanskaya was fired from her job at the St. Petersburg State University for what was officially announced as "an immoral misdeed."
In early March 2022, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that allows for lengthy prison terms for distributing "deliberately false information" about Russian military operations as the Kremlin seeks to control the narrative about its war in Ukraine.
That includes a prohibition on calling it a war. Moscow officially calls it a "spcial military operation."
The law envisages sentences of up to 10 years in prison for individuals convicted of an offense, while the penalty for the distribution of "deliberately false information" about the Russian armed forces that leads to "serious consequences" is 15 years in prison.
It also makes it illegal "to make calls against the use of Russian troops to protect the interests of Russia" or "for discrediting such use" with a possible penalty of up to three years in prison. The same provision applies to calls for sanctions against Russia.