More than 100 Russian doctors signed an open letter to President Vladimir Putin calling for the release of a 33-year-old Russian woman who was sentenced to seven years in prison for using price tags in a supermarket to distribute information about Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The doctors, in appealing to Putin as the "guarantor of rights and freedoms of Russian citizens" -- expressed "serious concerns” about the health of artist Aleksandra (Sasha) Skochilenko and insisted her actions did not violate Russian law.
"For disagreement with the war and a pacifist action that did not violate the law, the artist Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in prison," the letter stated.
"In addition to indignation at the obvious injustice of the sentence, we, as the medical community, have serious concerns about Sasha's state of health. She has been diagnosed with a number of serious chronic diseases that require proper medical supervision and a special regimen," it added.
SEE ALSO: 'Five Tiny Pieces Of Paper': St. Petersburg Artist Sasha Skochilenko's Defiant Final Words In CourtOn November 16, a court in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, sentenced Skochilenko to prison after finding her guilty of "distributing false information about Russian armed forces," under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, which was bulldozed through both chambers of parliament and signed by Putin in a single day last year.
Dozens of journalists and people who came to support Skochilenko chanted: "Shame! Shame! Shame!" after Judge Oksana Demyasheva pronounced the ruling in Putin's hometown.
Several municipal lawmakers and noted Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov were among those who were in attendance to support Skochilenko.
Opposition lawmaker Boris Vishnevsky said the court ruling "has nothing to do with law, justice, or humanism."
"This is not justice; this is a reprisal. Those who called this justice, I hope will be tried one day, though I don't know when that will happen. I hope very much that Sasha will be released earlier," Vishnevsky said.
Skochilenko was arrested in April 2022 after she replaced five 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."
In her final testimony hours before the verdict and sentence were handed down, Skochilenko reiterated her previous statement that her actions in the store were to promote peace.
Prosecutors had asked the court to convict Skochilenko and sentence her to eight years in prison.
Skochilenko has several medical conditions, including a congenital heart defect, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Since her arrest, rights groups have called for her immediate release.
Weeks after Russia started its ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, 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.
Article 207.3, which includes a prohibition on calling it a war -- Moscow officially calls it a "special military operation" -- represented a significant new phase in the Kremlin's effort to stamp out opposition to the invasion in Ukraine and clamp down on dissent.