Woman from Astrakhan Region convicted for fakes about Russian Army

Natalia Beliavskaya from the town of Znamensk, accused of spreading fakes about the Russian Armed Forces, has been sentenced to eight months of correctional labour.

As reported by the human rights project "OVD-Info"* with reference to the press service of the court, the reason to prosecute Natalia was in the posts placed in the "VKontakte" social network in April 2022. The case opened against her mentions "text records and images," in which the prosecution had found "deliberately false information" about deaths of Ukrainian civilians.

At her request, Beliavskaya's case was considered in a special order, for which the woman had fully admitted her guilt. The special order allows a defendant to receive a more lenient punishment than provided for by the respective article, due to the full admission of guilt.

The "Caucasian Knot" has also reported the case of Evgenia Maiboroda, a 72-year-old resident of the Rostov Region, who was accused under the same article. On January 29, the court sentenced her to 5.5 years in prison. The prosecution saw in her posts, apart from "military fakes," also calls for extremism.

*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of foreign agents.