In Russia, a nurse sentenced to eight years in prison for denouncing the offensive in Ukraine

A 59-year-old Russian nurse was sentenced on Thursday October 3 to spend eight years in a penal colony for denouncing the offensive in Ukraine on social networks. Russian authorities have banned any criticism of this military operation, punishing thousands of people with prison terms or fines for denigrating it.

Moscow’s Dorogomilovskaya court found Olga Menchikh guilty of spreading “falsehoods” about the Russian military, under a law passed shortly after the Kremlin sent troops to Ukraine and used to silence dissent. This court ruled that this nurse had broadcast messages “motivated by political hatred”. Olga Menchikh denounced a deadly Russian strike carried out in 2022 on the Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia and the alleged massacre of civilians in the kyiv suburb of Boutcha. She also attacked the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova.

Olga Menchikh pleaded not guilty and told the court she felt sorry for the wounded Russian soldiers arriving at the Pirogov National Medical and Surgical Center in the Russian capital, where she was a nurse anesthetist. “When a young man passes by, do you know what a woman feels? Compassion, not the hatred of which I am accused”she told the court, according to a correspondent for the independent site Mediazona, who attended the hearing. “I really felt sad for them.”

Olga Menchikh was arrested in April and placed under house arrest then in pre-trial detention in September. This nurse addressed the prosecutor in these terms: “You want to condemn me as for murder, but I fought for your health. I treated many prosecutors and judges from all over Moscow.”