Russia hands an 8-year prison term to a newspaper publisher in Siberia over Ukraine war criticism

A Russian newspaper publisher was convicted by a court in Siberia on Friday and sentenced to eight years in prison after his paper reported on Russia’s attacks on civilians in Ukraine, local media and rights activists reported.

The court in the city of Gorno-Altaysk convicted Sergei Mikhailov, a prominent journalist in the Siberian region of Altai and the publisher of the local newspaper Listok, or “Leaflet” in Russian, of “spreading false information” about the Russian army, the Net Freedoms rights group said.

Under a new law adopted days after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it has become a criminal offense in Russia to criticize the war. Hundreds of Russians, including multiple journalists, have been prosecuted under the law in a government crackdown of unprecedented scale and harshness.

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