Exiled Russian journalist gets 8 years’ jail for slamming Mariupol shelling

(Reuters) -Prominent Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail by a Moscow court on Wednesday on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army.

The court found that Nevzorov, 64, had been “motivated by political hatred” when he accused Russia’s armed forces in social media posts last March of deliberately shelling a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an assertion Moscow said was false.

The court said in a statement that he would be sent to a penal colony if he ever returned to Russia, and that he was banned from managing internet content for four years.

Nevzorov, who runs a YouTube channel with close to 2 million subscribers, called the investigation ridiculous and left Russia with his wife last March. Prosecutors had asked for a nine-year sentence.

Nevzorov responded to the verdict by saying “I don’t think Russia will exist in nine years’ time”.

In comments to a Russian news outlet, “We can explain”, he said he had no plans to return to the country and that President Vladimir Putin was heading “a dictatorship based on dirt, blood and denunciations”.

Nevzorov, who made his name hosting the pioneering news programme “600 Seconds” as Soviet society opened up under Mikhail Gorbachev and also served in Russia’s parliament, was granted Ukrainian citizenship after publicly denouncing Russia’s invasion, calling the war a “crime” and Ukraine its victim.

The case against him was brought under a law passed eight days after the invasion that set jail terms of up to 15 years for intentionally spreading false information about the military.

Russia has since blocked access to news sites publishing content at odds with the official line on the conflict, while dozens of Russian and international news outlets have left the country.

In a separate development on Wednesday, the General Prosecutor’s office declared the foreign-based opposition platform Free Russia Forum to be an “undesirable” organisation that posed “a threat to the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation”.

The Forum, whose leading members include former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, has held several meetings in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where it staged an anti-war conference late last year.

“Undesirable” organisations are banned from operating in Russia, and people risk prosecution for supporting or promoting their activities.

(Writing by Caleb Davis and Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)