Russia seeks 6-year jail term for medic accused of criticising Ukraine war 

Authorities in Russia are seeking a six-year prison term for a paediatrician accused of criticising the war in Ukraine during a private appointment with a patient and his mother.

Dr Nadezhda Buyanova was reported to the police by the ex-wife of a soldier missing after fighting in Ukraine – Anastasia Akinshina – who accused the doctor of blaming Russia for the war and telling her son that his father was a legitimate target for Kyiv’s troops.

Buyanova, 68, was arrested in February and initially released on condition of complying with certain restrictions. But two months later, authorities placed her in pre-trial detention, arguing that she violated some of the restrictions.

She is charged with spreading “fake” information on the Russian army under military censorship laws used to silence dissent.

The case against her is one of hundreds brought against Russians after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and Russian citizens.

Handcuffed behind a glass defendant’s cage in a court hearing on Friday, the Moscow medic cried and said: “I am innocent.”

Many have pointed to her birthplace – Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, which Russia has painted as the root of all evil – as a reason for such treatment.

“I was born in the city of Lviv, a city in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic,” she said, sobbing after prosecutors announced they were seeking a years-long prison sentence.

“What kind of hatred can I feel? I am related to three Slavic peoples: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine,” she said.

“I am not a politician. … I am just a doctor,” she said.

Buyanova also denied the charges against her.

“None of this happened,” she said in court, accusing Akinshina of making up the conversation.

At the start of the trial in April, Akinshina said her son was not present in the room when the dialogue took place.

But in a court hearing over the summer, the seven-year-old boy said Buyanova had alleged, “Russia is an aggressor country, and Russia kills peaceful people in Ukraine.” He also said Buyanova had called his father a “legal target for Ukraine”.

“I saw that boy. … These were such adult phrases, such scary ones. I doubt that those were his words,” Buyanova said in court.

Lawyers had asked if the boy was pressured, but the court refused to consider the complaint.

“It is obvious the boy could not remember or understand such phrases like ‘legal target’,” Buyanova’s lawyer Oskar Cherdiyev told reporters.

A dozen people, mostly medics, came to court to support Buyanova, whose first name means “hope” in Russian.

“The whole situation is absurd,” 49-year-old child psychologist Arina told the AFP news agency.

“The only thing we can do is to show Nadezhda that she is not alone, … that there are people who are hoping for a miracle,” she said.