A Russian anti-war activist has been sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for replacing supermarket pricing labels with anti-war messages.
Sasha Skochilenko, 33, an artist from St Petersburg, has been in detention since April last year.
She admitted taking part in activism shortly after the war began.
Her lawyers pleaded for her acquittal, saying that chronic illnesses she suffers from mean she is at risk of dying in prison.
Weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ms Skochilenko protested by replacing supermarket labels in a St Petersburg supermarket with anti-war messages, a small act called for by a feminist collective.
The replacement labels read: “Russian forces have destroyed 80% of Mariupol. For what?” and: “People I know are hiding from Russian bombs in the metro. None of them are Nazis. Stop the war.”
Ms Skochilenko admitted the charges.
In her closing statement, the artist struck a defiant tone, asking the court: “How little faith does our prosecutor have in our state and society if he thinks that our statehood and public security can be ruined by five small pieces of paper?”
“Say what you want – I was wrong, or I was brainwashed,” she said. “I will stand by my opinion and my truth.”
Skochilenko was convicted of “discrediting the Russian army” under repressive laws adopted in the wake of the invasion.
The legislation effectively criminalises all anti-war activism.
The trial lasted a year and a half, apparently because it was one of the first to be brought under the new laws. (BBC)
