Ukrainian film producer Rodnianskyi convicted in Russia for "fake news" about Russian army

Moscow’s Basmanny District Court has sentenced Ukrainian producer Oleksandr Rodnianskyi (Alexander Rodnyansky) in absentia to eight years and six months in prison for four anti-war social media posts and banned him from "writing on the internet" for four years.

Source: Russian independent media outlet Mediazona

Details: Rodnianskyi was found guilty of spreading military "fake news" motivated by political hatred. The trial was held in absentia. The state prosecution had requested a nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence for the producer.

In the debate, Rodnianskyi’s defence lawyer Irina Nikulina asked for her client to be acquitted: "My client is an exceptional person. The world's eyes are fixed on his activities. We are now living in times when the best people and the finest minds end up in court. People with the right views, with sober thoughts."

Nikulina also noted that no one informed Rodnianskyi of the criminal case or made any attempt to find out about his attitude to the case, although the investigating judge knew that a lawyer had been assigned to the case. The investigating judge had responded to the defence's petitions by attempting to replace her with a public defender.

Rodnianskyi had asked his lawyer not to provide the court with character references about "what a good person he is", as he does not consider this to be a proper method of defence.

The Russian investigation was based on Instagram posts by Rodnianskyi about the Russian attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol (dated 11 March 2022) and the Russian military killing civilians in Ukraine (16 March 2022), and a post about the Russian army's attacks on civilian targets in Kyiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia which Rodnianskyi wrote on 10 October 2023 and reposted on his Telegram channel.

For reference: Oleksandr Rodniansky is a Ukrainian citizen, born in Kyiv, who used to work in the Russian Federation. The producer has repeatedly spoken out against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He was declared a "foreign agent" by the Russian Ministry of Justice at the end of October 2022. A court in Moscow arrested the producer in absentia in mid-May 2023. Nothing had previously been known about the case against him.

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