Russia demands six-year prison sentence for medic accused of criticizing war in Ukraine | News about the Russia-Ukraine war

Pediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova is on trial over statements she allegedly made during a private appointment with a patient.

Russian authorities are demanding a six-year prison sentence for a pediatrician accused of criticizing 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 who went missing after fighting in Ukraine – Anastasia Akinshina. She accused the doctor of blaming Russia for the war and telling her son that his father was a legitimate target of Kiev troops.

Buyanova, 68, was arrested in February and initially released on condition that she abide by certain restrictions. But two months later, authorities remanded her on grounds that she had violated some of the restrictions.

She is accused of spreading “false” information about the Russian army under military censorship laws designed 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, triggering an unprecedented crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and Russian citizens.

The Moscow paramedic was handcuffed behind the defendant's glass cage at a court hearing on Friday and cried: “I'm innocent.”

Many have cited her birthplace – the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, which Russia has called 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 she was seeking a years-long prison sentence.

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

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

Buyanova also denied the allegations against her.

“None of this happened,” she told the court, accusing Akinshina of fabricating the conversation.

At the start of the trial in April, Akinshina said her son was not in the room at the time of the dialogue.

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

“I saw this boy. … Those were such grown-up phrases, so scary. I doubt those were his words,” Buyanova said in court.

Lawyers had asked whether the boy had been pressured, but the court refused to consider the complaint.

“It is obvious that the boy could not remember or understand expressions such as 'legal target',” Buyanova's lawyer Oskar Cherdiyev told reporters.

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

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

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