Moscow: A St. Petersburg woman who wrote a note on the grave of President Vladimir Putin's parents saying they had "raised a freak and a killer" was given a two-year suspended sentence by a Russian court on Thursday.
Irina Tsybaneva, 60, was found guilty by the court of desecrating graves out of political animosity. She didn't enter a guilty plea, according to her attorney, because she didn't physically desecrate the grave or try to gain attention for it.
On the night before Putin's birthday in October, Tsybaneva wrote on the guarded grave, "Parents of a maniac, take him to your place. He is such a pain and a hassle. Everybody prays for his demise. Putin must perish. You gave birth to a freak and a murderer.
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Putin's deployment of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 marked the beginning of a government crackdown on dissent unlike anything seen since the Soviet era.
Another instance involved the addition of Artur Smolyaninov, a Russian government actor, and a former adviser to the Ukrainian president's office to a list of "extremists and terrorists."
Smolyaninov said in a January interview with the Europe edition of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta that, if hostilities broke out, he would only fight on the side of Ukraine.
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Oleksiy Arestovich, a presidential advisor for Ukraine, resigned after claiming online that Ukrainian air defences prevented a Russian missile from hitting a residential building in the city of Dnipro, which resulted in the deaths of 45 people.
Nikita Tushkanov, a history teacher from Komi, was given a five-and-a-half-year prison term by a Russian military tribunal for remarks he made regarding the Kerch bridge explosion that connected Russia's mainland to the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine last year. Tushkanov was found responsible for "discrediting" the Russian army and defending terrorism. In social media posts from October, the teacher referred to the bridge explosion as "Putin's birthday present."
Alexei Navalny, a jailed opposition leader, tweeted that he had been put back in a punishment cell for solitary confinement just one day after being released from one. He made no guesses as to why.
After recovering in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning he attributed to the Kremlin, 46-year-old Navalny was detained in Moscow in January 2021. He had exposed official corruption and led massive anti-Kremlin protests.
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He was initially given a 22-year prison term for breaking his parole. He received a nine-year term for fraud and contempt of court last year. He is incarcerated in a maximum-security facility 250 miles (150 kilometres) east of Moscow.
The Kremlin's extensive repression campaign has made criticising the war illegal. In addition to fines and prison terms, those accused have also suffered from expulsion from Russia, blacklisting, and branding as "foreign agents."