Russian former teacher gets 5.5 years in prison for anti-war posts

A former schoolteacher in Russia has been sentenced to five and a half years in a penal colony for remarks he made online about President Vladimir Putin and Russian "fascism" in Ukraine, his fiancee said on Thursday.

Nikita Tushkanov, 29, made the posts last October after the bombing of the Kerch bridge linking Russia to annexed Crimea, a major attack that Moscow blamed on Ukraine.

Tushkanov called the bombing "a birthday present for Putler"—a pejorative term linking the Russian president to Adolf Hitler. When Russia responded with rocket strikes against Ukrainian cities, he called it "the revenge of Putin's fascism for the Kerch bridge."

His fiancee Alexandra Kochanova told Reuters his court case had lasted "not more than 10 minutes" in front of military judges, and that he would appeal.

Russia introduced new censorship laws after launching its war on Ukraine last year, prescribing long prison sentences for "discrediting" the armed forces or spreading false information about them.

Asked why Tushkanov had written the posts, Kochanova said he believed "it was necessary to write, speak, and show that he didn't agree. He understood the risks, but he still decided that this was more important, that these were his principles."

Officers of Russia's FSB security service arrested Tushkanov at his home in the city of Syktyvkar on Dec. 7, independent news outlet Mediazona reported. He was subsequently added to a federal database of "terrorists and extremists."

According to Mediazona, Tushkanov was fired in 2021 from his job as a history teacher in a small town in the northern Urals for staging a one-man picket in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

He had twice been fined for anti-war posts since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, according to court documents, although one of the fines was dropped.

According to human rights network OVD-Info, 19,673 people have been detained for protesting against Russia’s war in Ukraine since it invaded on Feb. 24 last year, and criminal cases have been launched against more than 550. — Reuters